Please Samoa Rugby Union, bring a Psychologist!

Dear Editor,

By now we should be done licking our wounds over our loss to Wales last Friday. It’s time once again to address the real issue plaguing our ever-beloved Manu Samoa. 

I say this in the most sincere way. 

However, we cannot and should not ignore the single most important weakness of the men in blue, both collectively and individually, their psychological makeup.

I hate to say this but ignoring this vital weakness will not help either. 

So I guess it’s better to say that there is a rotting weakness within the team than to ignore the obvious rotting smell coming from within. 

Two weeks ago, I ignored a decaying smell next to my house stupidly hoping it will go away itself. You can guess what happens.

The great American president once said, “Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.” 

He was able to read my mind hundreds of years before I was even born!

Maybe it’s time to consider hiring a couple of psychologists that can strengthen our boys’ mental tenacity to cope up with their psychological state!

Our men psychological struggles in crucial moments are as consistent with this year’s weather—erratic to say the least. 

None of us can contend that beyond pure skills and talents, beyond passion and dedication, beyond monetary and moral support there must be an underlying stable mental strength. Mental strength connects all skills, talents, passions and dedications into one that can produce highlight reels and beyond! 

Remove mental strength and you can be assured everything tangibles will be rendered useless. 

Manu Samoa teams, 15s and 7s sides, are in this conundrum for quite a few years now. 

Gone are the confidence of the 90’s players and the poise of the 2011 HSBC winners respectively. Both teams performance is within the all-time low; 15s side needs to qualify for the RWC, the 7s side is outside the top 10 teams let alone top 4 teams.  The teams become prisoners of their past failures thus become victims of today’s expectations! The sad result of this is that losing becomes a habit instead of a rare temporary setback.

This is not to say we don’t have the talents, the experience and the world-class coaching staff—the opposite is true.

We have our own issues within the system, a topic in itself I choose not to discuss because I hate politics regardless of the forms it takes!

I personally believe that Manu Samoa should be in the tier 1 nations given the talents, the passions, the skills and the support of our people behind them all the way through. 

But sometimes it takes a little-unexpected twitch to have a sluggish running car run like a sports car. This is what they need and this is what we deserve—a refined performance by Manu Samoa teams. Why? 

I tell you why because it’s in our blood!

Please bring a psychologist SRU the sooner the better!

 

Ryan C.F.N

Samoa Observer

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