MARILYN Monroe once famously said that “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend” and it is a fair assessment to guess that many ladies would agree. Another well-known actress, Elizabeth Taylor, went further to say that “Big girls need big diamonds.” Yet another, Jill St John, noted in support of her delight in diamonds that “Diamonds are forever – my youth is not.” She could enjoy them all her life, while another American actress Jaclyn Smith, put it like this: “Angels are like diamonds.
They can’t be made. You have to find them. Each one is unique.” In a forlorn attempt to bring about a more clinical view of diamonds, we find Malcom Forbes saying that “Forbes Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs”. That is a strong lesson for children, sure.
While our lady readers may delight in such thoughts of diamonds, let the sports enthusiast also delight in the recognition that in various sports, especially soccer, there is often reference made to a diamond formation whereby four midfield players take up positions in a formation that resembles a diamond, with two wide players and one further forward (the ‘false nine’ or the number 10) and one slightly further back, in front of the defence (often referred to as the number 6).
This may allow the team to dominate the midfield and outnumber their opponents by creating overloads in central areas. It is all sound, scientific stuff, especially for seasoned players. Diamonds work.
We can also learn greatly about school sport through diamonds but initially, maybe surprisingly, through the singer, Neil Diamond. One of his popular songs was entitled simply, ‘Play Me’ with the refrain declaring that “You are the sun, I am the moon. You are the words; I am the tune: Play me”.
Now there is positive, plain, productive advice for any coach of a school team (and for the parents of the players): play them. Especially with the younger children, we must let them play and in such a way enjoy the sport. They are not mini-professionals who have to learn every skill and tactic, or undergo endless fitness sessions.
Don’t pay me; just play me! They just want to play and have fun. Cindy Lauper may have had a hit song called “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” which included the lines “Some boys take a beautiful girl And hide her away from the rest of the world. I wanna be the one to walk in the sun” but children even more so, want to have fun. If they are going to go on with sport, which is the fundamental lesson of school sport, then they must have fun. Play them; let them play.
Play them; try them. Try them in different positions. Look to get the best out of them by playing them. They are not going to learn much sitting on the side of a pitch or going through endless drills. Play them. Get them playing that game, in whatever formation they may use! Play in the sun.
Furthermore, we need to learn to play them in the same way that in a song there are words and a tune; there is the sun and the moon, offering light at different times in different ways.
Coaches need to find the right words for the right tune from the children available to them. Each must go together and each should harmonise with the rest of the tune and the team.
They can complete each other by complementing each other in order to compete. That harmony is found in finding the best partnerships, the best combinations. Play them in all sports; play them in all positions. You are the coach; he is the player. Play him – over and over again, as we do play songs over and over again.
Someone once said, “I am not a puzzle to solve; I am a person to understand” and that is so true of children playing sport. Madaly Beck said that “If you mess with their mind, you will never have their heart.” It is their heart that we want. So, we must not play games with children; we must not mess them around.
They are not fair game for the coach’s ego. Coaches need to learn that it is they who have to learn the saying “Don’t play games if you can’t afford to lose” (as Germony Kent has said) but so too we might add that we should not play games if we do not know how to lose.
Children are not forever; they grow up so they need to take those lessons from their childhood into their adult life, forever. We have to find the diamonds in our children on the sports field, children who delight in playing.
There are some real diamonds out there, so let us amend the statement and note children “are like diamonds. They can’t be made. You have to find them. Each one is unique.” We find them when we play them! Play the child who just cries: Play me! That is music to our ears!
