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Media Coverage
Autumn 2006 Rapport Magazine The Warriors, one of the most successful rugby league teams of all time were about to be relegated until they recruited the help of an NLP coach Michael Farrell
Wigan Warriors, formally the Wigan 'Wasps' rugby league football club, is one of the most successful sporting clubs in the UK, winning trophies most years and pulling in some of the best players in the world. Yet for the first half of this season they were languishing at the bottom of the league. No club that is stuck on the bottom at the half way stage through a season has ever avoided relegation in the entire history of the rugby league. That is until now thanks to Mick Farrell, an NLP practitioner who was recruited to help save the club from relegation. "I'm a former rugby player and an NLP practitioner. I had just finished the Wyatt Woodsmall Advanced Behavioural Modelling course, and following that I wrote a letter to the club saying how NLP coaching could help the players get back to their previous form and start winning matches again." The club had also recently appointed a new manager, Brian Noble who also manages the Great British Rugby League Team. "Within two days of me sending the letter he called up and suggested a meeting," says Mick. "He was very open minded. He told me that he had a strong belief that the mind played a fundamental part in sports performance and success. I explained a few principles. I told him I had more tools in my tool kit that he'd seen before. I told him I'd be able to capture players previous form and remove their negative beliefs. At the end of the meeting he told me: 'as far as I'm concerned you are on the coaching staff from now on' and the very next day I met the whole team including all the coaches." Mick was there for the next four months and helped restore the clubs winning ways" they went from winning only 2 out of 16 matches to winning 10 out of 12. They avoided relegation - in fact there was not even a hint of relegation and they missed the play offs for the title by only 2 places." So what did Mick do to help restore the clubs fortune in such a short space of time? "It was initially crisis management. The team had to start winning and they had to straight way. The first three weeks involved attending team meetings and explaining some principles to the coaches and the players. Firstly I explained the importance of positive language over negative language. I wanted to eliminate coaches saying to players "stop missing tackles and stop dropping the ball". He explained that they are negative embedded commands. " The way the mind works is that it does not process negatives so all that it hears is 'drop the ball' or ' miss the tackle'. The whole point of the first month was to teach them how minds work. They learnt that it is much better to say 'make the tackle' or 'hold onto the ball'. They will have more success focusing on what they want to achieve rather than on what they want to avoid ." Farrell also worked one-to-one with the players, who says, that despite being some of the best in the world, were so professional about their games that they wanted to learn as much as possible to improve. "When a player is playing well they do it unconsciously, but when the form goes they try to improve it consciously, become aware of what is going wrong and trying to correct it consciously. That wasn't working. So I regressed them back using NLP and hypnotherapy to when they were playing in the best form of their lives and I analysed their submodalities and meta programmes." He worked with one player who two years previously was on the verge of international selection, but who had lost his form and he would try to psyche himself up before his game. "I regressed him to 2 years ago and elicited those states to find out why he was playing so well. Half way through he started smiling and laughing because when he played rugby well it was fun and he was happy. He didn't know until he regressed." Mick then captured his unconcious processes and anchored them for him. "For the remainder of the season he went out and enjoyed every game. He was also voted man of the match for the most games and has a key element in the side and has helped enable them to win all the remaining games." The last three month of the season he worked one-to-one for players who needed help " They would come to see me for an hour and I would often install an anchor they could trigger while on the pitch. I needed something that would be accessible to at all times, so not the rugby ball itself .I anchored positive feelings and past form to clenched fist for instance." Mike also says that he was surprised that wasn't initially faced with the challenge of scepticism about NLP or his place there, "everyone was receptive. They are a professional club, steeped in deep a great history and will try anything to help them win. It made my job easier because there were no barriers," Mick says that he helped the players redirect their thoughts. " I showed them how to run their brains, or run their own minds, like it was an application. They gave me positive feedback.They really believed that it helped them to improve their performance. I told them that what ever they focus on they will get more of. So if they focus on the problem they will just get more of the same problem," he says. He also compared the mind to a satellite navigation system in a car for many of the players, "The car does not know the journey, just the ultimate destination. The navigation system fills in the journey for it. The desired state is like a post code for the mind. You set it where you want it to go and it will get you there," he says. Mick has now been asked back next season to work with the youth squad to ensure that all the young players coming through will be positively motivated. Yet his sports performance successes haven't been just left on the rugby field .He is also currently using his tool box to help Bury football club, golfers, and, remarkably, a 13 year-old girl who is competing in the horse of the year show. To find out more about Rapport magazine or purchase back issues |