The Benefits of Sports Tours for Team Building

• By Sam Parton
• In Blog
• May 5, 2015

The Benefits of Sports Tours for Team Building

The sporting annals are replete with teams that have ventured into the backyard of their opposition on hostile soil and overcome the odds to prevail. The British Lions did so in 1997, seeing off South Africa in the first tour post-Apartheid. The English famously saw off the Aussies in 2003, and while most of the post-tournament analysis focused on Boy Wonder Jonny Wilkinson, critics also highlighted the strength of the team.

As Richard Williams wrote: ?Observers who for six weeks had fallen over each other in the rush to label England arrogant and boring were forced to admit that their own Wallabies had been beaten in a thrilling contest by a more skilful and resolute side.?

The English did it again, this time on the Australian cricket pitches, in 2011, and once more a team effort proved to be the key factor in a 3-1 Ashes win. Two years before, Nottingham fighter Carl Froch, expertly coached by the Olympic GB head boxing trainer Robert McCracken, defeated American Jermain Taylor in Connecticut, the first of an incredible run of away performances in Denmark, Atlantic City, Helsinki and other locations against the world?s best super-middleweights. Froch?s team is largely the same as it was when he made his debut back in 2002.

What does embarking on a string of sports contests away give a sportsman, or his team? Certainly that time spent away from the home distractions, including wives/husbands and children, can crystallise and concentrate thoughts. Spending an extended spell of time with people enables you to find out their motivations, their thoughts, and sometimes even their bravery.

It also enables you to talk tactics; tactics that can surprise the opposition, but only if everyone knows their role and believes in their teammates. Remember the shock victory for the GB team in the 4x400metres in the 1991 World Championships, put down at least partially to the swapping of Roger Black to the opening leg and letting Kriss Akabusi bring the team home past red-hot favourites the US? ESPN details it here.

That gamble could only have happened because the team of friends knew each other?s strengths, knew the Americans? weaknesses, and trusted themselves to make the adjustment. Akabusi and Black had trained together around the world including cold mornings in Southampton.

So tours and sporting journeys abroad can teach you more about the people with whom you play sports. At a lower sporting level you may not know all of your team-mates, at least initially. You may have seen them playing their sport from the sidelines or elsewhere on the pitch, or you may have just turned up five minutes before a match with your boots on, on several occasions and barely exchanged a word.

But it?s the meals, the bus and plane journeys, the banter in bars and the late night chats where you get to know a person?s ideologies and ideas and personality. Teammates might discover similar interests in music, literature, or console games that they would not realise ?at home?. Some managers let little cliques and groups form, but others deliberately move people around within the squad at dinner team or during practice sessions to boost interactivity, and sometimes improve morale.

Sports tours with companies such as Duke's Sports Travel can be uncomfortable and lonely. Players miss family members and home comforts. That can be compensated by the rewards of building a team that will be stronger when they return home.

By Patrick Vernon