You cant outcoach the numbers. Heres the data to prove it, Ben Darwin

Ever notice how the “genius coach” story never mentions the stacked deck? We dig into the Monopoly Effect—a coin-flip advantage that people later mistake for skill—and use it to decode why some teams look unstoppable while others keep rebuilding without getting better. With Ben Darwin of Gain Line Analytics, we map the hidden architecture of performance: feeder systems that quietly lower error rates, stable combinations that turn instincts into shared reflex, and board decisions that either protect or pulverize cohesion.

We walk through real examples across rugby, league, and football: why single-feeder clubs dominate, how national sides thrive when selections cluster, and what happens when a decorated coach imposes a new system on a group that hasn’t unlearned the old one. The data is blunt and liberating. Money can buy talent, but instability taxes skill; cohesion compounds for free. Copying champions often fails because you’re importing their adaptation to a weakness you don’t have. Better questions lead to better builds: Which links in our decision chain must stay together? Where do we refine the existing grammar instead of rewriting the playbook? What timeline are we truly managing—this week’s optics or next season’s reflexes?

If you lead a team, this conversation gives you a framework to stop overreacting to luck, set-piece swings, and noisy narratives. You’ll learn how to stabilize fast without going static, communicate realistic timelines to anxious boards, and measure progress beyond the scoreboard. The takeaway is simple and hard: sustain combinations, shrink chaos, and let cohesion do what talent alone can’t. If this resonates, share it with a colleague, hit follow, and leave a review to help more coaches and leaders find it.

If you can SUBSCRIBE, RATE, and SHARE the show and series, you would be doing your bit to grow this show. Very appreciated. Ben

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www.coachingculture.com.au

Chapters

• 0:00 The Monopoly Effect Explained
• 3:30 Meritocracy Myths in Team Sports
• 7:58 Cohesion vs. Coaching Genius
• 13:07 Structural Advantages and Feeder Systems
• 19:27 Boards, Blame, and the System Problem
• 24:57 Interpreting Performance Data and Context
• 30:52 System Change, Adaptation, and Chaos
• 37:07 Talent, Money, and Cohesion Tradeoffs
• 42:47 Stabilizing for Sustainable Improvement
• 48:12 Practical Coaching With Cohesion in Mind
• 51:47 Wrap-Up and Where to Learn More

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 0:47

The cards are stacked in their favor. Okay? And it's not a meritocracy. Team sports is not a meritocracy. So then he goes and wins the Super Obutoll. And now he's a genius. Right? Yeah. And now everyone's like, what's the secret? What did you do then with the secret? The answer is neither. If I get rid of another player, he comes in and he doesn't know any of the lifts. And so they sack me as a coach because the lineup goes to crap. They bring in a new coach and he says, I want to bring in three new players. It just goes boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Like it's one bad decision can lead to a tumble down effect. Going and then going to a club that's winning and copying their techniques doesn't make sense because what you're actually doing is copying an annotation to a weakness that you don't have.

SPEAKER_00: 1:30

Welcome to Coaching Culture, the podcast about cultivating culture and leadership. I'm Ben Herring. I've been loving this side of the game for bloody ages. Today's guest is Ben Darwin. He's back by popular demand. Like honestly, the feedback that we were getting to get this guy back has been huge, and so he's back. Little bit, if you didn't hear him the first time, former Wallaby tight head prop, broke his neck, retired, took up coaching, but then went into the data deep, went to the deep dive matrix styles, and his company, Gain Line Analytics, are doing something really special in that they're measuring team cohesion. Measuring what has long been held as unmeasurable, putting some real rugby science behind that other stuff and shaking up the way you think about cohesion and culture in your teams. Fan, welcome back to the podcast. What a pleasure to have you back. Thank you, Benjamin. Man, so we have been chatting about a lot of things off-air and we could talk forever. So we're gonna pull out a couple, but I just want to just touch on a phrase that we talked about last time, which was one of the big ones, which was just no one can outcoach the numbers. And I just love that, mate, that just that phrase. And so what I'd like for for listeners in this episode is just to think about that concept and you can dwell on it as you go. But we want to talk about this one, Matt Man, Ben, the Monopoly Effect. It's it's an intriguing name and it's gonna stir some brains up for coaches and leaders all over the show. What is the Monopoly effect and why is it important?

SPEAKER_03: 3:04

So it comes from a study from a guy at the University of California. I've actually been emailing him a little bit because I tend to like to contact people, I hear things about. So, but he appears in this uh film, and it's actually about um the film's actually about uh inequality in the world and how people treat inequality. And they did this study where they got people to play Monopoly against each other, right? And they never met each other, they didn't know one another. But before the game, they got 180 pairs to play against each other, and before they played, they flipped a coin. And so one of them, if it landed on heads, the person who the coin was assigned to have landed on heads, they would be regarded as the advantaged player. Okay. So the advantaged player would get$2,000 at the start, they'd get two dice, so they'd move around the board faster, and they'd get$200 every time their pass go. The disadvantaged player would get uh$100 every time their pass go, a thousand dollars at the start, and they get one dice. Okay, so you're fundamentally behind the eight ball. And$180 out of 180 pairs, the the the cord person on who lands on heads wins, right? Yeah. But they didn't they knew that was gonna happen. And so um what they're really interested in is how people treat each other and how people behave. So what they found was that the person who started to win started to kind of talk down to the other person and started to kind of not treat them very well, they would bang the pieces more loudly on the table, they would eat more pretzels, and they would start to bang on about how well they were doing, right? And then at the end of the game, they would interview both interview both people. And the when they said to everyone who won, why did you win, none of them attributed the win to the flip of the coin. Right, zero. They attributed it to their innate skill, okay? And so I automatically thought to myself, man, I've met a few coaches like that, and I've been that guy. Right. And what I mean by that is is that it's like in that situation, Monopoly player refuses to understand that the cards are stacked in their favor. Okay? And that and that it's not necessarily like like like it's not a meritocracy. Team sports is not a meritocracy. You know, the one of the the fact the sayings I hate the most in commentary is, you know, the team who wants it mo net wants it the most will be the one who wins. It's like, sure, I've been in teams where everyone's been trying it enormously hard against teams who weren't even trying at all. I've been on, I've been on games where when I was at the Brumbies, I remember playing the Bulls in 02, and it was literally like we're just wandering around the park because they just weren't, they weren't built at that point to win. They were later on, guarantee you, but it was literally the easiest game I've ever played because it just functioned so beautifully. So it was, it's as coaches, I think we tend to not really recognize when things are in our favour. And so when we win, we go, geez, we're doing a great job. And we lose, we're doing a terrible job. And I think it's just a lot more complicated than that. And I think we we really have to be reflective of am I actually doing a good job here, or am I simply just on the receiving end of a system which is fundamentally better or and or worse than the opposition? And so, therefore, a number of different coaches could probably win this game. Some by more, some by less, or or or any coaches almost would would lose this game. So uh it we certainly know when we talk to coaches who've been in losing teams, they are very aware of the inequalities. And I've always wondered, I wonder if they're more aware of the inequalities. But you know, when when coaches say at the end of a game in a presser, you know, I'm not gonna say it's an excuse, but we did have seven guys out this week. Right. But when a guy wins and it's the other team that's seven out, they don't say, you know, to be honest, to be fair, they had seven guys out this week. We probably should have wanted more. Right. Now, when we've had conversations sometimes with coaches where we say, you know, you probably underperform 10, 20%, something like that. You know, we don't really do that very much, by the way, but that can that can really stir up some emotions for people. Um, you know, and and it's you know, these things are very, very, you know, individual results have so many variables and inputs, it's extraordinarily hard to tell. But the notion that maybe they didn't perform their best, even though they won quite regularly, can really stir up some emotions in people.

SPEAKER_00: 7:46

It's interesting with that, because when you see some of those most, the most experienced best coaches in the world, you actually see them they're sometimes at their most grumpy, most agitated with the team after wins when they when they know they could have done better. Some of the best coaches I know get their most angry when there's complacency creeping in in a win.

SPEAKER_03: 8:05

The two the two I think of is Bennett and Popular.

SPEAKER_00: 8:08

Yeah. Yeah, exactly, exactly right. And and is that just because they know that yeah, they didn't perform to their best, that they that there was this, they had the cards stacked in their favor and they didn't smash the game. They cruise around the board essentially in that monopoly and exactly.

