Finding The Future Champions

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Finding The Future Champions"

Octavia Melton
5 years ago
Views:

1 Finding The Future Champions Martin Dew Hattens Introduction Records show that England has had poor results in recent years since the days in which Robertson and Emms were at their peak. The All England mixed used to be one event claimed regularly by English players but we have seen no title for over six years. In the wider frame England have had no European team event gold for 27 years and no Uber/Thomas cup medal for 27 years. Recent performances in the commonwealth games have also been disappointing. If we look at the current World rankings there are no English players in the top ten in any event. It is worth noting however that Denmark, a nation of only five million people, can boast six entries in the top ten spanning over the five events. (Official world rankings as of ) The width and depth of the English team has been seriously lacking now for more years than I would like to see. At the World Championships in London this year we were proud to watch Adcock and Bankier nearly experience their wildest dreams when England got half a silver medal in the mixed. Adcock impressed me as a young strong athlete and Bankier like Gail Emms at her best. Does this mean a revival for English Badminton? In recent weeks the results of the silver medalists are not quite so impressive and are recorded as loosing 3 rd round in the Chinese Masters, 2 nd round in the Japan Open, 2 nd round in the Danish Open, 2 nd round in the French Open, 3 rd round in the Bitburger Open, 1 st round in the Hong Kong Open and 1 st round in the Chinese Open. I wish them strength and good winds in the future and hope their result was not a one off, but they seem to have hit the wall at present. With this evidence I find it difficult to believe a revival of English badminton is imminent! So what is the difference between Denmark and England? What is driving the success of Denmark on the world stage? Danish Badminton I have written many times on Danish badminton. No system is perfect but they do have the facilities offered by a strong competitive club system to be able to gather a good number of players in the same place and keep them interested. Whilst many English players stop playing at age 18 the Danish club system keeps Danes in the loop after reaching their teenage years.

2 Many of the Danish players however are reaching their sell by date and Denmark is seriously looking for the new batch of youngsters. Denmark is trying to be creative but may be moving away from a system which is seen to work: a) They are deliberately ignoring results for team selection and instead preferring what they call potential in team selection. This causes problems when players are not selected based on results and more than one player has felt so much injustice that they have not the will to keep playing. This strategy relies on the fact that the right people making the decisions. A really worrying spin off of this is that many players selected for the national team do not take part in the national events in within their own age group. This really does have a weakening effect on the whole system. b) They want to take elite players from their club at a young age and move them to elite centers Chinese style. This will certainly kill off the club system! c) They want to produce players at a younger age. For whatever reason I don t know but it is a strange policy when most of Denmark s best results come from players well over the age of 30. It would be dangerous to try and change this. It would seem Danes mature at a later age. It is also notable that some of the players such as Fischer and Laybourn were discarded from the National training for a while but were kept in the loop by a strong club system until they matured. Maybe the Danes should try and expand their national squads rather than try to minimize them! The next few years will tell if these measures are successful. Personally I suggest that these tend to break down the structure of the Danish club system and will result in a lowering of results in general. Regardless of the effect in a few years time the current seniors are achieving good results (for now). There will always be players like Victor Axelsen who live outside the mould. I have seen him since he was eleven and it was always clear he going to be at the top of the world one day. I would not say however he is the produce of the Danish system but more a product of himself and Odense badminton with a vicious desire for success and willing to work hard for it. It is clear however that the number of people in the population is not a factor to produce a world champion. Victor did it and from a nation of only 5 million. Basically the Danish club system serves to gather a critical mass of players in the same place and gives them a place to play badminton and have fun. This by nature finds the champions since the court space and time is available locally in which young talented players can explore their talent. There are many who remain at a basic club level but those with the natural talent find progression a reachable and enjoyable task. English Badminton So what s the problem? Even if we create a good club system and local training centers and pump millions in the National Badminton Center will England enter the world rankings once more? Well we already pump millions in the National badminton centre and results show that this does not work. I believe that Kenneth Jonassen is a great coach but even a master needs the right material to work with.

