You gotta have heart

Well, the underdogs won both grand finals in Melbourne and Sydney over the weekend. I don’t know much about Cronulla in Sydney… all I do know is it was their first premiership win in many years.

But I do know about the Bulldogs here in Melbourne who enjoyed their first premiership win in 60 odd years.

When the final series started I knew the Bulldogs would be successful.

Now that’s a rash statement but I had heard how good the coach was. First of all he had the ability to get into the minds of his players. I heard that he had been a coach of a college football team in C grade and took them to the premiership in their first year; the team then moved up to B grade and he took them to the premiership that year; so then they moved up to A grade the next year and they won the premiership that year. Being able to do that takes more than just having talented football players; it must mean getting them into a winning frame of mind.

Oh and by the way when I say that I knew Footscray would win, I did put my money where my mouth was. I had a small wager on the match.

But what was the real secret to me knowing they would win?

The reason is quite simple. I just believed the Bulldogs wanted to win more than Sydney did. You see it’s not only wanting to win, it’s wanting to do it more than your opponents do. Wanting to do it so much that it hurts! And I think that was easy to see in the Bulldog’s demeanour over the weeks of the finals series.

How do I know that wanting to do it more than anything almost invariably guarantees success?

Well, everybody told me I couldn’t run a sub-3 hour marathon But I wanted to do it more than anything else! I wanted to do it so much it hurt! And guess what? I did it!

As I’ve often said: you can do anything you want to do… If you want to do it enough!

Well done Bulldogs!

Here’s the showstopper song from Damn Yankees!