SPEAKER_03: 8:26

I think I think, you know, we all enjoy feeling good winning games, right? But I think we can sometimes we start to strut a little bit too much. I remember coaching in Japan, you know, and I was coaching at NTT and we beat this team by a hundred. And I remember sort of tears like, I can't step a foot wrong here with my coaching because teams aren't making any mistakes and we're just tearing them apart. But it's like, you know, you think about when you when you're coaching a team when you've had a really long pre-season and you get a lot of detail into it, and then you have other scenarios like Postacogaloo is now gonna play this weekend. He's got three days prep coming into the game, right? Yeah. He's he's trying to get them to play against Arsenal this weekend. No detail would have been put into this game whatsoever. He just simply cannot control a lot of this, and he's probably gonna lose the game. And he's gonna be feeling probably, you know, he's pretty good, I know it's sort of controlling his emotions, but he just does not have the level of detail. And some clubs, some clubs are just built like that all the time. You know, some clubs are constantly in chaos, and and there's a whole bunch of things that are also completely outside of your control. Like there's so many things about structure, for example, yeah, that are outside your control as a coach.

SPEAKER_00: 9:35

What sort of things are we talking, Benny?

SPEAKER_03: 9:37

So I mean, one of the things we look a lot at is feeder clubs, right? So let's say you've got guys who are coming in who, you know, if you take you take the Brumbies as an example, we used to have the Cooker boroughs, okay? And the Cooker Burrows was our feeder club. So if you had an injury, a guy would come in and he'd go, Oh, hi guys, how are you going? And he'd know nine of the blokes and he'd know all the players, and away you go. Right? Yes. Now the cooker boroughs existing is not really inside the control of Eddie Jones or David Nassaphora or whatever it might be. It's more the board, it's more structural, okay? Yep. Now later on, the Cookerboroughs got thrown out of the Sydney comp. Then they went to the Queensland comp for a while, then they got thrown out of that, and they just couldn't exist anymore. So then for the Brumbies, when a decision is made to bring in a player, he's coming out of Randwick and he's never met anyone, and you've got to get all the detail into him that week, and he makes mistakes because he cannot remember to fold on the open side on a defensive read, right? Or he shoots out because he's used to doing it. Like when Jamie Roberts came to the Waratars' first defensive play, he Barney's out of the line, everyone, he all the other players stay where they are because that's just what he's used to doing when he's playing for Wales or whoever he's playing for previously. So that now that player does it in the game for the Brumbies. He let's say he goes, he goes to the wrong spot, somebody runs through that gap, you lose the game. Okay. Well, that's completely outside of the control of the coach.

unknown: 10:59

Right?

SPEAKER_03: 10:59

You're never going to get that amount of detail into him, you're never going to be able to build that instincts. And so, and we know the cohesion numbers by our methodology would be different in game A to game B. Right? Now, do that en masse, and you do three, you have three injuries, and all of a sudden guys are coming from different places into your team, and all of a sudden it's just a lot harder, right? And so, as a coach, you know, there's games in the in the 70s, 60s and 70s where the all blacks would lose to like a northern England or they lose to Munster or something like that. And it's like you had five or six amazing all black guys been there for a long time, and then because guys are coming in from they didn't have super rugby back then, they'd come in from basically the NPC. Is that when the All Blacks made changes back then, they dropped off dramatically, they were dramatically worse.

SPEAKER_02: 11:46

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 11:46

Do you remember in '86, I think, when they lost a lot of the guys because of the South African tour and stuff. Like they really fell away really hard. So there is a lot of components of the team you have and the group you have and the systems you have where you have advantages and disadvantages. So we know, for example, in Super Rugby, I think the teams of singular feeders have won 82% of the titles.

SPEAKER_00: 12:07

So when you're talking about this, this is a cool one for the audience to listen. So singular feeder, you mean there's one club that that feeds this club rather than a multiple of like a small board of choice?

SPEAKER_03: 12:18

During during the the best days of the Crusaders, generally they're coming out of Canterbury. They can choose from elsewhere. And that was the that was the gift that the Crusaders were given when Super Rugby formed, and the Brumbies were given when Super Rugby formed. Our advantage was we have the Cookaboros and they had Canterbury. And because North Canterbury wasn't, was another feeder, but wasn't in the top levels of NPC. Now they've gone really to Tasman more now, but they're still feeding off two when others are feeding off three or four.

unknown: 12:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 12:46

New South Wales has to feed off 13. Right? That's why New South Wales is, you know, makes it so hard for them. They're the biggest union, they should be the most dominant, but fundamentally the structure is so against you. Or coaching England, for example, you know, it's hard because they're just coming from all these different clubs all the time. Whereas coaching Ireland, easier. Guess why? Because they're all coming from Leinster, right?

SPEAKER_00: 13:09

And would that would that be an argument for, you know, when there's this big debate around international players going offshore and playing, that just opens up that even more, right? That's it's it's a really interesting balance, right?

SPEAKER_03: 13:21

Because like the Springboks are doing it now, and they broke the record for the most cohesive team in the last World Cup in the final. So in terms of their total shared experience, but one thing Rassi did is he got a lot of them out of Western Province, but then he also has held that group basically together for two to three years, even now, sort of almost seven or eight years.

SPEAKER_01: 13:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 13:41

So if you lose guys overseas, then the cohesion's gonna drop away. But then if he comes, and then you say, no, okay, we're gonna go with overseas-based players, when your local guys come in, there's no chance they've ever played together. So there's a complexity to it. It's like if if we tomorrow decided that the wallabies are gonna go, are we can only pick overseas players, and the starting 15 for the wallabies moves overseas, the only way we would win a World Cup would be to pick from overseas. Because we wouldn't have enough time to rebuild off local players.

SPEAKER_01: 14:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 14:17

So it's almost like there's a tipping point at which so many head away that you have to go for the overseas-based model, because then you can just keep picking everyone all the time, no matter where they go. Yeah, that's kind of what Rassi's been doing. But South Africa has many more layers under it than we do. Because we have Super Rugby Club, they have Super Rugby uh Curry Cup, Vodacom Cup. So their engines, like the Sharks, they're playing 60, 70 games a year. Total, the whole organization. Whereas Waratars are playing 18 games a year, now 21 games a year with this new system.

SPEAKER_01: 14:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 14:54

So so it's a there's a balance to it, and there's like like I said, like this Australian soccer, if you went just for like A-League players, we would be annihilated because none of them are built very well either. Because anytime they do well, like Central Coast Marines a couple of years ago, built a really good academy-based club, the foreign foreign guys just take what they want. So there's a there's a there's such a like it's the answer is it's incredibly complicated. But um generally with clubs, the smaller the feeders you have underneath you, the easier it is because there's more likelihood that guys have played with their teammates when they're playing the first game and they can come into that environment more easily. And that stuff is not necessarily in the control of the coach. If you went to the Watars, you're not gonna say we only pick Sidney Uni plays from here on in. Because then you miss out on a whole bunch of uh talent, right? For the cohesion factor.

SPEAKER_01: 15:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 15:47

So you've got to, you know, how can how can you structure things? And this is the conversation, you know, for boards too.

SPEAKER_00: 15:54

Yeah. Well, I guess that leads us to the boards. Like, it's not always like some of the stuff you're talking about is big picture stuff, right? It's not always assigned to heat coaches, it's it's the higher echelons of some of the stuff.

SPEAKER_03: 16:06

Yeah, there's it's it's about control. And one of the things too is is uh, and I hope you don't mind when sort of jumping to this, is like the problem is in a way that that what I see with a lot of boards is you know, a guy will be coaching very well somewhere else and might be on the receiving end of a fantastic system, right? So sometimes they'll be the assistant coach at the Crusaders or at Hawthorne in the AFL. And so they go, we want that talent. Or there's a there's a head coach overseas who's doing fantastically. Let's say you are coaching Leinster or something, right? It's like we want to go get that guy because he's doing because Leinster as a coaching job is the right gig. If you get a if you get an assistant job or a head coach there, just never leave, right? So, because a bad year is a semifinal loss, right?

SPEAKER_01: 16:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_03: 16:51

So, so let's say you're doing very well over there, boards get obsessed about people who are being successful elsewhere, and they'll find a find a reason to get rid of the head coach. Like, oh, he's lost the group, or and if they think he's lost the group, if they think he hasn't lost the group, they just won't go and ask the players. Or the, or, you know, I just don't just look at the body language of the poor guy. Well, he's lost nine straight, so why do you think he's got poor body language, right? And so it's almost like, well, we we want to feel good about this, and and it's just very much easier for the boards. You know, one of the problems here is one, how we all interview as a coach, which is we'll interview you'll say, I can fix the problem.

SPEAKER_00: 17:29

Yes. You have to say that though, right?