3 That is the crucial point to my paper here. Are we feeding the right players to Kenneth so he can make champions? Basically any nation needs to have one winning champion who can then span a decade on court. Peter Gade has done wonderfully and now Jan Ø. Jørgensen or Victor will take over the mantel. Who took over the mantel from Darren Hall? Andrew Smith was in the top 20 in the world for a while but injury has severely curtailed his activities since then. Where can England find that one men s singles player from a batch of youngsters spanning a decade? Are any of the youngsters playing in the minor events of sufficient quality to break through as a European champion? Looking at recent tournament results make me think otherwise. I have consistently heard tales of good talented players in their junior years. Many players find it difficult to get court time and travel long distances to do so. Making progress around the age of 18 becomes difficult because of a lack of stimulation and local facilities and some disappear to some other life where they can progress. England needs a stronger club system to keep these players in the loop until they are ready to mature and be able to use their talent and where a critical mass is achieved to that a club atmosphere is achieved. We need to achieve a play and socialize culture instead or the play and go home which exists at present. We have a club system we happen to call it county, but its central position in English badminton has withered in the last 15 years and with it the fortunes of English badminton players. To find that one player per decade we ought to be looking for that player I term a natural champion. The Natural Champion I firmly believe that people are suited for a particular sport. To make a ridiculous example everybody would accept that the build of a rugby player would not be suitable to become a ballet dancer! In the same way there are conditions which are obviously optimal for a badminton player and some which are not quite so obvious. We have heard of stories in China and seen various films on television in which schools are visited by officials and children at an early age are hand plucked and selected for duty. This is a great chance for them and few would say no given the chance. China also has the ability to get it wrong most of the time due to their large population the ability to replace injured players and their fantastic financial position in the world. We don t have that same culture or funding in the west and this is unlikely ever to happen. So what is the perfect badminton player and how do you find them? Well if I knew the answer to that then I would have found them and developed them all by now. I may have ideas but I am not Merlin! Consider this one point for judging hand eye coordination. Stand in front of your candidate at a distance of 4 meters. Warn them you will throw a ball and they must catch it. Throw it to them in a flat well paced arc above and to their ride side if they are right handed. My contention is that players with extreme hand eye coordination will simply raise their hand out into the air without actually having to look at the ball. They will have judged the trajectory at an early moment and have no need to look at

4 the ball to catch it. Other less gifted players will have to look at the ball all the way into maybe a two handed catch. From my younger years I know that cricketers are often very good at this skill. It is my view that is the most crucial ability a badminton player must have. Although this skill can be enhanced I don t believe you can enter into world class levels by training the skill alone. There has, in my view, to be natural talent. So what is Natural talent? Maybe a good definition is A marked innate ability Natural talent in another way can become a curse since the athlete believes that he does not have to work hard to improve their ability. This is why players with natural talent are often perceived as lazy because they are through boredom or lack of stimulation. Without top class, challenging, stimulating coaches they become bored since everything seems so easy to them. They need to be challenged and stimulated. This is identical to the experiences of Einstein, Newton and Stephen Hawking who were underachievers at early school since they lacked stimulation or opportunity. They had to be provided with the right opportunity and convinced to work hard to be able to use their talent in the right way. This is the job of the coach and managers in badminton. If you are interested in the concept of natural talent there is an interesting article at you believe in natural talent. The author does not believe in natural talent. Nevertheless the article is still interesting and talks of the 10,000 hours needed to train anybody to world class. Unlike some sports badminton is complex. It is reasonably easy, for example, to train a rower just to pull on a couple of oars but the sport of Badminton takes more than ten years to develop a champion and you had better have the right qualities before you start or you will end up being a mediocre national champion rather than a European Champion or World Champion. Hence I believe the success of a player is limited by their natural ability to play the sport. Here is an attempt to try and list some qualities useful in badminton. Some of these might be what can be termed border line but we have to be creative here: a) The physical frame of a badminton player can vary quite a lot but it seems that a height of 182cm is a good starting average b) Exhibit qualities of being an athlete c) Be a good natural runner d) Terrific hand eye coordination If you only look for one attribute alone then this is paramount. Badminton is such a fast game that the head does not have a chance always to move and many shots are played without looking directly at the point of impact. Some of it is done through periphery vision This is where extreme hand eye coordination is required. e) Like hard physical activity

5 There is no doubt about it, this is no soft sport and its requires much higher levels of fitness than a few years ago. f) Attempt to use deception from a very early age This shows creativity, a good thinking brain and an understanding of tactics. g) Left handed players are worth considering. Firstly because shots come from unusual angles and they tend to use more deception. Secondly because the left hand is controlled by the right hand side of the brain where the control mechanism actually exists. Brain signals do not have to cross the brain to be delivered and hence theoretically the left hander has better reactions. Ok small margins I know. h) Attempts highly complex shots and maybe makes lots of mistakes at an early age. This one is interesting since some very good talents would often loose first round in junior events since they have not learned how they should use their range of skills without high rates of error. Many years ago I was quoted by Shella Tyrell in the badminton magazine having just lost first round in the Junior All England to another unknown Roger Green who has since disappeared without trace. Quote:. and amongst the lesser lights I noted Martin Dew, a young copy of Mike Tredgett, all skill but not able to use it. Shella saw something in me! We need people who are able to recognize this skill and to nurture it. i) Determined j) Stubborn k) Confident l) Reasonably intelligent so as to understand advanced tactics, hold to a game plan and change it on the fly when needed. In many ways all these coaches on court is killing the player s ability to think for themselves. They always seem to be turning round seeking the next instruction. I firmly believe coaches should not be allowed on court in junior badminton. This will teach them to think for themselves in a crisis. m) Self sufficient n) Persistence o) If the player has experience with fencing then all the better since the lunging process brings them easily into tune with the motion of moving to the net in badminton p) Likes more than one sport. For example running, fencing, swimming or cricket q) Has had some formal dancing training the reason for this is that it will give them balance, a lightness of foot and a good understanding of where their arms and legs are at any one time. Moving gracefully around the badminton court is akin to ballet and it would be interesting to

