As Australian cricket seeks to make its way from chaos to triumph, its stakeholders can learn from the Tigers’ example of forging relationships and building trust that helped them fight through numerous crises and win the AFL title in 2017
Daniel Brettig24-May-2018Triumph out of chaos is just the sort of trajectory Australia’s cricketers and coaches are chasing after the ball-tampering fiasco of Newlands, and this week they’ve taken heart from the tale of Richmond’s switch from a chaotic, underperforming 2016 to a cathartic premiership victory last year.Central to a seminar for all coaches with Cricket Australia and the state associations at the National Cricket Centre in Brisbane was a session with the Tigers’ head of coaching and performance, Tim Livingstone, in which he detailed the club’s journey through numerous crises to the 2017 flag, capped with a command performance over Adelaide in the Grand Final.Livingstone, who on matchdays takes up the key role of link man between the senior coach Damien Hardwick and the players and runner on the interchange bench, spoke about how the club had seemingly been building towards success in 2016, only to see a year of poor performance force plenty of reassessment of how the club, from Hardwick down, was going about its business. Aided by the club’s board – itself subject to a challenge from a rival ticket – and management electing not to respond by sacking the coach, a period of introspection led to a greater focus on relationships, vulnerability and building trust.Broadly, Livingstone told those present how Richmond engaged the whole organisation into understanding and believing what they wanted to achieve – getting connected from top to bottom – and then living that out. Another element of discussion was bringing the “fun” back into the club after a dour and disappointing 2016, when most had been saddled by expectation. This was shown by examples such as the marked contrast in the pre-Grand Final photos of the Tigers and Adelaide. Damien Hardwick’s team were all smiles, Don Pyke’s largely deadpan.Wade Gilbert, professor at California State University and a globally respected coaching scientist and consultant, was also a keynote contributor to the week, and said that the Richmond story was a further reinforcement of what has become apparent to many successful sporting clubs and governing bodies: look after the people, and the performance will follow. Gilbert and Livingstone both spent time with Australia’s new coach Justin Langer as he contemplates a first assignment with the limited-overs teams in England.”We spent a fair amount of time talking and I was there for a few hours with them and their staff [at Richmond] and they also built around people, they understand the importance of continually investing in the people in their organisation,” Gilbert told ESPNcricinfo. “[Livingstone] shared with Justin and CA some good examples of the types of things they do and how they navigated their own turmoil, their own crises.”Justin will be looking, and already has been looking, outside cricket to other organisations, other sports, other cultures, other programmes, to better understand how they built culture, how they built relationships. The Richmond story is a great story, but it’s just another example of another organisation that really invested heavily in people.”Gilbert said that all sporting organisations inevitably faced setbacks whether on the field or off it, and the key was to develop an environment in which resilience and trust allowed a quick recovery. “Every club that I’ve been around the last couple of weeks, we’ve shared the same message and had similar conversations,” he said. “All around culture, people, relationships and the little things you do on a daily basis across your organisation that help strengthen relationships and trust.’If you’re doing those things, you’re going to be fine. That’s what you see at the best clubs and the best organisations. For sure you’ll have good days and bad days and losses, but you’re just going to have a better environment. People are going to be more resilient, they’ll come back after a bad loss.”Previously, Livingstone has spoken about how the club adjusted its focus entering into 2017, a process that started largely with Hardwick acknowledging that under the pressure to perform, he had moved away from being himself. “Through his inspiration, we’ve invested more time in understanding everyone’s story and how they came to be playing for the Richmond footy club,” Livingstone told the AFL website. “It’s the old saying, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”He’s always been a great leader in that sense. He sees himself as the leader and the buck stops with him. Damien will put it on himself and the coaches first. If we’re not teaching them correctly, we cannot expect them to execute. He’s always taken responsibility.”On a week-to-week basis, these relationships were strengthened among the players by the staging of regular sessions in which players shared personal stories with one another, building knowledge of each other, emotional connection and trust. “It’s pretty confronting, but it’s also like a load off their mind,” Livingstone said in . “We’re talking about stories of sickness and broken homes. Put it this way, if you’ve got to put your arse on the line for your mate, and take a hit on the field, you’re more likely to do it if you have some care for what he’s been through.”
Gilbert said that all sporting organisations inevitably faced setbacks whether on the field or off it, and the key was to develop an environment in which resilience and trust allowed a quick recovery.
The strength that can be derived from a stronger relational focus is summed up by how Hardwick and Livingstone operate on match-days, with the latter essentially acting as Aide-de-camp for the former. This means that Livingstone will interpret and pass on Hardwick’s messages in the heat of a game, occasionally leavening out some hot-blooded venting into useful information for players.”We both know when he just needs to vent,” Livingstone said. “Like sometimes he’ll say, ‘Get that guy straight off the ground, now’, but I’ll know that the player is five minutes away from his rotation, and Dusty [Martin] is due, and if we need to hold Dustin on the ground when he’s fatigued, that can have consequences. Damien trusts me to hit back at him.”Lessons translatable across sports can reckon without subtle distinctions. Cricket is almost unique in its fusing of individual disciplines into a team configuration, being more Ryder Cup than Stanley Cup. Equally, Australia’s national team is a representative team rather than a club, where players compete as much with each other for tenure as they do with opponents for trophies.But then, Australian cricket has always had considerable crossover with football, from the moment the game itself was first concocted in the 19th century as a way of keeping cricketers fit in the winter months. Several former AFL players and coaches are employed within cricket, from Guy McKenna as a coaching and talent ID specialist at Cricket Victoria, and Brett Jones as high performance manager at Queensland Cricket, to Stephen Schwerdt as fitness coach for South Australia.James Sutherland, the longtime chief executive, had his eyes opened to the rough and ready world of sports administration by serving as financial officer and company secretary at Carlton in the 1990s. The former coach Darren Lehmann has been a Crows ambassador since 2001 and not so long ago sat alongside Pyke in the Adelaide coaches box for a loss to North Melbourne in Hobart. Langer, too, has his own foot in the other camp, as a Board director with the West Coast Eagles.Whatever their relationship to football, all will hope some of the lessons of the Tigers’ tale can aid Australian cricket on that aforementioned journey from chaos to future triumph.