SPEAKER_03: 17:31

You have to say, I can fix it, I can turn it around. Okay, fine. Um, and so they'll point to, oh, well, look, you know, the defense is bad, I've been a defensive coach, or the attack is bad, I've been an attacking coach. And and what we find is that they aren't necessarily able to solve that problem, right? Or or the team has been on a rebuilding cycle. So, for example, if you look at at Leicester, you had um the the current Warataz coach was there and he was rebuilding, then Checker comes in, the rebuild keeps going and they win the title. But from our numbers, I think like both coaches did great. One one did not even get near the finals, the other one won the final, but both coaches did great comparative to what they had because the the um so this is the waratized coach, you have to forgive me, I need help.

SPEAKER_00: 18:18

Dan McKeller.

SPEAKER_03: 18:19

Dan McKeller was basically putting it back together again.

SPEAKER_00: 18:22

So, what do the numbers say? What did your numbers say on this stuff? Like, what does it does it give you a spit out on numbers?

SPEAKER_03: 18:27

So basically, like it comes with it comes with uh, you know, first premise home team should win, is more likely to win, so the away team's got to be 20% better. Second part is red cards kill everything. So just like if there's two or three red cards, just throw away the result because it just has such a defined impact on the game. But but you know, all things being equal, let's say where 70, 75% depends on the comp like World Cups, like 92% or 90%, because world cups there's such a there's a have and a have nots, basically. Yeah, whereas in English premiership it's more even. But basically, if you are 20% better than the opposition, you should win the game. If you're 30% better, maybe you'll win it 80% of the time. If you're you know three times the cohesion, you'll win that game 95% of the time. Okay. So if you're so if Leicester's here and the opposition is here, Leicester will win that game maybe 15%. Okay. Now, what starts to happen over time is you build through the season, your numbers start to come up, you get closer to everyone, and then so you start to win home games, and then sometimes you'll play uh Newcastle Falcons and you'll win an away game. And then if you keep that group together the next year, the numbers keep going up. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 19:37

And this is the we you're talking about the cohesion numbers, right? The connection pieces. So your key positions, how long they've been together, what sort of combination, those are the numbers your data does, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_03: 19:47

I'm not I'm not I'm not interested in output data at all. I'm interested in input data, right? Leading data before the before the thing occurs, right?

SPEAKER_00: 19:54

So that lets the team just in that example had when when those coaches came in, the cohesion was really low, low combinations, hand played a lot together. So that you're starting with a low base, and then those coaches essentially just trusted in what they did, build a lot of combinations, and it slowly crept up till And if you look at the if you look at the back end of McKellar's season, he did say it's for good wins, right?

SPEAKER_03: 20:16

Then the group then stayed together for the next year. Now, sometimes, you know, I I always love this about you know Ranieri when Ranieri joined Leicester City, is he he joined with eight days to go before the season started because the previous head coach had been uh thrown out because his son made a sex tape or something, right? So anyway, so he was given so little time he couldn't make any change. And there was a huge advantage for him because they kept the same group from the year before, and then basically they had a lot of continuity inside the season, which was might have been your anniary, might have been something else, you know, as as the as the season goes on, and they they you know, the all the senior teams that year kind of had injuries and had problems, and they kind of fell through this opportunity and won the title. Uh, England 03, kind of similar to that. Uh, because we were reloading with rugby league players a little bit. Mitchell kind of decided to move the senior players on, the RAND was creating problems for South Africa, so they a lot of their guys went overseas. So they just the numbers were really bad for the three Southern Hemisphere countries. England keeps her team together for eight years when the 03 woke up. So so there's there's a whole bunch of things here at play, right? But I'm not I'm not casting as permissions on either as coaches or anything, like they all did great.

SPEAKER_00: 21:32

Everyone did great. I just think that example you gave about um the less uh Leicester City team forced to keep the same team. And I I got given this piece of advice in my first year here, actually, just a very experienced coach just said, um, just in the school space, just said, mate, just take the year and just sit back and just just watch how it all plays out. Like there's gonna be a lot of things you don't know, and before you make any decisions around stuff which you don't know, watch how it plays out. And gosh, it was good advice. Just uh, and a lot of things that I probably would have gone, nah, nah, just on gut fee, I've got to get rid of that, do that, change that, would have been uh if I'd done those, they would have been poor decisions um with the experience of sitting back for a year and just having the confidence to go, let's just see how this works, how this engine is working. And they just kept things in play. I thought it was awesome, an awesome um, but you can't always do that, can you? And like there's a there's a little bit of expectation sometimes. Like there's a lot of things.

SPEAKER_03: 22:29

Well, sometimes there's a mandate, right?

SPEAKER_00: 22:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 22:32

Get rid of these guys, they're terrible players, they're not performing very well. Or, you know, um the there's there's a mandate to change, do what you did in the last place. I have to match the success I had at the last club. And so one of the one of the problems too that I find is with that, with the boards, when they're sort of thinking to themselves, okay, we're not doing very well. Here's this guy over here doing fantastic, he's gonna come in and fix it. And and um I was thinking about I was watching uh Chernobyl again the other night, and I think there's a court case at the end of Chernobyl, and they're basically saying the the Communist Party is basically trying to find someone to blame, and they blame the the two or three guys who are in charge of the thing, and and what they actually talk about is well, actually the system was more likely at fault, but boards probably don't want to blame systems, they want to blame people, because people are much easier, because then you could just brush it off all to one side and say, okay, well, he wasn't very good. And if you look at if you look at, you know, the Crusaders, the hard decision was to keep the coach and say, Hang on, maybe the system is a pro maybe the system is a problem here. Or maybe injuries were a problem, maybe it's not, you know, because that would be so easy to sack him after that season.

SPEAKER_00: 23:41

Well, what what a glorious example of that, right? Like the trust they had, and I know had conversations with you about this previously, but there's a lot to be said about that decision because the public pressure was pretty high and from a lot of a lot of groups. Um but goes from yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 23:59

With like like the there's all the old men yelling at their televisions, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember someone, I remember talking to someone um my dad's uh my dad's farm, and I was saying, you know, what do you think? Um uh please help me with the coach's name. I'm sorry, I've just got so many in my head. Rob Penny. Rob Penny, you know, um, you know, because they would be, I think they were beating Queensland, we're watching a game, and I said, Oh, do you want Queensland to win on or the Crusade? He said, I want Queen Zone to win because Rob Penny, he he was terrible at the Waratars, he destroyed the place.

unknown: 24:31

Right?

SPEAKER_03: 24:31

So he was like, had this opinion of something that Rob Penny had done to him, or he, you know, like just had this opinion of the person. And so his narrative is Penny's a terrible coach, right?

unknown: 24:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 24:42

So then he goes and wins the super obutile, and now he's a genius, right? Yeah. And now everyone's like, what's the secret? What did you do that was the secret and stuff like that? And so um, you know, the answer is neither. He's a good coach, good coach, doing a good job. Yeah, but there's limitations inside of what he had. I'm not saying, you know, I'm not saying coaching doesn't make a difference, I'm not saying you can't make uh huge differences inside the construct, but a lot of the time the damage can be done by making the change you want to make or you feel like you have to make, or like doing nothing is so much harder. Or I'm not understanding what you're seeing in front of you. Um, I think a lot of the time if you've coached a really well put together side and they're of a certain age, then you go to another club and you've got a team and you're like, look, they're all senior players, you know, and they're great skill. Why am I now is oh and three? Well, because maybe they're not actually they're senior players, but they haven't actually been here for a you know, they've been to other places before they've come here and it's not necessarily it's take gonna take time to gel. So, you know, one mistake that teams people tend to make is thinking experience equals success. And the classic I give with that is like the Panthers a couple of years ago with one with the second youngest team in the comp. Um I think most of this year the the the the uh Sir George Dragons are the most experienced team in the comp. But they're not they're not having a good time of it because they haven't played together enough, right? So the correlation between experience and success and um is is not as as strong as people might believe it to be. So they'll see a senior team and go, okay, why aren't we winning? Because you're fundamentally built differently to the team that was running.

SPEAKER_02: 26:26

Hmm.

