Rise of the Underdog - #Believe

St.Mirren football club hadn't scored a goal at Hampden since 1987 when they last won the Scottish cup. In fact they hadn't beat Celtic at Hampden since 1959. Today they put three goals past the Celtic keeper and sealed their place in the League cup final on March the 17th. To say I had a good day is an understatement, but today was not the lone victory for the underdog, it has been a weekend of great victories for so called "lesser" teams. So what has made the difference?

Belief?

In the last 5 days names like Bradford, Luton, Oldham, Leeds and indeed my Mighty Buddies have hit the headlines after being written off by almost every sports journalist and pundit alike. The underdog is given no chance of success in the build up to the game, no credit for the fact they bothered to turn up and generally snubbed by opposition fans as they prefer to sit in the house or pub and watch the game with a drink of choice as after all, they are only playing a diddy team, how difficult will it be?

While the big teams this week have been preening their interests in bigger things such as facing champions league opposition and spending millions on the next big thing the underdog has been working on their belief model. A belief model built on the training ground where the preparation would have been the most critical aspect. Key to that would have looked at players strengths, highlighting things that went wrong in the previous game, being honest with ones performances and most of all looking for weakness in the opposition to exploit (Saints new loan signing Isma Goncalves arrived earlier in the week speaking little english but asked for DVD footage of the defender he would be facing. He never lost out to him all game). Having the right tactics and strategy is also important but this is all built on the back of that preparation and then turning that into the right attitude on the park.

That belief was in abundance over the last few days, and in fact for each wee team that won it fanned the flames of that belief and each wee team said, why not us?

I have that belief whenever I go to a game and always think we can and after today it is not so much the rise of the underdog but a fall for the non believers.

KTF SMTID





That Learning Dude