Shin-ing star sheds some light

Blackburn Rovers' youth team were trailing Coventry City 3-1 as their Academy final went into injury time at Ewood Park last week, their dreams of becoming the national champions set to end in bitter disappointment.

Then, suddenly, a hotly disputed goal from Joe Garner sparked a quite remarkable revival, and Rovers went on to score twice more in as many minutes to emerge victorious.

For those who were lucky enough to be there, it was the most amazing finale to a game of football they had ever witnessed.

Even Gary Bowyer, Rovers' incredulous young manager, later admitted to being rendered 'speechless' by the manner of his side's astonishing fight back.

One man, however, looked on from his seat in the stand with a knowing smile and a warm sense of satisfaction as he reflected on another job well done.

Yehuda Shinar is the secret weapon in Blackburn Rovers' armoury as they seek to steal a march on their Academy rivals.

The Israeli, whose theories on developing a winning mentality were instrumental in England's rugby World Cup triumph in Australia two years ago, has spent the last five months working closely with Rovers' Academy staff at their leafy Brockhall training base.

And the results of that collaboration are there for all to see after Rovers successfully overturned the odds to become the Academy champions of England for the second time in three years.

So how did the mastermind behind England's World Cup success come to find himself in the Ribble Valley, thousands of miles away from his Tel Aviv home?

It was Academy physio, Tony Faulkner, who first struck upon the idea of inviting Shinar to Rovers after reading about his theories in Sir Clive Woodward's aptly named autobiography 'Winning!'

In an age when professional football clubs are increasingly turning to sports science as a means of gaining an advantage over their rivals, Rovers were keen to push the boundaries even further by exploring the mental side to football, and Shinar's study on what makes a winner struck an immediate cord with Faulkner, who wasted little time in arranging an audience with Shinar in Munich.

"Over the last few years we've been fortunate enough to visit various different clubs in Europe and look at the way they train and do things, and we came to the conclusion that all the top teams are now doing much the same in regard to the technical, the tactical and the fitness side of things," explained Faulkner.

"We are always, therefore, looking for the one thing that could give us the edge on others and a massive element is the mental preparation, which hasn't been addressed in football like it has in other sports.

"Anyway, I happened to be reading Clive Woodward's book when I came to the bit about Yehuda and thought this is exactly what we've been discussing at the Academy, in terms of preparing players to survive in a pressurised first team environment.

"We then decided to track him down and since Yehuda has been at the club, we've noticed a marked difference in the individual players he's worked with, both in terms of how they prepare for games and knowing how to deal with pressure situations."

Yehuda Shinar was a handwriting expert in Israel with no background of working in sport when he first began to develop his theories on winning 20 years ago, and what makes a winner.

His curiosity had been pricked by a client who had asked him to sift through a number of job applicants with the intention of identifying a winning candidate, based purely on their handwriting.

"I had to give an answer so I made up my mind to initiate a study, the purpose of which was to finally get to the bottom of it," said Shinar.

"Are there winners? What is a winner? What does it take to be a winner? And can anyone be a winner?

"These were all questions that needed to be answered and after 15 years of very fundamental research, the results were fascinating."

Shinar's research focused on examining the characteristics of leadership and performance in high-performance individuals, and he devised a computer program that assesses an individual's ability to perform under high levels of pressure and stress, given his or her mental acuity and psychological make-up.

In layman's terms, he created a computer simulator that measures an individual's various different responses in a pressure situation, and a clear pattern soon emerged between those who coped best in the hot-seat.

"People used to consider winners as magicians or supermen. That's the typical stereotype," explained Shinar.

"But we now know for sure that there is no such thing.

"Winners are ordinary human beings and the biggest difference between them and others is, first and foremost, in contrast to the stereotype, they are very pragmatic individuals.

"They are people who deal with challenges based on thinking and not just reacting.

"There's no secret or wonder behind their success stories. They all share the same dynamics, which is what we call 'winning behaviour', and when you analyse it, it is based on certain rules and principles to which winners are committed and you won't move them from that.

"No matter what they do, they stick to it.

"They are warriors who leave nothing to chance. They take the responsibility and initiative and fight for their right to win.

"So winners are, firstly, warriors who then use their thinking ability to think under pressure.

"Only then comes the skills and everything else, but talent alone is not enough."

Put simply, Shinar found that if you control your mind under the most intense pressure then you control the game, and he took his findings a step further by identifying eleven high-performance behavioural traits that are consistent with 'winning behaviour'.

They covered areas like identifying opportunities, decisiveness, time management, momentum, self-control and one-on-one situations and from the moment Woodward got to hear about it, he was convinced the Israeli was onto something so he promptly arranged a meeting in Tel Aviv.

"I found his insights stimulating and his conclusions amazing," recalls Woodward.

"Nothing Yehuda was saying was a surprise to me. Indeed, it was everything I'd ever experienced and done when I was successful in a competitive environment both in sport and in business.

"But I'd just never heard anyone stating so simply and clearly what were obvious truths about winning.

"It was exactly the link I'd been searching for. I could sense that the England team hadn't reached its potential in critical areas of our performance on the pitch.

"This sounded like the perfect way to tie everything together into a tight, coherent strategy."

After that, Shinar visited London many times to share his ideas with the England coaching staff in the build-up to the World Cup.

He would talk at length about his theories on winning behaviours and Woodward and his team of coaches would then apply them to rugby.

"My role was to ask questions and Clive's was to come up with rugby answers, and how you finally connect the two - rugby and winning," said Shinar.

England's results improved dramatically after that, culminating in them winning the World Cup itself on November 22, 2003, thanks to Jonny Wilkinson's last gasp drop-goal.

For the millions who watched the drama unfold, it was a superhuman effort, rather like Rovers' astonishing comeback in the national Academy final.

But for Shinar it was just another example of an elite sportsman thinking correctly under pressure - something he and the England coaching staff had conditioned Wilkinson and his team-mates to do in the months before.

Other sportsmen and women have also benefited from his help in the past.

He first put his theories to the test on a young Israeli squash player named Ronen Goldberg, who was blessed with wonderful natural talent but struggled to fulfil his true potential.

He later became the five-times Israeli and California State champion.

A similar transformation took place at Maccabi Tel Aviv, the unfancied Israeli football team, who, against all the odds, reached the group stages of the Champions League the season before last, soon after Shimar became involved with the club.

Now Rovers are the ones benefiting from the Israeli's help in the form of twice monthly visits to Brockhall and Bobby Downes, the Academy's forward thinking director, is keen for that relationship to develop further.

Shinar, however, is a man in demand, and after spreading his gospel in Blackburn, he may now decide he's needed elsewhere, safe in the knowledge Rovers' Academy staff have already been converted.

"I've got many interesting and challenging offers, including some in the UK, that I'll have to take into consideration.

"Every one of those opportunities is fascinating so time will tell, but I've enjoyed working with Blackburn and particularly the people here.

"They have been very receptive to my ideas."