SPEAKER_03: 26:27

I like them out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 26:29

So so that's so the other thing too I want to talk about, if it's okay, is well just before we jump onto that, Benny, just before we change it, I think it's important just to bring it back to that monopoly piece. Because, like when you talked about coaches changing and they go to a new club and they've been successful, where then everyone thinks they'll be successful, but everyone's forgotten, right, in that monopoly example we started with it, they had that advantage, they had that card advantage in the first place. Now they're coming to a new place where they have the opposite, they have the disadvantaged cards, and that's where you've got to just acknowledge there is a big difference in what you've been given, right? And that's the bit you often forget, and your ego or whatever it is as a coach goes, no, no, I've got it, I've just been kicking ass over there, I'm the best monopoly player in the world. You come here and then all of a sudden you've only got one dice and you're only getting$100 around, and you're like, oh, uh, this is yeah, and then it all falls to pieces again. And then everybody around the game, right, not only the coaches but the boards and things, they forget those advantages as well. They forget that if you're coming from uh the crusaders, which is a great system, it's all done to somewhere which is less fortunate, it's gonna be different. That's the that's the kind of linking that analogy, right?

SPEAKER_03: 27:44

And and part of it too is I remember talking to um Ryan Hoffman, who his daughter goes to school with my um with my son, and uh, and he was talking about when he went to the from the from the storm to the Warriors, he was absolutely, you know, when he arrived said, I'm gonna turn the storm into the I'm gonna turn the Warriors into the storm.

SPEAKER_01: 28:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 28:06

And after six weeks, he's like, What am I doing here? Right? This is not uh I can't do this. Razor said, gave me a similar experience he had when I think he went to Purpanyon. It's like I can't, I can't make this into what I was hoping to make it into because one, these players have been doing this for 10 years. Right? So, so make them trying to change the way they do something, it's like they have to be the best version of themselves or the most appropriate. And so the things you're talking about, like just because this of the system you had where you were, as in the way you do things, worked, doesn't mean it's going to work here. Because what it's going to take is a whole bunch of people to learn and learn a new thing and unlearn the old thing. And I made that mistake when I coached at Suntory. I literally destroyed their line out. Because I'm like, well, hang on, I've got 92% success here and 87% success here. And then we we're in a game and the players just blanched, they just panicked. We almost lost the time. Like we went undefeated through the whole season. But it wasn't because I was doing anything right. It was literally, I was so convinced my system was better, and it nearly destroyed the team. And it was like, I just should have kept, I just should have let them do what they do and make the minor techniques. I mean, um, I remember hearing uh reading a book, and it was uh the the Australian trigger captain, and he was talking about the four horsemen of the apocalypse in terms of destroying teams. And one of them was like telling a young player or a player with an established technique to change, or trying to coach them and trying to make what they're doing better, and it's like just leave it, right? It's just you know, give small pieces of advice on something you can do within the construct of the system, but trying to teach a 27-year-old guy to re-learn how to bat, like why are you doing that? And and part of it is coaches, like we want to justify our existence, right?

SPEAKER_00: 29:58

Well, and you also know what you you you know a system too, and it's easier, it's a default pattern, right? But it's a self-defense mechanism.

SPEAKER_01: 30:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 30:06

Well, I want to use this because I'm useful with this. Yeah. I'm completely useless with this system, I don't know it.

SPEAKER_01: 30:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 30:13

But what does it do when you introduce that new system? So we talk about cohesion, we talk about different forms of it. So there's interpersonal understanding and then the system understanding. And system understanding is how do we do something, a technique individually or collectively. So you get in a car, you turn on the indicator and the windscreen wiper goes off because it's on the other side, because it's a different car, right? Or people go to London, they get hit by a bus because they look left as opposed to looking right.

SPEAKER_01: 30:38

Yep.

SPEAKER_03: 30:38

It's the innate, it's the innate way of we do things, and under duress, we revert, revert back to how we've done it before. So we talk a lot about system change. Will actually mean your cohesion that works against you. If I go to the Crusaders as the most cohesive team and I try to change what they do, and I say, you absolutely have to now tackle this way, I can render them completely useless. Right? Because they've been doing it for so long that half of them will learn it right, half of them will do it quickly, half of them will do it slowly, and so we just will have a complete mess. So that's when we find sometimes a coach will imprint their system on something and they can actually take a very cohesive team and they will they will underperform. If we actually think the NRL, the more experienced a coach was, the more they underperformed in their first 10 games at a new club. Really? Yeah. Because the because the kid, the assistant coach from the other place is like, I'm don't think I'm gonna change anything here, I'm not sure. And the senior players here. Whereas when a guy comes in and goes, We're gonna do it like this, it takes some you know quite a lot of adaptation for everyone to get used to it. Des Hasler at the at the Titans this year would be probably be a good example of that. He what's he done? Well, he's come from he he was at Manley, had a brilliantly well put together team, went to the Bulldogs, had some success, gone to the Titans, they've just fired him at the end of the season. The Titans were not, you know, they're not terrible, but he played a lot of guys out of position that they're normally used to, Freedan, as an example. Yeah. Or, you know, I don't like I don't know the in I don't know the inner workings, but he's a very experienced, very successful coach. And they were saying, you know, in in interviews with the players, it's just gonna take us some time to get used to how Des does things. And unfortunately, he ran out of time.

SPEAKER_01: 32:28

So yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 32:30

Yeah, yeah. We you had you had the end of season, you had Dez against Wayne Bannett, and both clubs almost got the wooden spoon. Fortunately, the Knights in their usual fashion came from nowhere to pull it off, but but um yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 32:44

I think that's a fascinating point, man, about the system change because I think all coaches, you have the system you like that you enjoy, that you know, like your own car, right? With all the the buttons in the right places.

SPEAKER_01: 32:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 32:54

And to yeah, it it it takes you time to flip to what the the new car's like, um, rather than trying to and and waiting is so hard and not doing anything is so hard.

SPEAKER_03: 33:05

We all have this need to come in and make a change, right? Yes. With you like, what are you doing?

unknown: 33:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 33:11

Why you're not why are you not taking any action? Because I just want to wait. And particularly as a young coach, you feel the need to take action, right?

SPEAKER_00: 33:18

Well, you're getting it from a lot of angles, right? Like to actually just sit back and let things roll.

SPEAKER_03: 33:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 33:22

Is is almost not in the coach's DNA, a lot of ways. That's that's not what coaching looks like, sitting back and just observing, right?

SPEAKER_03: 33:28

One one point I just wanted to mention too is that one of the challenges with boards we find is they only want to get involved in the club when the team isn't winning. They only sort of like they they they're not but if if we go talk to boards and say to them, you really need to get a good understanding about where the club is at and if you're actually heading in a positive direction in terms of sustainable development or whatever it might be. And then then they'll say, Well, no, you go talk to the coach. And I'm like, okay, well, what if, what if, what if you start losing? Do you have an understanding of why you're losing, perhaps? Like you might have had a whole bunch of injuries to your back row and your back line, and you don't necessarily have the depth yet, and you're going to lose, you know, the last five games. And if you compare it to last year, you might go, well, bugger it will sack you. So the boards only tend to really be interested when things are going wrong, and then they become performance experts. You know, I remember when they they're sacking um, oh god, uh, one of the AFL coaches this year, or I can't remember who it was, and it was just recently, and I was watching the CEO, and he's saying, like, you know, you need to understand we should be in the finals every year. Why do you think that needs why do you think that should be the case? Because the AFL is really hard to make the finals every year to be consistent. You really have to, you have to take a long time to reload, you put yourself back together again to have success. Or we should be top four every year. Well, it's a very competitive system. So we try to at least give them at least an understanding of like everything takes time, and then sometimes you'll just have a stack of injuries and you'll come 10th, and that's where you should be. But then panicking and sacking the coach is the worst possible thing you can do because the new guy will have a whole different set of ideas about how to do things. Like when Eddie came into Coach Australia, right? It wasn't that he was a bad coach, he's had a different set of ideas, and you generally don't want to do that nine months out from a World Cup. For that exact reason, right? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 35:20

And so that's obviously like a lot of those English shock teams are uh a big example is they set coaches three times a year in some cases, don't they?

SPEAKER_03: 35:29

In the championship, I think the average is eight months. I think Brazilian football is three months. Um AFL is five and a half. I think that's the longest of any competition in the world. NRL is three and a half. So we're actually quite Australian competitions are quite relatively stable. Yep. Um, there's a lot more panic stations, and because you have you have promotion relegation. And promotion relegation does really messed up things to people. Like that in order to not to be promoted, they're happy to lose money to take the risk that they might go up because the rewards are so great, but they're so worried about losing and coming last. Like all you do in the NRL, the AFL by losing is win a wooden spoon. Right. And if that's if that's where you should be, that's where you should be. And whereas whereas the ramifications in in promotion relegation systems are so dire.

