Transcription
So that you get athletes who just turn up. They'll turn up. They'll do the requisite amount of work, but that's it. Athletes will turn up to compete. They put a bit more effort in. They try. They try to be the best amongst their group. Then there's the athletes who train to win. They train every day, every session, so that they win on match night. And then there are just those very few players who train to dominate. They train so hard that winning is inevitable on race night.
And the English coach is Bill Beic from Manchester. This side of yours is unbeaten thus far. You think that they can maintain it tonight? Well, it won't be for want of trying. Uh, it's a good record to have and, uh, it's a tough one to maintain. New Zealand in New Zealand, but it's going to be a great game. There, in fact, all of these top four teams have been remarkably close.
Were you confident at any stage that you could win it? I think you, you give it your best shot. It's a bit like Rocky 1, 2, and 3. You go out there, you prepare, and you give it your best shot. And that's what we said today. We had a team meeting. We said, we're going to give our best shot. And my three questions are: What do you want? How badly do you want it? And how much will you need to suffer? And very often, everything revolves around the first question, what do you want? Because a lot of people are unclear what they want from life. They don't sit down and think through. We, we are writing our own life story every day, and yet we don't think about it. What, what, who do we want to be? Where do we want to live? What life do we want to lead? When we finish our life, come to the end of our life, and look back, what do we want to say that we've done? So, "What do you want?" is a very powerful question.
And then, if, if an athlete says, "I want to be the best," Bill, fine. How badly do you want it? Because it's going to, you've got to pay a price to be the best. The best pay a big price. You've got to work harder. You've got to commit more. You've got to take more responsibility. You've got to deal with more ups and downs. And if there, if we can deal with that question, how much you want to suffer? Because I work with gold medal champions, and they suffer every day. They work enormously hard. They sacrifice enormous things in order to get that [Music] [Music] success.
"I wake up every morning and don't let the old man in." And that's life. We wake up every morning and make a decision who we're going to be. I've got Parkinson's, so getting up in the morning is not so easy for me. Getting dressed is not so easy. I have to make a decision: Am I going to be a fighter today, or am I going to be a victim? There's a great phrase: Genetics deals the cards, environment plays the hand. So genetics and you, your background, do influence your disposition to success in various activities. Another great thing I wrote once was, "There's a thousand excuses, but not a single reason." I did that with Bristol Bears be last this season. They loved it. Uh, when you step into the challenge zone, the number of excuses for getting out back into your comfort zone from there multiplies. "I'm too tired. It's too difficult. I'm having a bad day. Nobody likes me." Uh, and so I would teach them to face up to those excuses and refuse to be a victim, and teach them a fighter mentality about all those things may be there, but I'm still going to do it. I'm going to deal with it. So, a thousand excuses, but not one reason to achieve.
And even if you don't achieve at the highest level, you may not have the same genetic disposition as somebody else. But there's an awful lot of players playing in the Premier League football in this country who, uh, for talent, not quite as genetically superior, but, uh, for attitude. And attitude is something anybody can have. Anybody.
This is a time with a lot of talent, but one that you haven't spent a great deal of time with. How difficult is it to get cohesion between a lot of individuals who are very talented on their own? Well, that's my most difficult task because with a national team, you have so little time to prepare them. Unlike a club situation when you have them week in, week out. Uh, before this tournament, I had five days with the boys in Los Angeles to get them ready and playing together. But if, when it does happen, and it did happen against Canada, they become quite an effective force. Fast and move. They will go for the steal and make sure you come out to receive the ball. Get the foul. You're in control. You're in control of your mind. It's your mind. So you decide what you think. You can decide to improve your attitude any day.
Let's go to our, well, basketball. Um, we won the Commonwealth gold medal, which was the first medal that England had ever won in basketball. That was very good. Uh, still, still talk to my captain every week. Marshall, here's another example of it. The whistle blows, a timeout is taken, and half the New Zealand team arguing with the referee, while England is talking with their coach, deciding what to do in the last 20 seconds. I'm very impressed with that young man. He is going to be coaching England for a long, long, long time to come. Bill Bess, outstanding discipline is the name of the game at this level, isn't it? B, 20 seconds left in the game. Here we go.
Race day is fun because there's a crowd, there's cameras, there's your family, your friends, and it's nice to do that. What they don't see, the people in the arena don't see, is you on your own at 6:00 in the morning, working out, sweating [Applause], struggling. And that's what makes champions. The ability to motivate themselves to do the work on their own that leads to success in the arena. There's the physical element. You've got to take care of your strength, speed, stamina, nutrition, sleep, health. There's the technical element. And then you've got to develop the tactical intelligence to compete, follow a plan, know your position on the field, uh, know how you relate to the members of the team, know how to deal with certain situations in the game, one nil up or one nil down. And then there's the mental element. That's building the confidence and belief that you are a champion, that you can do this. So it's, it's that, uh, change from being in the dressing room, the comfort zone, to being in the tunnel before a big game, breathing in, to going on the field and believing and having the confidence to do what you do.
Well, this team came here very much as underdogs. England, they weren't rated very highly before the tournament. Thus far, everybody has been extremely impressed with the team and impressed with you. How do you see your future as English coach if you lose? Well, first of all, we prefer to be underdogs. It's a nice, sneaky position. Um, I think this is a start of, of what I'm hoping to achieve with the national team. And tonight's going to give me a lot more evidence on what kind of progress we're making, because this is a real pressure situation, uh, for what is basically been quite a young thing.
If I teach the athlete how to avoid victim mentality, how to slip into fight, how to transfer to fighter mentality, they're going to have that in life. When I got diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, I was driving back from the hospital with my wife, and she, she rang my, my second son, Phillip, in London, and said, "Phillip, your dad's got Parkinson's. He's, he's gone into victim mentality." And I heard this booming laugh at the other end of the phone, and he said, "I'll ring back in 10 minutes." And he rang back, and he and his wife, Haley, had Googled Parkinson's, researched it, and said, "Dad, we'll be up this week." It was Thursday, and he said, "We'll be up this weekend with the boys. We'll have a family action plan meeting on handling Parkinson's." And that was straight back into fighter mentality. So there's a very big crossover between situations in sport and situations in life. I mean, in a sense, we're all high performers. We all step up every day to earn a living, to maintain relationships, to take the responsibility of owning property, to raise children. We're all high performers. So the lessons of my high performance in sport carry, carry across into life.
It's, it's quite difficult actually, 'cause I deal with intangibles. They're non-measurable. So it's very hard for me to say, "I really helped that kid." 'Cause, but I get an instinctive feeling that maybe I, I, I did help. So I think it's hard for me to say out loud publicly that I really influenced that athlete, because they're intangibles. Belief, confidence, um, issues like raising your bottom line. But I think I instinctively know I did offer some help. The goal is to make better athletes and better people. And I think that's the whole goal. We, we're there to make better athletes, the one or two percent we talked about, and better people. People that are more able to write their own story in a better, more positive, productive way.
Are you confident at any stage that you could win it? I think you give it your best shot. It's a bit like Rocky one, two, and three. You go out there, you prepare, and you give it your best shot. And that's what we said today. We had a team meeting. We said, we're going to give it our best shot. I think it's going to be a good final. I think it'll be, I hope it'll be a fitting end to a great [Music] tournament.
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