Tuesday 30 October 2007

To mesh or not to mesh, what are they doing?

QUEENSLAND Roar teammates Reinaldo and Andrew Packer had to be separated at training yesterday as the intensity cranked up a notch ahead of tonight's A-League clash against cellar dwellers Perth Glory at Suncorp Stadium.
Big defender Sasa Ognenovski was forced to intervene when a nasty push and shove developed between Packer and Reinaldo, who wasn't pleased with an earlier tackle made by the defender in a high-intensity training drill.
Roar coach Frank Farina later dismissed the incident, saying there were "no dramas" and that it showed "they're all ready for the game".

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22656138-5003412,00.html

After reading this, it kind of made me wonder. Is the reason the Roar aren't reaching their full potential because of the players skill level, or because they simply aren't melding as a team? When you have fighting in a game between opposing teams, that's bad enough. But when someone has to separate two teammates, it really makes you wonder what's going on.
The reason that Kruse and Zullo work together so well is because they actually like each other. The fact that they've played together for so long would mean practically nothing if they hated the sight of each other. Look how much they've helped our campaign through their obvious displays of unselfish teamwork!
The fact that Farina later tried to play the whole incident down shows that there is much more to it than meets the eye. Reinaldo is a fairly arrogant player, as is Andrew Packer. Packer also strikes me as the sort of fellow who won't take any s*#t from anyone (being from Ipswich and all).
Maybe instead of spending so much time at training injuring themselves (has anyone else noticed the excessive amount of injuries sustained at training?), the players should be doing teamwork building exercises, trust exercises and how not to attack your fellow player exercises!
That aggression should be channelled into the game when it is being played, not against each other while you are practicing.
I honestly think that if the players learnt to trust and respond to each other, we might be able to break the three season slump that disappoints us every time.

2 comments:

Whistler said...

Yep - it's the old saying, "A star team is better than having a team of stars", and if you look at the Roar's performance, we've done better with the home grown locals than the supposed star imports, with the exception of Seo, who really stumbled into the Roar. Too many egos could be the problem.

john said...

Moore had a got at Packer after the Perth game.