With many of Canada's squad for the Women's Rugby World Cup playing against one another at the recent National Women's League championships,in her latest column for rwcwomens.com,wing Julianne Zussman discusses the positive impact it will have on making the team stronger.
Two weeks ago the Canadian rugby team was assembled for the last time before the Women's Rugby World Cup, banding together against our North American rivals in a two-game test series in Shawnigan Lake, British Columbia.
And last week my friends became my foes, so to speak. Over one hundred of Canada's top female rugby players spent Canada Day's holiday weekend in Toronto competing on behalf of their provinces in the National Women's League championships. For four days we put our national loyalties aside and pulled on our provincial jerseys.
It's pretty unconventional to pit national team members against each other this close to the World Cup. For most countries, this is the opportunity to centralise and start accelerating the team-building phase of preparations. This is widely considered "go-time" for World Cup prep.
Mind games with teammates
The NWL championships showcased four tier 1 matches between Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. The tier 2 tournament included teams from Saskatchewan, Ontario, Alberta and Nova Scotia.
The tournament was the last opportunity for Canadian national team hopefuls to show their stuff in front of the coaches. The week following NWL, World Cup selection emails were sent out. Jinxy [head coach John Long] and Kris [de Scossa] were present throughout the week, eyes peeled and notebooks in hand, taking note of who was on point.
Many of the positional match-ups were the same as those fighting for spots on the World Cup team … and the players knew it. For the first time in years, national team players were expected to make their teammates look bad.
At this point in the preparations we're familiar with each other's tendencies. In both games, my opposite was someone I'd been working with tour after tour in order to comprehend (and camouflage) her strengths and weaknesses. We're familiar with each other's warm-up songs, we know who responds to trash talking, who's carrying injuries, and who steps best off which foot.
Despite trying to stay focused on my own performance, there's no doubt that when I came one-on-one against a familiar face, I told myself "she's stepping outside, she always steps to the outside…"
In past NWL tournaments I would have approached the same situation with a certain naivety. This time around, it was much more personal and much more calculated.
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Philosophical rugby
So why the sudden change from "team-building" to inter-squad competition? Bear with me while I quote Aristotle, and offer a little philosophical reasoning.
In sports, especially in rugby, we need our teammates. When on tour, we train, travel, eat, and spend every waking moment together. And when we're on tour we undoubtedly perform to higher standards than when we're in our hometowns with a handful of national-level teammates surrounding us.
As a group, the sum of the collective makes us stronger. Individually we bring certain value to the rugby field, but when we're together, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" - that's where Aristotle comes in.
So how about if all of those parts were stronger? According to Aristotle, this would not only make the team stronger, but it would make the team exponentially stronger.
The only way for our squad to continue growing over the next month is to push each other to outperform one another every day. At this point, the World Cup is at the door. The least productive thing we can do now is to settle in to our comfort zones and to take a step back from our individual performances.
While the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, the best way to increase the value of the whole is to increase the value of the parts. Let me step away from philosophy now and back to the world of rugby.
Seven weeks and counting
The next month of training is about individually preparing ourselves as best we can … and sometimes that means beating the living daylights out of each other seven weeks prior to the World Cup.
August 9 will be the first time most of us see each other since competing at the NWL championships. Ten days prior to our first match, the team is flying to Wales for a pre-tournament preparatory camp. This will be our final training camp before playing Scotland in the opening match of the World Cup.
Between now and then we're on individual training programmes and playing out our local club seasons.
Seven weeks is without a doubt enough time to dust our shoulders off, shine our boots, and come together for the World Cup. I can't wait to put all of our hard work together and discover the strength of the sum of our parts.