It wasn’t quite Jim Telfer in the famous Living with Lions fly-on-the-wall documentary but the Darvel manager’s pre-match speech before his team played Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup was brilliant TV.
The fact that Mick Kennedy let the BBC cameras into the dressing for such an important part of his preparations for the biggest game in the club’s history speaks to the confidence he had that his players would deliver.
I dare say he had gone over the themes in his head before he started speaking but the passion he had, and the way in which all the Darvel players were hanging on his every word, was a fascinating insight.
You can certainly understand why they came out firing from the first whistle.
🗣️'The next 90 minutes will probably be the most important of your career' 👊
How about this for behind the scenes access! 🎥
Darvel manager Mick Kennedy delivers a passioate pre-match team-talk to his players ⤵️#BBCFootball pic.twitter.com/5F78ABjbQs
— BBC Sport Scotland (@BBCSportScot) January 23, 2023
It’s night and day from my own experience of top level sport, though.
If the cameras caught one of our pre-game talks it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting!
Emotion and energy is such a big part of sports like football and rugby but in curling we want to keep them under control for a game that can last over three hours.
We don’t want to be hyped up.
We want to be patient and be ready to take opportunities when they come along.
A normal routine would be to have a 10-minute group chat and then spend 15 minutes on a warm-up before a game starts.
Sometimes it’s the other way around.
And the focus would be tactics, ice conditions, knowing our key roles and the opposition’s weaknesses – things like that.
It’s pretty generic stuff but important to have at the forefront of your mind.
For big medal games there might be a bit more talk about the importance of a game but not too much.
I can’t say that I’ve ever given my team a Mick Kennedy-style rallying cry!
Back in the day when I was coming out of the juniors and looking to make my mark in women’s curling, Kelly Wood was the skip to beat.
Kelly’s from Montrose and played out of Letham Grange.
She was definitely my biggest rival when I emerged on the scene and she went on to become one of my best team-mates.
In any sport you need somebody as the person you’re striving to match and then get the better of.
For me, that was Kelly.
I beat her to win my first Scottish title in 2009.
We played together in the Vancouver Olympics the year after and Kelly was our alternate at the PyeongChang Olympics eight years later.
Now that I’m finished, she’s still going, which feels a bit strange!
"I married the mayor and never came back." The story of Kelly Schafer, the fifth member of @Team_Muirhead going for gold for @TeamGB in a couple of weeks… https://t.co/NKhybGjGoP
— Eric Nicolson (@C_ENicolson) January 27, 2018
Kelly Wood is Kelly Schafer these days.
She married the local mayor in Swift Current, Saskatchewan and got official Canadian citizenship not that long ago.
That means she can compete in Canada’s Provincial Championships.
It was great to see that she won her first game with Team Silvernagle the other day and I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that they can qualify for the national championships.
If Kelly does get there, she’ll be an answer to a quiz question because I don’t think there will be many, if any, women who have competed in the Scottish and Canadian Championships.
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