Clive Woodward

Especially in this era of AI, there can be opportunities to manufacture images and views and perspectives.

It always reminded me of a slide I use when I'm doing presentations on ecological dynamics constraint-led approach and it's a slide of a big six-foot pink furry dice hanging from a tree and it was a story that Clive Woodward told who was the England rugby union coach from about 1999 to 2003, longer than that, but culminating in England winning the World Cup in in Australia in 2003.

But before, Andy said, if we win the World Cup and we've got a six-foot pink furry dice hanging by a tree next to our training ground, everybody will want a six-foot pink furry dice because people follow fads.

They'll follow, oh, that must be the reason why they won then and everything.

It was funny, actually.

I had a conversation with Clive Woodward, and he was like, "I wish I was coaching against Razzy."

Against?

Yeah.

That's what he did at...

City, it's what he learned at Southampton under Clive Woodward.

It's what he went over and kind of looked at when he came back to Stockport and how he's kind of done so successfully there.

What you're seeing at Stockport, effectively, is a side that's had a new lease of life since Simon Wilson's left.

Yeah.

Sir Clive.

I know the stats.

Look at me and my backbone.

Yeah, they are good stats.

Yeah.

Do you know what Clive Woodward was?

Uh, s- 68.

I think...

I was reading, Lawrence Dallaglio wrote about it in The Sunday Times, and, and Clive Woodward, uh, posted something on LinkedIn referring to, to the idea of what, what that England '03 team did was, was have a mentality.

There's no point chasing the best in the world.

We have to become the best in the world with our, our game and our identity.

But if your win percentage is 58%, I mentioned Stuart Lancaster, I mentioned Eddie Jones, 73%.

Clive Woodward won a World Cup in England, 2003 was 71%.

That 70% level seems to be the number that you need to be hitting if you're using numbers to value a coach's worth.

But you know what I mean.

And to do that, I thought I'd give you an example of a video I saw recently.

It was Laurence Delaglio, the ex-England rugby captain, talking about what happened when Clive Woodward came in to be the head coach of England rugby.

This was back in the late 90s, and England had never won a World Cup.

And Clive Woodward, as Laurence Delaglio was saying in this video...

He didn't try and copy what France were doing or what the All Blacks were doing or what Australia were doing.

He actually went around the world looking into other sports, looking to other scenarios where he could find genuine excellence in a way that nobody in rugby was doing.