(02-09-2016, 09:20 PM)LP link Wrote:Warne isn't the first past player to comment about Waugh, he's been indirectly accused of captaining for the benefit of his own statistics on more than one occasion. I've heard two such comments directly in person at sportsmen's nights. In retrospect they sum the situation up as Waugh being the direct opposite of Mark Taylor, Taylor many believe to be the equal best of any captain Australia has ever had!

I'd always thought Waugh was over-rated. He is nowhere near the best captains Australia had, he was a good batsmen without being exceptional or damaging. His fielding was good without being exceptional. For example Ponting had him covered in most areas on a like for like basis.

At the time Waugh was given the nod Australian cricket was being dominated by the relationship between the NSWCB and MCC, it still partially is the case.

(02-09-2016, 11:05 PM)Mav link Wrote:This is why I always laugh a bit when people say, "The coach has lost the players".  Sometimes, the term "the playing group" is substituted to emphasise the solidarity of the players players - instead of individuals, it is a monolith. 

In reality, those who are both "inside the bubble" and sensitive to the undercurrents know just how factional teams can be, much like a microcosm of ALP factional politics.  In any team, there are the haves and the have-nots.

It seems that hardly anyone in one of Australia's best cricket teams got on.  Warnie loathed Steve Waugh, Buchanan, and Gilchrist but liked Pup.  A lot of players, including Katich, hated Pup.  Symons seemed to hate a few.  Well-credentialed batsmen like Siddons and Hodge didn't seem to have any support.  I wonder if any of them are still mates?

(02-09-2016, 11:05 PM)Mav link Wrote:This is why I always laugh a bit when people say, "The coach has lost the players".  Sometimes, the term "the playing group" is substituted to emphasise the solidarity of the players players - instead of individuals, it is a monolith. 

In reality, those who are both "inside the bubble" and sensitive to the undercurrents know just how factional teams can be, much like a microcosm of ALP factional politics.  In any team, there are the haves and the have-nots.

It seems that hardly anyone in one of Australia's best cricket teams got on.  Warnie loathed Steve Waugh, Buchanan, and Gilchrist but liked Pup.  A lot of players, including Katich, hated Pup.  Symons seemed to hate a few.  Well-credentialed batsmen like Siddons and Hodge didn't seem to have any support.  I wonder if any of them are still mates?

(02-09-2016, 09:57 PM)JonHenry link Wrote:The comment from Warne was that he was selfish!
What other player said he was?
Waugh is certainly not Australia's best ever captain but he did instill a win every test mentality. I am not sure what else he is meant to do?
Warne clearly hates being told what to do, or that he's not up to it, which at that time, recovering from injury, he wasn't.
To label Steve Waugh selfish?
Warne could have been a tennis player with his sense if self worth

Quote:Steve may have been a teenage glamour boy of cricket but beneath the Boy Wonder headlines lay a steely but nervous blue collar warrior who he had to fight for everything he had.

As a consequence he became protective, insecure, and paranoid as he took his first steps in the wider, fiercely competitive world of professional sport.

Quote:One rival remembers Waugh saying “it’s okay for you, I am trying to make a living out of this’’ during an early game after he took the plunge to play full time.

Unlike, say, Ricky Ponting, Steve was not eased into an Australian team who was trampling the world and simply joined the party.

He was tossed in as a gifted but unworldly teenager in the mid-1980s where the Australian team was like 11 men on a life raft fighting a bitter battle for survival.

Was he selfish? Of course. Most were. In troubled times, who is the first person you look after?

Was he more selfish than most? Perhaps – but he grew.

Waugh never admitted this but it always looked as if he realised how selfish he was and that the way to overcome it was to invest himself in emerging players like Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer.

Hi did once concede “you realise there is so much of the game that you are not involved in so you must learn to appreciate other people’s success.’’

(02-10-2016, 12:28 AM)Mav link Wrote:But as Cookie points out, it's true of any organisation, even ones with a mission which you'd think would unite its personnel.  Just about every organisation looks shiny and monolithic from the outside until you zoom in and see what's actually happening inside.

Just look at the police, as an example.  It's easy to think of them as a brotherhood.  But then you read the stories about bullying and even rape within the ranks and high-level machinations which would make Machiavelli blanche.  In Victoria, Assistant Commissioner Ashby and the head of the police union, Paul Mullett, beat perjury charges arising out of a move they made on the then Commissioner of Police.  When you throw in the more garden-variety corrupt relationships between some police and drug dealers, even the suggestions that some bent police helped assassinate some informers who were under police protection, it doesn't seem to be such a monolithic brotherhood.

Quote:Why, then, would it be a surprise that any elite sporting team would be as fractured and factional?  After all, any success one of the team has works to the disadvantage of one or more of those competing for spots and there will always be those who would prefer individual over team success.  How many footy players have done what Warnie did - trying to force their way into the team for a big game in the hope that they'll be able to rise to the occasion despite injuries or injury layoffs rather than with any real confidence that they will be able to do so?