All Whites captain's plan for young talent
SIMON PLUMB Last updated 09:47 04/09/2011
All Whites captain Ryan Nelsen is bringing to New Zealand a sport psychology system used by some of the English Premier League's biggest stars. And he is convinced the system can help develop the next generation of Kiwi talent.
"This is exactly what got me ready for the World Cup," he says of Provelop, a system of measuring mental strengths and weaknesses developed by English footballer-turned-sport scientist Tony Faulkner. Faulkner was head of performance at Blackburn Rovers, where Nelsen has been club captain for a decade.
Manchester City, Everton and Blackburn Rovers are among many top English clubs using the system.
Nelsen and his Roar Sports Marketing partners, Hamish Miller and Clark Todd, are the Australasian stakeholders in Provelop.
"When I met Tony at Blackburn we had a lot of conversations about the mindset of the academy players. Particularly, why weren't some extremely talented players making it through to the first team – while less talented players with better mindsets were," Nelsen told the Sunday Star-Times.
"The way Tony saw it, virtually 100% of academy training was being done on the pitch. None of it was about mindset or the mental side of the game.
"I first did the profile about two-and-a-half years ago and it opened my eyes to an area of the game I never really understood, and to be honest, I don't know if a lot of people truly know what they mean when they talk about mental toughness.
"I really got into this ahead of the qualifying process for last year's World Cup in South Africa. You find out some truths about yourself, some answers about where you're weak, where you're strong and how you can get better.
"One of the big things for me was confidence. If you have a couple of bad games in front of 50,000 people, and then the papers are on you, it can knock you, and some people don't fully recover ...
"The same demons can come from a Saturday afternoon where there are just a few parents watching.
"I'd love to give the same opportunity to all New Zealand kids, young sportspeople in general, to become the best they possibly can, whether that's first XI or world elite. It doesn't matter how much natural talent you have, having the right attitude is priceless.
"I'd like to think I've become a better footballer, and a better person, through this."
Faulkner, who now consults with Premier League and other top clubs in Europe and the States, says while the system is currently football-specific, "tweaks" for other sports are in the pipeline.
"It's not accurate to judge a developing athlete on talent alone, you can make some grave assumptions about whether that person is capable of making it as a professional," Faulkner said.
"What it means for New Zealand is that if you can put in place these mental behaviours within a group of people who already have technical ability, you're going to achieve so much more excellence."
Provelop co-founder Fran O'Leary, who spent two decades coaching in US universities, told the Star-Times: "Here in the States there's major emphasis on improving players above the shoulders.
"Below the shoulders there's been huge strides made over the past 20 years in areas such as diet, recovery, rest and exercise. The feeling now is that the next major improvement will be dealing with mindset ...
"For example, I bet a lot of Kiwis who played football with or against Ryan Nelsen at youth level sit round the dinner table telling stories about how they were faster, or technically better than him, but he's the one who made it.
"A lot of talented players fall by the wayside while shooting for the upper echelons of the sport and, most of the time, it's because they're not strong enough mentally."
- Sunday Star Times
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/sport/football/5560827/All-Whites-captains-plan-for-young-talent