SPEAKER_00: 36:23

Especially at a big money competition like the Premiership in England, right? Yeah. Well, that's an interesting point. It's it's that's the psyche stuff. Like coaching has those stresses around performance, but then the bigger club does too. When there's that sort of edge to it, right? Like when there's that the financial hit you'll take from being relegated is is massive pressure.

SPEAKER_03: 36:44

And pressure from the fans too, like the big clubs. You know, um, the pressure that comes, you know, from because people get embarrassed, board members get embarrassed, and so they want to take out that frustration on you as a coach. You know, they're gonna spit on you in the street and stuff like that. Like it's it's it's all the power and none of the, you know, it's all the responsibility and none of the power to change it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 37:07

And you talked about that um Chernobyl example when you're talking about like it's easier to blame a person rather than a system, essentially, right? Yeah. You made that reference uh off yeah about yeah, the communism was the example in that case, but but like it is it is interesting, right? It is, you know, it had that scapegoat, that person that, you know, it'll all be better when we change that person or we get that guy or that girl into and it's only when you then look at things holistically, right?

SPEAKER_03: 37:36

If you look at the history of, say, the Waratars or the Newport Gwent Dragons or whatever, or or different coaches, if you look at it en masse, you can see, okay, this coach has not fixed the problem. They'd been through, you know, nine different head coaches in 11 years. I mean, one was a really interesting one, which is the Paramount Eels, that by just changing the tenure of their board, dramatically changed their outcomes. So they they had Dennis Fitzgerald there for a really long time, and he was reasonably successful. They won three titles in the 80s. Oh uh, they made the 01 grand final, and then Dennis, I think, left a little bit after that. He was there quite a long time. And then they'd said, okay, well, we're never gonna have anyone with more than two years on the board after that. So that was their response to somebody being there for a long time. Maybe they didn't think it was that effective. So, okay, we're gonna. So everyone who was making decisions on the board was like, well, everything we do, we have to win inside the two years I'm here.

SPEAKER_02: 38:38

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 38:38

And I had some conversations with the CEO about that, about him saying to them, no, we need to be thinking long-term. And they're like, no, why would we do that? Because none of us are gonna be here to see the outcome of that. So it's just by changing the timeline of things, of how long your tenure is going to be or how long the input is going to be, can have a dramatic impact because you're just thinking short-termism, right? Whereas, like, uh wouldn't it be great if as a co if if I said to you, Ben, you're never gonna be relegated, okay? And and uh you're at Newington, right? Right. Every win the first 15 has for the 10 years after you leave, you're gonna be given a hundred bucks. You'd be down coaching the six-year-olds next week, right? Yeah, man, like you know, because you build a system and they and imagine if they said, Okay, well, we're not really sure if you win this year, but we want to be winning in five years' time, that just completely completely changed your outlook, right?

SPEAKER_00: 39:38

Yeah, it wouldn't it? Like, that's an interesting scenario, right? Like um a different because you're right. And this goes to coaches too, like uh around contract length when you're signing coaches. That that um you know, the uh mental aspect to that, if you sign a coach for one year and say, well, we'll reassess at the end of that year, uh as opposed to signing some for someone for five years, it says something to the coach about what you're trying to do as a club, right?

SPEAKER_03: 40:05

Like I think I think the hardest coaching Ferguson ever had to do was probably his first year. Once he'd won two or three titles, he just would have known his contract is gonna go indefinitely unless something goes absolutely horribly wrong. So he's he was building he was building dynasties that he knew we were we're not gonna win it this year, but I reckon two years' time we'll be there. Like that's just such an entirely different conversation rather than if we don't win the title this year I'm out of a job. So when we talk to people about cohesion, they're like, but you don't understand, I have to win tomorrow. But like, yeah. So maybe as a coach, only part of this conversation can happen with you. This has got to happen with the board, it's got to happen with the governance to give you that time to do the things you need to do in the way you want to do them to have success. Because, you know, like like this is the problem now with the Panthers, is that no one really knows how to take the Panthers on. It's just a different team losing to them in a grand final for the last four years because they built a juggernaut that started in 13 and it wasn't perfect, but now it's almost, you know, as of this year, it's been a huge reload, but they're still in the finals again. And you think Cleary's worried about his job? Yeah, couldn't care less. He's like, we've done win this year, we'll probably win it next year.

SPEAKER_01: 41:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 41:19

But but you know, everyone else is thinking, you know, how do I, how do, how do I how do I win a grand final? How do I get to a grand final within 12 months? So you kind of like as bored sometimes, we need to take that pressure off the coach.

SPEAKER_00: 41:32

Yeah, well, it's interesting that what you're doing with gain line is is this sort of data is is perfect for those higher echelons because a coach can only control so much, right? They they they can't control this bigger picture stuff that unless you're in exceptional circumstances.

SPEAKER_03: 41:49

Yeah. Every dynamic in every club is different. Like Ferguson and Manu, he ran the club himself, right? He was basically in charge, would control the board, all the conversations. Bennett at the Broncos, for a long time, would have been in control of the club. But you you can only get that through having a very, very well-built advantage in a way. And Bennett lost that because they went away from singular feeder systems. So they ended up ended up sort of in the end, they felt like they had to fire him. Then they brought it back, then that didn't work again. But this sort of sense of like if you can have that control and you can have that advantage. And the great thing with Bennett is when we've spoken to him, he's like, no, I get it. I I know I had a huge advantage at certain times in my career, and Bellamy's the same. It's the interesting one is it's only really coaches who've only ever won. If they've kind of if they've won and lost, they can see both sides of the coin. Yeah. Because for those people, they've only ever played Monopoly in this game once against this person. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 42:48

They like the feeling of having the advantage, so they just kept playing that. Oh no, I'll just keep this, the these two dice thanks.

SPEAKER_03: 42:54

Yep, exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 42:54

Yeah, I'm not playing another game. Man, I love them, man. I also love the phrase you used last time, which was you don't find the solution, you build it, and around this cohesion thing. And I I think that's a really cool thing about your data, which your data shows a lot of, is it's you actually got to build these this cohesion A. It's you can't make cohesion a lot.

SPEAKER_03: 43:13

Well, yeah, the the the problem is is expectations and and sometimes it might be okay, we change a combination and then it works, but it's also important to understand what you're up against. So if you're playing, let's use the lowest cohesion team ever played super rugby. Let's play your, let's say you try a new combination, you're playing the Sunwolves, you're gonna win that game, you're gonna make 10 line breaks. So you that works in that game. The next game, you play the Crusades, you make no line breaks, and you they break seven line breaks against you. Well, then you don't say, okay, well, that didn't, it worked in game one, but it didn't work in game two. It actually worked as well as it should have in both games. Does that make sense? So it's about understanding what have we got, what are we up against? And then so, because when teams lose, they panic. In fact, um Pat Pat uh Ferguson, who was one of our founders, and he actually was at uh Harvard Business School, they did a study with Geelong Football Club. And what they did is they looked at, or might be Melbourne University, he's there now as well. I apologize. Um, what they did is they looked at how the coaches responded in their reviews of individuals in games where they either won by six points or less or lost by six points or less. Because that's basically one kick. So it's one shoelace. And so they looked at how they reviewed the individuals, and when they lost, the the the reviews were profoundly different when they lost as opposed to when they won, even though it literally was the difference of one kick or a shoelace or a hand or something like that. And so I think as coaches, we tend to overplay when things go wrong, the need to change or the need to be harsh on people, and and we overplay the need to be optimistic and positive when we win, even though in those, in those circumstances, those specific circumstances that I looked at, the difference was literally nothing.

SPEAKER_00: 45:00

Hmm. We've all done it, right? Yeah, 100%. Uh you lose three games by one point and you think it's you think you're just doing terrible. But it's there's something in there, but it's it's not as bad as probably the reaction you're gonna have.

SPEAKER_03: 45:16

Yeah, well, we you know, we might you might say you should have lost all three. In fact, you did great to lose white point.

SPEAKER_00: 45:21

Yeah, yeah. Fantastic outcome, right? That's right. Mate, interesting. And that's mate, and and that leads us to that word, right? Like we were chatting off here about the phrase interesting when when coaches pull that one up, and I think this is a cool concept, mate, to to throw.

SPEAKER_03: 45:37

So it comes, it comes from um something we've heard over the 13 years now, which is when you describe something that runs against someone's narrative, their own personal narrative.

