Work’s Work

I was thinking of Jack Arnold the other day. Kevin’s Dad from The Wonder Years. I’m not sure why the old bear came to mind, but he did.

The wind was fuelled with fury and anger when I strode out to my tenth floor balcony to eat my marmalade toast and enjoy the sensuous relief of a Dunhill Refined. Hotels don’t look too kindly on the smoking fraternity these days. The Balcony and the goddamn street. Take me to days gone by where it was considered, in some circles at least, uncouth not to smoke. Where a smokeless room wasn’t fun and to pass on an offer of a cigarette had nasty ramifications for your social status. When you used holders and men smoked with men. Ah, the days of yore.

But there is no point in getting worked up into a frenzy now. The high watermark for smokers can no longer be seen, washed away by time and jack-boot social revolutionaries. The party is over, as they say.

Nevertheless, as I fought and struggled valiantly and with honour to spark up, my eyes went misty and my heart mellow. Jack Arnold came striding into focus.

I loved Jack Arnold. He was a great dad. Top class. The best ever television dad and I will fight anyone who suggests otherwise. He was always busting his hump, showing tough love.

“Hi honey! How’s work?” Norma, shining fifty’s smile, would ask Jack as he walked in from another day- a day the same as tomorrow and the day after and some other yesterday.

“Work’s work” Jack would respond exhausted and firm.

Jack was a great role model. He had the old school work ethic. You’ll never see a better attitude. He was made of The Right Stuff.

I don’t know if he ever coached Kev’s Little League team, but he should have. There would have been no slacking off, no ill discipline, no shirking of responsibility, no disrespect.

There would have been focus. There would have been a desire to win. There would have been a sense of fairness.

That is why sporting organisations and clubs who have a Jack Arnold culture are invariably more successful. Clubs who are successful for a substantial period of time, in nearly all cases, have the Jack Arnold attitude.

It is this writer’s opinion that a sporting organisation’s culture and mentality is a most crucial aspect of finding a good bet. Some teams just don’t know how to win. Some clubs cannot deal with adversity. Some organisations encourage ill discipline.

And these teams invariably fail. So if you can find the sides with a poor culture or poor mentality- if you can pick up on the signs of same- there is a lot of potatoes to be made.

Some clubs do not know how to win. Anybody who backs Cronulla to win an NRL title is either a fool or has no respect for money. The Sharks have had the best team in the competition so many times in their near-on forty year existence yet they have never looked like winning a premiership. They are failures. They are a club who is happy to make the finals. When someone attempts to overhaul this losing culture, like Chris Anderson, the club is split by infighting and bitterness. There is no desire to change, to develop a winning culture. Clubs who don’t know how to win can easily be potted in any long term markets.

It has to be remembered that in every competition there is only one winner. The rest are failures. Second through to last is failure.

Looking at how a club recruits/cuts players also gives a good insight into the preparedness of a team to win. Teams who pay “overs” for older name players invariably fail. Teams who let aging veterans continue despite the fact they have turned into a liability invariably fail. Teams who draft or recruit flashy unneeded types over necessary workhorses invariably fail. The Brisbane Broncos have been such a successful organisation because they have detached themselves from individual players and deemed that the good of the club comes first. They cut Wally Lewis, one of the all time greats, because they would rather cut him a year too early than a year too late. This is the attitude of a winning club. Conversely, Souths have persisted on signing veterans at the tail end of their careers. This highlights short-sightedness and a failure to look to the future.

Positive recruitment leads to a positive mentality within an organisation. And you are always better off backing a team with a bit of optimism than one mired in negativity.

Analysing how a team has reacted to adversity over time is also important. How does a team react to disruptive players within their organisation? How does a team react to a series of close losses? How does a team react to adverse publicity?

These questions need to be looked at in a long and short term manner.

For example, the Canterbury Bulldogs have always reacted well to adversity. In 1995 when four senior players betrayed the club, the team united and went on to win the premiership. They have very rarely tolerated ill discipline within the club. They have a lock-down mentality when they receive adverse publicity, for good or ill, that ensures the team is bought together. That is why a team like Canterbury-Bankstown has been so successful over they years.

If you back teams who react well to negativity, you will win over a period of time. Similarly, if you back against teams who don’t deal with adversity well, you’ll also win.

One little theory I do like to operate with when betting in confrontational sports like the football codes is to back against teams who lose narrowly the previous week and then spend the next week bleating how they were robbed. This suggests to me that a team is mentally unprepared for the upcoming game and are probably a good lay. The perfect example of this in recent weeks has been the Washington Redskins. Losing to Tampa on the buzzer to a 2-point conversion would have hurt the Skins. It would have hurt more when they realised it shouldn’t have been awarded. But instead of taking the defeat in stride, they whinged and moaned like little Jimmy at the supermarket. Subsequently, they lost in the dying seconds to Oakland and then in OT to the Chargers. This theory works.

The point to all this is, you have to look at a team’s mentality as well as its physical attributes, the statistics and all other factors you would normally use when betting.

And to me, no one was more right-on mentally than Jack Arnold.