AFL Training and the 'Gifted' Player - Another instance

Ron Barassi, the legendary AFL coach and player suggested that players should not be proud of natural ability: it comes from their parents. It is what they do with it, the work they do that really will make them worthy as players.

As I watched may AFL team training tonight I again observed the reaction of some of the most naturally gifted players (but not all) as they tried to resolve a problem.
In essence, we were running a three man weave with the 'starter' kicking for goal off the third pass. It's a nice little play action drill as we can encourage run from behind, support of the ball carrier and have a moving shot. We can also easily translate it into a competitive little game play and add some game centred elements into it. We added a variation onto this weave by having a fourth player lead up from the goal square, take the mark and then pass to the first player in the set up to get the weave going. As the group had done some 5 man weaves the week before and my team had done three man weaves last week as well, I thought we would have good execution and then build in some game play into the drill.

There were three groups. The first had two quite gifted players and two good athletes but all are excellent thinkers. They barely missed a mark and really could work on a number of extra areas. The second had one excellent athlete and leader, a excellent athlete who was a beginner to the sport and two younger players and after some initial fluctuations, began to execute smoothly. The final group was the interesting one, four very naturally gifted athletes, all experienced players. They did not quite understand the weave and had to work really hard at getting it going. After getting it horribly wrong a couple of times, their work as a group and individuals dropped off to the point of being ineffectual, even when they decided to kick at goal, they executed poorly. When asked about why, the excuses came: “I have not done this before’, ‘It’s his fault, he keeps stuffing up’ and of course ‘I don’t want to talk, I came here to play’. What I observed was that these quite talented boys struggled when asked to solve something that required something more than just ‘excelling naturally’. This then comes back to the original quote. AFL, just as in any endeavour will be filled by lots of players who have natural ability. I wonder if these boys’ disengagement will be reflected in their play when they come up against a player with the same ability and they can’t work out how to play him or her?

Do you have this issue in PE classes or at training? How do you deal with it? It’s much easier to take the path of least resistance and give in here, is it not, drop the demands for excellence and keep these players happy, especially if the others in the team don't really make a fuss? What are your thoughts?

Greg