SPEAKER_00: 45:48

Well, just just to context this first, Ben, this is when you go into teams and you present the data about cohesion, right? Yeah, you're almost slapping it in the face of coaches around things. And then yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 45:58

Yeah, I'm not trying to slap, I'm trying to let the data slap them in the face. Um, but we let's say we let's say we present to you and we say, Ben, here's your time at you know, team A, and you've let's say you've gone undefeated through the season or you won nine out of ten. And we might say, to be fair, Ben, like like, you know, the results you got there is you had a fundamental advantage over the rest of the competition. You did obviously did quite well, but there's no, there's no, um, you know, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say absolutely categorically you are good or you are bad, but absolutely all the results you got are within range. Okay. And, you know, you you won nine, you lost one, you did, you did great. But it certainly doesn't show us, for example, that you're coaching above your station. Because every other coach who's got the same has either one eight, nine, or ten games out of ten. That's the moment at which coaches normally say to us, interesting. Because if you have, as a coach, you've built up a narrative of yourself like I won 90% of my games. I'm the I'm the best coach that's ever been. I look at the success I've had. I've never had a year like that. And I really am, I really feel like I did this, this, this, and this. And you might have done those things, and whether they made a difference or not, you know, we don't really know. And you might have done the same thing in other years, right? I mean, a lot of the data we look at, we might say a club has done A, B, C, D, and the next year they've also done A, B, C, D, and they've got a completely different set of results. Right? Let's say it's going and doing pizza nights, or let's say it's going and doing, you know, um uh uh I don't know, whatever it might be, whatever might you you feel is going to make a difference. I mean, I remember when I was at Northern Suburbs, we just our club basically decided to buy a title. We won one of our first 11 and we won the back 10. And the thing we put it down to was like a night where we all went and sat down and had had um like a pizza night together. We're like, it's after that night, everything changed. Like, well, the next week, we did play Penrith, which was the worst team in the comp at that point. The numbers I can guarantee would have been catastrophic. And we did decide to keep the same team, and then we won, and then we kept the same team next week, and then we back-ended through the season, very similar to the Eels this year, and all of a sudden it, you know, we made the grand final, we looked great. But but so then when I went and coached North's when we were like one and ten, I'm like, let's go do the pizza night, and we did it, and we just kept losing the rest of the time. I was like, okay, well, that's out of the way. So like there's so many concepts like that that we tend to have either superstitions or ideas that if I do this and it works, and then we'll go and try it somewhere else. And it's like, oh, okay, maybe I didn't do it the right way, or maybe, you know, well, maybe it just maybe it didn't make a difference in the first place. Maybe it did, I don't know. But but we all tend to hang on to these certain individual things that we think is actually going to make a difference and may not be doing that at all.

SPEAKER_00: 48:55

Yeah. Well, I always remember those um those times in the amateur era where coaches would would be in the change room and that I had one time where they whipped off a bed sheet and there's a pallet of bear there, and I was like, we're not leaving this change room until this is gone. And that was like the the defining moment of the season, a massive booze up instead of training.

SPEAKER_03: 49:15

I I can't for the life of me think how that worked, but um you know, like like it's there are times when it's worked and there's times when it hasn't, but maybe they're not related. Maybe it's not related to what comes. Maybe it is a little bit. Maybe there's stuff that needs to be said, but I've done just as many honesty sessions and it's made no difference as honesty sessions have made some difference.

SPEAKER_00: 49:36

Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. Mate, it's the your your stuff is just is fascinating, man, because you're you're you're putting this little lens on, just exposing some of these traits that coaches and and and wider staff have in organizations, which are really human traits, aren't they? They they're not, you know, the gut feels, they're emotional, and you're putting these hard sort of things on that, you know, hard data on the numbers. And I think it's awesome. If I may, Benny, there's a couple of little things from our last conversation which I'm keen just to um just to drive in on a little bit more. You talked last time about that talent versus cohesion piece where the numbers suggest that well, the numbers are pretty categoric that the cohesion is is is hugely important. But can when can talent be so strong that it outweighs the cohesion piece? Like, how is there a measure of that? Like, can you put a measure on an X factor player?

SPEAKER_03: 50:39

So what we've what we've done is we've looked at different competitions around the world and how they're constructed and then how they're how they're acquired, how talent is acquired, and then looked at different sports, right, where it makes a level of difference. So doubles tennis, for example, uh is actually becoming less cohesion-oriented because pairs just aren't playing together the way they used to. They don't run tournaments where guys have played 50, you know, the Bryan brothers, for example, who won for like 20 years in a row, like they were a pair of identical twins. That's like the most cohesive pairing ever, right? No one does that anymore. Okay, so you can basically throw a team together now and win a tournament because everyone else has probably thrown together as well. But also doubles is you've got two people in a game together. Yeah, right. So the context of this um is going to be different across each different competition and each different sport and each different role. But let's take football, for example, so EPL, you've got teams that are spending, let's take last, let's take two years ago, the last time I did a really hard look at it. Why Man City spending 1.15 billion on their wage base and Sheffield Wednesday is only spending 150 million, poor buggers, they've got no money, right? So, so if Man City and and play Sheffield, they have the same level of cohesion, Man City win because they have more skill. Yeah, right. Now we found that the that there's like a ziggle to Z score, like the correlation of something, we found that the biggest that that money did make more difference in the EPL because there was such a dramatic level of of uh skill differentiation between the top teams and the bottom clubs. Because the top team was spending 10 times more than the bottom club. If you make everyone have the same amount of skill, in other words, spending the same amount of money, cohesion will make a much larger impact to performance. So if there's a salary cap, say? So with the EPL, EPL, money is making a bigger difference than cohesion. Cohesion is coming a pretty close second by all the data we have. But that's because there's 1.15 versus 150. If you shrank it down, you said right, 600 to 400, cohesion would be making a greater, greater contribution towards performance. But the thing with cohesion is it doesn't cost you anything. Yeah, it's actually it's actually free, right? So so then you can actually come back to a number and say, okay, for each each 1% you have a TWI, it might make, I'm I'm gonna throw a number out here,$27 million difference in those leagues. I uh you know, rugby league, not so much. But you know, one of the things that that we've looked at quite a bit is is that, and and and forgive me if I've explained to you this before, the low cohesion clubs don't make players better at the same rate as the high cohesion clubs, right? And so if you're basically everyone pays everyone like this, my first contract was like$20,000 for the first year,$50 for the second, and$100 for the third. Yeah, right? So we pay people because we expect them to get better over time. Okay. Now the low cohesion clubs is the players will be paid like that, but their skill improves like that. They're 20 in the first year, 30 in the second, 50 in the last. So the end of their contract, the club goes, you're not playing to the standard of what we're paying you. All right. Now, there's a club we've been talking to for a long time that said that to us three times. All of our, we're paying overs on so many of our players. They're at the third year of a contract, we're paying them a million and a half, and he's only paying like an$800,000 player, right? So that's so that club's there and the norm is there, whereas the other really good clubs are here, okay? So they take, they you build a really well put together system, and the player is improving so dramatically, you're paying him, you know,$20,000,$50,000,$100, but he's playing at, you know,$50,000,$200,$600, right? Yep. So those teams have a$20 million team on a$10 million budget.

SPEAKER_00: 54:56

What are those good cohesion clubs doing? Like, is it's not just more time in, it was just better time and better quality time, better coaching.

SPEAKER_03: 55:06

It's like if you take take uh let's take an individual sport, right? Let's say um one thing that tends to happen a bit, and let's take gymnastics. Like, let's say in Australia, you know, we have some good coaches, but we feel like we've got to import coaches. Okay, so when a kid is between six and nine and she's doing the pommel, they bring in a Chinese coach, and that kid learns the Chinese way to get onto the pommel or to jump or whatever. I'm I don't know. I'm just making that. Then all of a sudden, some Simone Biles wins a whole bunch of gold medals, and they're like, we need to go to the US system. Okay. So they take someone's assistant coach from the US, they bring them across, and they say, no, this is not how you get on a pommel. You're gonna have to get on this way, this is the way we do it in America. So that nine-year-old till they're 12 is now having to spend a year and a half to learn the old way, to learn the new way and unlearn the old way. And therefore, she's not actually developing her detail very well. So she never kind of develops at the same speed, right? Then, whereas the Chinese, same system all the way through for 25 years, right? Then then when they get to 12, they say, Oh, look, the Russians have won more bell medals now, we're gonna go to the Russian system. New coach comes in and goes, I want to do it the Russian way, and then they get us to start again. Okay. So if you constantly, if the club is constantly trying to find a new person to run the program and changing how they do things, then you're not going to get that much better. You're not gonna get to the level of detail of how to do something because you're having to stop and adjust. So if a club if a club is constantly new players, new teammates, if I have a new hooker next to me, I've got to teach him how I want to do things or how he wants to do things. I have to adjust to him, depending on what he's senior or not. I have to talk about this is how I like to bind. We need to do about 500 scrums first before I start to get comfortable with him. Right? So some guys never leave the club, but the club is constantly changing for them.

unknown: 57:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 57:05

It's like a new club every year. And I remember talking to an analyst to the club in the UK, and he's like, I've had nine different head coaches and seven different owners and three or four hundred players come through this place. Like, when is it gonna stop? When is this chaos gonna stop? So yeah, so so in chaos, no one gets better.

unknown: 57:23

Right?

