Victory Coach Talks on “Hunting Territory”

By Primary Communication
Tuesday 11 March, 2008

“The Science of Teamwork”, a Sport Knowledge Australia (SKA) workshop-seminar taking place in Melbourne on 15 April, is set to address a host of tough issues faced by coaches and team management.

Among them is the gnawing question of why some teams, that should be world-beaters, fail, and why some others, more modestly endowed, succeed.

During the SKA seminar Olympic gold-medal winning coach Dr Istvan Gorgenyi will draw upon the “Hunting Territory”, an embodiment of his life’s work, to detail why understanding and influencing team dynamics is crucial to achieving best performance.

One enthusiastic champion of Gorgenyi’s theories is Ernie Merrick, head coach of football’s Melbourne Victory, and himself a highly qualified sports scientist.

Summarising Gorgenyi’s “Hunting Territory” theory Merrick says, “It encapsulates the dynamics of a sporting team, the fact that they all have to cooperate and compromise and when the dynamic is not right, no matter how talented the individuals, you are not going to have team success.

“Hunting Territory talks about areas and domains of players and how they operate and whether they are willing to share and how really fragile that dynamic balance is. Getting it right is a real challenge, but being aware of the benefits of getting a team dynamic right, and putting into practice a range of measures to have a team work cooperatively, in an understanding way, is what gaining success is all about.”

Merrick first worked with Gorgenyi at the Victorian Institute of Sport in the late nineties and the pair collaborated successfully in 2006-07 - the season that Merrick took over the reins at Melbourne Victory leading the side to the A-League premiership and the championship.

During the seminar Gorgenyi will conduct workshops based on case studies of the Australian Socceroos and the Sydney Roosters Rugby League team. Seminar participants will address topics including team behaviours, spotting early signs of conflicts, a team life-cycle, leadership and accelerating team development.

Kenneth Graham – the head of sport science at the NSW Institute of Sport who has supported such elite athletes as cyclist Brad McGee and swimmer Ian Thorpe - will join Gorgenyi in presenting “The Science of Teamwork”.

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