Friday Freebie: Football Thrives On Success

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This week I’ve a guest article from Gavin Blackwell. Gavin has been in the game a long time as a club physio and is currently attached to Dudley Town from the Midland Football League. Take a look at his article below and feel free to leave any thoughts and opinions in the comments section.

There is more written about promotion than relegation, more about cup winners than losers. Throughout the many leagues, from primary school right through to the Premier League, it’s a competitive framework that sets the scene, season after season.

The few supreme honours are fought for to the end. Success boosts crowds, excites supporters, gives dreams of greatness to players and managers. Failure not only means disappointment but also the sack. When you’re on the right side, you enjoy it because everyone knows the ramifications of being on the wrong side. Working with players and management teams is such a high pressurised situation.  All clubs are in the business of playing football matches, fielding players and hopefully winning. Injury is a spin-off from this. 

Physios are the men and women who treat the injuries at the clubs and, in the hard world of football, have their hands full. 

The arrival of October and November brings the next stage of the long 10 months, and, with it, the sacking season begins. Reality begins to set in and the early hopes are beginning to fade. Managers might not have reached the goals set during summer, perhaps the players brought in aren’t delivering for one reason or another.  Players not in the side get unsettled and start moaning.

One manager used to say, ‘If you’re playing well, you’d be in the team. You’re out of it because you’re not playing well.’    Most managers work on the same principle. Unsettled players want to move on and their mood can affect others. The clocks go back, the nights draw in. The weather changes, temperatures plummet, and you are suddenly playing in rain and heavy wind. Pitches become lusher, slower and heavier.  As the clubs’ hopes start to fade, fans start to moan. Only one team can win the league, don’t they know that?

God they are fickle! Results affect numbers through the gate which, in turn, affects revenue. Chairmen’s minds begin to get made up. Occasionally, you can get a realistic chairman who knows where the club is at and what building blocks need to be put in place for the long term but this seems a rarity these days. Instead, managerial sackings come thick and fast and dominate the game’s media coverage and the merry-go-round starts. Football is a results business and in this world of ‘now’, we have to deliver.

The fans think, ‘great, a new manager’.    However, there is a lack of appreciation among them because they don’t know the suffering a sacked manager goes through.  I learned very early on from experiences of other physios around the country that the arrival of a new manager could mean the sack for yourself. Although mainly to the coaching staff, it does happen to physios as well. Once in, the new broom begins to sweep clean and every player in the squad considers how it will affect him. Those in the team wonder if they’ll keep their place, others on the edge get renewed hope. A new manager draws his own staff around him. 

But there can be knock-on effects.   You develop relationships within clubs and it’s really important to develop relationships with managers, but it does make you feel you probably mourn a little bit when they leave.  But we are all big boys now and we all realise the industry doesn’t give much slack to negative results. So, if you’re not getting results irrespective of the hard work on the training ground or at the club, no matter what job you do, if you’re not getting the three points at the weekend then clubs have to make difficult decisions. 

It starts with a phone call that the club have decided to change the manager.   You are then informed about who is the interim manager or caretaker. It is usually a member of the current staff, a senior player or could be a complete outsider.  It hits you again when you go in to training and the manager isn’t there.   Someone you have worked with, respected and developed that trusting relationship with, is no longer at the club. 

The role of the manager can be very lonely at times, and when the pressure is on, there can be a number of negative influences looking to be disruptive, and that’s where your trust and loyalty is so important. 

It’s a difficult and emotional one to deal with but one that you have to quickly put your emotions to one side and concentrate on the players because they will also be affected.   Importantly, there is usually a game in a couple of days’ time that you still have to prepare for.  You are employed by the club and have a job to do.

It’s the one thing I absolutely don’t like about football is those times of change when you’re in the hands of the Gods because you don’t know what’s happening. The insecurity that you feel is absolutely awful. You’re hearing all sorts of names being thrown about, and then you hear who the new manager is going to be.   You then go back into your own personal point of view and start thinking: ‘Who was the physio at his last job? Who’s he worked with in the past? Does he bring a physio with him? Does he know about me? Does he want me?’

 That also applies to the other staff left behind. All the questions. With football being football, people sometimes take it for granted that you know something that you don’t.  So, I then bump into the new manager on one occasion who’s arriving with the chairman.  He says, ‘Gavin Blackwell is the physio.’  Does that mean I’m staying?   People take it for granted that you know you staying now but you had all the insecurity that it might not be the case.  All the time that you have been anticipating that cruel rejection that happens when a new manager brings in his own backroom team. 

What happens when a sacking takes place

As someone who has experienced both situations (being hired and being sacked), times when it’s benefited and times when it hasn’t, core staff must prove their value to a new management team. If a manager hasn’t time, he needs proven lieutenants to deliver.   It’s tough to develop relationships with people you don’t know in the intensity of club life. But the bottom line is you could be working with one manager one day and, the next day, they are gone and a new one comes in. So, you need to be adaptable and be able to work with different personalities and management styles. 

That’s where I think the relationship you have with a manager is so important.   They have got to trust you, that you’re doing the right thing and that takes time to build up when you have a new manager.  You know that you are learning that relationship again, starting from scratch. Every time a new manager is appointed a little voice suggests you might be walking out through the revolving door that the manager is entering with his own staff. 

I have also worked with very pragmatic managers with no desire to bring in their own physio. They have assured me that they would defer any decision-making over injuries to me and wouldn’t interfere in my management of rehabilitation.  They were all true to their word. However, when a new manager comes in, you have to realise that although you’re still working for the same club, a new manager will have their own ways of working so you’re going to have a certain amount of nervous anticipation. Especially when you formed that good relationship with the previous manager. 

Surviving managers is an achievement in itself.   It didn’t matter who came in. It was another manager change to survive and equally, the insecurity of being a football physio is largely because they answer to the manager, not the club. You could be out of football in a second due to the inherent instability of it. This cut-throat climate, where members of the backroom staff are disposable commodities depending on who the manager is at the time Is not for everyone. It’s not every manager who wants to retain its predecessor’s physio. 

It’s the other side of this glamorous game - the one where people get hurt and where heartbreak is only a result or two away.