SPEAKER_03: 57:23

Players don't really get much that much better in France. It's like it's like when refugees move countries.

SPEAKER_00: 57:29

Well, just on that the French one, you mean just because the way they play, it's it's all like it's a little bit all over the show.

SPEAKER_03: 57:35

Well, fundamentally, there's basically two clubs that are really well built, Toulouse and Clermont, were basically the generally the really well-built clubs in terms of long-term sustainable development.

SPEAKER_01: 57:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 57:45

And so if you go to those clubs young, and that's what the French are actually finding, importing guys at 25 isn't working. Importing them at 17 now seems to be working.

unknown: 57:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 57:54

And if you look at you look at um uh Maya Lata, you know, when Maya Lata went across to the NFL, his coach at uh at Philadelphia said he's perfect because he's a blank canvas. I have nothing, there's nothing I have to unteach him from college, right? So I think a lot about it's more about purity of experience, right? So it's like it's like if you're constantly bringing in people from other places with other techniques, you have to change what they do, or you adapt to them, or there's a chaos there. Whereas like if you just constantly get in the blank canvas, like you teach kids at Newington how to pass, right? But try to teach Aaron Smith to change how to pass. He's not gonna listen to you. Yeah. Right? I well, you might do, I don't know. But is that your experience, like of senior players?

SPEAKER_00: 58:45

Well, uh absolutely. You have to be well, you have to earn something, you have to have a niche which would suggest that why he would listen to you.

SPEAKER_03: 58:53

And you have to, you just I remember George Gregan saying to me that um he was trying to teach the guy in Japan to pass the way he he what he thought he should. And this guy was yes, but then he watched him in this game, he hadn't changed it at all.

SPEAKER_01: 59:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 59:05

And he said, Why doesn't he change? It's like, because that's how his university coach taught him how to pass. Now I'm not saying that's great because George Gregan shows you how to pass, adapt, right? But that's just over there, they just what whatever their their sensei taught them, that's the technique now for life.

SPEAKER_00: 59:20

Yes, right. And and and Japan's a very uh slow-moving change sort of place, as you know, yeah. Well, I think it's interesting too that also that like what you sort of suggested there too was there's a lot of different ways to do it, the Russian, the Chinese, the different ways of that ballet, but it's not necessarily not what anyone is particularly the right one. But if you just have one and you say, we're gonna get really good at this way of doing, and that's gonna be the way we do it from now forth with.

SPEAKER_03: 59:45

And the the great strengths are built off your weaknesses.

SPEAKER_00: 59:50

Yes. So you just chip away at the things which aren't good.

SPEAKER_03: 59:54

Well, well, or or it's a response. So, like maybe Australian back lines became so good because we didn't have Fords that were big enough. Right? Yeah, or I think about um uh did I talk to Tell you about Boomer? No. So the fast bowler, like you know how he's got like a four-step runner? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And everyone's like, everyone's now copying the boomer technique, and it's like, why did you why do you bowl like that? And he's like, because this is the length of my driveway, right? It's what I had. So a lot of the times the techniques we use will actually be built off the environment we're in or the surroundings we're in. Okay. Like the Bulls probably went to a kicking game because they had Matfield and they're at altitude, right?

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:00:38

Whereas other scenarios, maybe you've got muddy grounds, you play in the forts, whatever it might be. So going and then going to a class. That's winning and copying their techniques doesn't make sense because what you're actually doing is copying an adaptation to a weakness that you don't have.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:59

Adaptation to a weakness you don't have. An adaptation to a weakness you don't have.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:08

So so we all so so do you want to react to.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:14

Do you want me to say it again? Okay, so I'll said it to myself three times.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:18

Okay. So so let's use the bulls as an example. Okay? So the bulls, let's say they played a kicking game because they knew they could get 60 yards out of the kick. Okay. So they play a kicking game, therefore they play line out defense. They also have Victor Matfield as an example, but let's say, let's say because they're kicking so much, they have to do a lot of defensive lineouts. So if we're going to do a lot of defensive lineups, let's practice a lot of defensive lineouts. Let's get really, really good at it. Right. And then because, you know, maybe we get those, we then become quite good at mauling. Okay. Now that is all an adaptation to altitude. Yeah. Okay. And then you watch the bulls play and they win the title. And you're like, they're kicking 75% of the time. So we need to go, we're going to go to the Bulls and we're going to hang out with them and look at their culture and all this other stuff and the things they do. But maybe if we just copy their kicking game, that's an adaptation of something that we don't have to deal with, which is altitude.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:02:16

Right? It's it, and so um, you know, teams like like I remember St. Joseph's College generally had really small props, right? Well, Joey's doesn't have a lot of kids. Quite small group years of groups. And one of the advantages they had with boarding, right? But St. Joseph's College generally had smaller players playing in the flank and go with smaller players because there was just not a lot of kids at the school. And the more kids you have, the more likely it is you'll find a big unit rather than a small unit. So if we don't have a lot of kids, we've got to find a way to adapt to that. So we're going to play a fast game, we're going to play quick ball out of the scrum, and then you become really, really good at it. But you don't copy that. Because you might be a really big school that's got day boys, and you have huge units. Well, why are we copying what Joeys are doing?

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:04

That's exactly right. That brings you back to the first one. You know, where you're just you've you've actually got to wait and see a little bit. You can't just rush in there and do something because the all blacks are doing it, or the wallabies are doing it, or the St. Joseph's are doing it. Another one, which I like I was a part of this one too, is when with just with the Aaron Smith example, the Highlanders never had the biggest team. So part of their Tony Brown's philosophy on attack was we're we're carrying in that pod to trap people, and we're using Aaron Smith's long pass so we can trap more people by him getting that little bit more distance. Therefore, that was the style. So every halfback had to do that. Therefore, the Highlanders didn't have running halfbacks because that wasn't the way they played. So guys that were running halfbacks didn't do as well for a little period there because that wasn't the game style. And so, like, there was I always found that a real interesting mix of like why they were doing what they were doing to suit them as a team. And other the blues wouldn't do that because they had forwards that could carry and knock over guys and pick and go and dominate that phrase. They didn't have to trap numbers, they could just play.

SPEAKER_03: 1:04:09

And and there's a long history in sport of of coaches taking responsibilities for adaptations that teams are making and seeing it as tactical genius, whereas sometimes it's just like the players going, This isn't working, let's do this. And the coach goes, Okay. Yeah, and then and then three years later, they're like, you know, why did you why did you decide to play this way? I really thought it was going to be to the strength of the players we had.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:31

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's actually what had happened with the he walked out of the room and the players went, We're not doing that, we're gonna do this. So just not in a couple. At World Cup level. Yeah. Um, which is incredible, right?

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:03

So, so we've so the the notion of of talent versus cohesion, yes, but it's very expensive. Right? It's very, very expensive. And if you're not, if you're doing a lot of acquisition, you'll be more unstable, which means your ability to adapt will be harder. Okay. And the point I was gonna make was if you look at people who move from overseas who are like refugees, right? Yep. So, so they're not able a lot of the time to adapt all of the things in their life to then be an entrepreneur who has a lot of success, right? Because they've got to adapt to language, adapt to system, adapt to driving on the other side of the road. Everything's just really hard when you're changing countries, okay? But their kids are able to have success, right? Because they're not having to deal with the same level of adaptation. They go, they go up in the schools and have to change languages. So sometimes with a club, it's like we just have to stabilize here first so the next generation has a shot. Otherwise, if we just keep bouncing around with different people all the time, we'll never be able to develop anything ourselves.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:09

Stabilise so the next generation has a shot. Yeah. Geez, that sounds like a political movement, Ben.

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:16

Sorry, well, no, it's just just this, just the notion of creating an environment that's stable enough for kids to be successful. If you look at education outcomes for kids who have to move schools a lot, like in the Navy and Air Force and stuff, it's really hard, right? It's constantly moving makes it really hard to and and and you know, people sort of say to us, well, I don't know how much difference cohesion makes. It's like it's it's not that, it's chaos. What does chaos do to people? You know.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:46

Like on the show, we often talk about all the culture and the cohesion side, but you don't actually reference the the chaos side, which is the other side of things, right?