6 see a ballet dancer trained in badminton, if they could be bothered! The various Royal Ballet schools around the world turf young players away at very early ages. It might be interesting to pick up one of their rejects and see what they can do on a badminton court. They will certainly be athletes. Can you tell all this from a six or ten year old? Maybe, but you have to get to know them first, and the local club coach is in an ideal position to do this with regular weekly contact. So does England give Kenneth the natural champion to work with? Well I doubt it and I believe this is a major contribution to the lack of success. We are simply producing players with a will to play who happen to be at the top of English sport but who lack the true ability and talent to win medals. Nathan Roberston exhibits many of the qualities above and that s why he was at the top of the world in his best days. If progress is simply marked by results then we may lose the natural champion. This is why Denmark does not pay too much attention to results at an early age. It a difficult line to take though. It is important not to restrict talented, possibly highly strung young players, with rules and regulations and boring training drills. It has to be the manager and coach who are flexible not the players. Placing rules and regulations on talented players is one of the best ways to make them quit playing or under perform. Keep it interesting, keep it flexible. During the 80 s one of Ciro Ciniglio s famous sentences was.. do it for the players... That means put the player first, get them what they need. Our structure in the west does not support plucking youngsters out of schools and placing in sports academies. Everything is based on free will. All we can do is provide opportunity, facilities, the right coaches and concepts and let nature take its course. Conclusion The world ranking list shows that England is doing something wrong. Copying the Danish way would not be a bad starting point! We have to funnel much more money from Milton Keynes to the regions by reducing the incredible staff levels hence providing funding and opportunity to the regions for courts, shuttles and coaches We must deliberately give attention to identifying the young star of the future, even when they possibly don t quite justify attention by results alone. We need to keep the talented but under performing teenage players interested and in the loop. This was possibly the best effect of the England B Squad of the 80 s in which upwards of 40 players attended HMS Sultan in Portsmouth during summer weekends. The days of Sultan have gone but we must find purpose built halls, shuttles and coaches to widen the net of players entering the system and then stimulate those with perceived natural talent.

7 The 100 point plan is too many items and to consider them all will only result in the dilution of the effect. We need to concentrate on a far smaller number. I can manage it with a four point plan!!! 1) The reduction of staff at BE by 50%. Channeling of resulting funds into shuttles, purpose built halls, court time and coaches in the regions. Maybe some of them could be retained on commission to work on sponsorship deals for BE which will fund purpose built halls in the regions. 2) Contact all ex internationals from the last 10 years. Ask them to discuss and implement a talent identification scheme and ask them to take an active part in their county (without payment) to identify and mentor young naturally talented badminton players. Yes some are active now but far too few are active. 3) Present the county as the center of English badminton and try to mimic the Danish club system within the county structure. Council members represent the counties so that should not be too difficult to fund yourselves from Sport England funds instead of Milton Keynes. All funding needs to be channeled through the counties to make sure they have a central position. This also makes it possible to reduce staffing levels in BE. 4) Widen the scope via the counties to keep under achieving teenagers in the loop. Give them a place to train, have friends and have a life. Just like the Danish club system. Yes I know much if this is politically difficult in which budgets are earmarked for certain things only. But it s only a question of moving a number from one line in a spreadsheet to another! The players with the ability are there, it s just a question of supporting them in the right way. It is clear that to continue on the current course will not give results.

22/08/2011. A Winning Culture. Wembley Stadium 11 TH 12 TH AUGUST Martin Andrew Badminton England. World Badminton Coaching Conference

22/08/2011. A Winning Culture. Wembley Stadium 11 TH 12 TH AUGUST Martin Andrew Badminton England. World Badminton Coaching Conference A Winning Culture Wembley Stadium 11 TH 12 TH AUGUST 2011 Martin Andrew Badminton England 1 NATHAN ROBERTSON S COACHING HISTORY COACHES AND INFLUENCES Who is Nathan Robertson? Born on 30 th May 1977 in