Chelsea FC have brought on board Gilbert Enoka, a mental skills coach who was the brain that engineered the New Zealand National Rugby team “no d***heads” strategy to assist in generating a tradition of victory.
The blues have reportedly appointed Gilbert Enoka in their push for moving towards a culture of victory.
Enoka’s Years Spent With The All Blacks
Gilbert Enoka has been in charge of the All Blacks for close to a period of 22 years, and has been the manager of leadership for the side for seven years.
Prior to becoming the manager of leadership with the New Zealand national rugby team, he was for 15 years the rugby team’s mental skills coach.
Gilbert Enoka would be assigned with consultancy duty with the team from West London, Chelsea.
The Chelsea job would be Enoka’s first job in football, although he is widely revered and said to be a key factor to the success of the All Blacks for more than 20 years.
Gilbert Enoka’s Input to the All Blacks
In the course of taking charge of the All Blacks, he implemented and expanded a tradition that helped in teaching members of the team how to be responsible for their actions and decisions.
Gilbert Enoka many times went into different changing rooms after the conclusion of an encounter and if a player’s action affected another player they would have to talk it out with the player and not the coaches.
Why his strategy is known as the “no d***heads policy”
To buttress his style, Enoka said: “A dickhead makes everything about them”.
“Often teams put up with it because a player has so much talent”.
“We look for early warning signs and wean the big egos out pretty quickly. Our motto is, “if you can’t change the people, change the people”.
Enoka further stated:
“Our coach Steve Hansen, a brilliant man, once came into a team meeting a few minutes late. As he walked in, one of the senior players stood up and said, “Coach, you can’t be late. Not again, please.” So it’s actually the team monitoring this behaviour”.
“Look for people putting themselves ahead of the team,” he said when asked how to root out bad influences on team culture. ‘Or people who think they’re entitled to things or expect the rules to be different for them. People operating deceitfully in the dark, or alternatively, being unnecessarily loud about their work”.
“The management might not spot these counterproductive behaviours. The players and leaders themselves should call others out for their inflated egos.”
And it seems Enoka is here to hit the ground running with a side that is lacking in confidence, chemistry and proper understanding of their play.
The blues have picked up just 8 wins out of 21 matches in the Premier League this season and have lost a huge number of 7 games at this stage.
It would be fascinating to see how Gilbert Enoka influences Chelsea like he did with the New Zealand national Rugby Team.
But his years with the All Blacks yielded magnificent successes as he was among the fray when they claimed two World Cups in back to back fashion – one in 2011 and the other in 2015.
Indeed, Enoka made a commendable positive impact on the Rugby team and Chelsea would hope he could do more at the Premier League side.