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:54

Yeah. And it's and how everyone talks about stability when you don't have it. Yeah. We just need to just settle down for a couple of weeks, right? Yeah. When you've got it, no one talks about it. Everyone just thinks it's the norm and they're doing great, you know. So you had you had I I'm I'm cheating here, you had some more questions after that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:23

I do, mate. I like I was really wanted to dive into it a little bit, mate. What do you think? You're like last time we talked mate, like the the one I uh a couple of people wrote in about is what if you can't wait? Like, and and this was from CEOs, like leaders in in business. What if I can't wait three years? Because you said last time it's about 2.8 a season to reach peak performance post-transfer. But what if you can't wait 2.8 years?

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:49

Will you wait a day? Because because cohesion's it's not like it's not like it's two and a half years and flick all of a sudden it's working. It's moving all the time. And the most dramatic change is on the first day, right? If I take so we've done a lot of kind of work in this, we do people with doing, we do Lego together, right? So we do it the first time we get a score. Let's say we have 11 minutes. Every time we ever do it and we don't make any changes, the average improvement between round one and round two is between 41 and 46%. So the first time you do something together, you're diabolically bad. The second time you do it, you're say 41, 46%, and then it keeps on reducing, right? So the most important, the most important uh aspects is the first day, right? So a team, a team, when you don't change a team, it dramatically changes day to day, game to game. So if you look at, like if you look at Paramount A, game one of this year, Storm put 50 on them. It was a massive variance in the cohesion of the two teams. The last game, the Eels put 30 or 40 on the on the Knights. They still would, but they still would have lost to the Storm had the Storm had the same, but they would have been a lot closer. Okay. So yes, it takes two and a half years to get to peak, but just 10 games can make all the difference in the world. Just one game can make a huge level of difference. It's just how catastrophically different it is between one and two, or you know, how much it improves between that. So it's not, it's not I can't wait three years. It's like whether you like it or not, it's moving all the time. It's changing all the time. And it's changing at different speeds, at different rates, depending on the relationship, depending on the position, depending on the context. And so when you don't change a team, it changes. And when you do constantly change a team, it's just the same shit with different people. Sorry for language.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:46

No, it's good.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:47

But it's like like the Knights, this I love the Knights, but it's the 20th anniversary of their 2005 season where they lost by 40 points to Paramatta, 50 to Parramatta, and came last. And they celebrated 20 years by doing it again. They're in the same spot, they're just in the same place 20 years later.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:11

Some clubs are just just repeating the same stuff with just with different people.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:14

Yeah. Right. And that's that loop you get into, isn't it? You talked about on the last show.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:20

Yeah, it's a do it's a downward spiral because you make what you make one change. Let's say I change a line out and it says too much information to the players, so it doesn't work. So I get rid of another player. He comes in and he doesn't know any of the lifts, and so they sack me as a coach because the line out goes to crap. They bring in a new coach and he says, I want to bring in three new players, it just goes boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Like it's one bad decision can lead to a tumble-down effect that can that can. And the problem is with cohesion, is it's a it's generally, you know, a it's a slow build back to get it back to the same point, but you can drop it really, really fast if you make a big enough effort. It's like a house. A house will fall down really quick, slow to build.

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:04

Yeah, I love it, mate. Hey, Benny, this I we mate, I could talk to you for hours, but I I do like to put a cap on it because about the hour is the commute a lot of uh a lot of the listeners do. So we don't want them to be leaving with 10 minutes to go, mate. So I've got one more question for you, and it's not the normal question, it's a different one for you because you've answered that in the last show. This one is about you, mate. It's about you talked in the last episode about you once wanted to try beat these numbers and you went hard to try beat some of this data. Um, if you were coaching now, what would you do differently to work with not against cohesion? What would be your one takeaway for coaches? Start out who because you know the feeling of you wanting to prove and say, I'm gonna turn this thing around. What would you say? What is it to work with cohesion?

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:55

So that's from a prior conversation, but I think I must have misquoted myself or something, because I think it was a coach had said to me, I want to beat, I tried to beat the numbers, I want to beat your numbers, that's my sort of goal. I've never coached, I've never coached having done this work, if that makes sense. Yes. But but if I was to coach now, the first things first is context. Is what am I looking at? What am I up against? So if let's say, let's say you're at, you know, game one, I'm at lay say level two for cohesion, the opposition's at level 10, and we get absolutely spanked. My next goal is to try to get cohesion towards level three. Because I can't get to level 10. And so that's my focus for the rest of the season is to try to keep building it as we go, knowing that if we keep building it, we've got a shot at getting towards six and seven, and then we can start beating some teams that are going to be below us, or they're, you know, we're the home team. But to beat to teams that are 10, the next goal is to get within 40 of them or get within 30 of them. So that's the context. The second context is individual performance, is that we know certain positions are going to be harder than others. So centers, center pairings 10, 12 or 13 tends to be much harder to adapt to than wingers, for example, or props from a power position. But there's going to be components. So where do we work as a team? Where do we work as individuals? The next part is the guys who are more experienced, they might find it harder to adapt coming into a system than a kid, right? So a kid might come in and play really, really well, and the older guy really struggles, but you need to understand he's finding it harder to adapt because he's having to unlearn a lot more. So maybe we need to have some patience because if we throw him away, we're throwing out the baby with the bathwater because he's got some fantastic understanding across this level. Um, I think the next thing would be is about my communication with those above me, and you have to have it before the season or before things start to go wrong.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:04

Because if you go to a board saying our cohesion's terrible, they're like, too late now, dude. If you lost five in a row using this as an excuse, you know, if you can go to a club and say, listen, I know you've hired me and we do want to make some changes, but to be honest with you, I'm looking at this going, this year's going to be a really difficult year. We're completely reloading here. And if you look at, if you look at, you know, when Parramana lost that first game, he basically said, I take complete responsibility for the amount of changes I made to this team. It's going to take some time.

unknown: 1:14:35

Right?

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:35

It was exactly perfect response. So I'm sure he probably said that to them before the before the season started, right? And so um that would be the the, I suppose, the next part of the context. But also too, is understanding enough to know that when we're winning, it's not necessarily me that's making the winning, it's the players making the winning, it's the organization that's making the winning. So maybe not get too carried away with my own rubbish if we are winning, because because it can change very, very quickly. You know, like Bellamy's record in origin only tells you that, you know, as he even said to me, like, now I understand origin a lot better, because of of you know, why I necessarily couldn't win that. Because they had that period where Queensland won, I think, ten or nine or ten years in a row. And so that was just a huge disadvantage for him. And and the interesting thing about that is like, is he a great coach? I think he's a very, very good coach. But in talking to people around him, they're not saying he's like a s like a genius. The problem is the press, right? The press will portray them as geniuses and the press will shift, you know. They there's you know, a player will play well and part of a great team, and they'll say, This guy is, you know, one of the greatest players in the history of the game. Not necessarily understanding the context, they'll say about another player, this player is simply not up to it. And sometimes it's the same player, they've just forgotten when they said it before.

unknown: 1:16:06

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:07

Fascinating, mate. Interesting is the phrase, isn't it? Interesting. Hey, Benny Darwin, thank you very much for your time once again. Episode two. For the listeners, if if you haven't listened to the first one, get on there. It's absolute gold, dives deep into the data, and Gain Line Analytics is just a sensational company which is actually unlocking a whole lot of not just the data, but the coaching psyche and just smacking people in the face with actually what is actually out there. So, Benny, before you go, where can if people want to know more about Gainline Analytics and what you do, where can they find you and what else, what else do you do?

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:45

So we do um we present to people on cohesion. One mistake that people say to us, well, that's all very good and well in sport, but this is corporate, it's different. And our response to that actually is actually the original research, a lot of it comes out of military data, HR data, hospital data. We've just applied it to sport. We've taken a whole bunch of other things people have done on cohesion and sort of synthesized it and then and then studied sport in the same light. So a lot of what we're talking about actually comes from corporate work. Um, but we also present to corporate, we measure corporate teams. Uh, we've been measuring the ASX now for about 10 years with some really interesting results. Uh and so uh yeah, but we fundamentally see teams as the same in all types. So we are on um uh gainline.biz is our website, we're also on Twitter, LinkedIn, or you can find me. Yada yada yada.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:39

Mate, thank you for your work. Thank you for your time sharing this sort of stuff. It goes a long way to helping coaches and leaders be better versions of themselves, mate. So thank you for joining us once again.