Half Court Press caught up with Pat Merton, head coach of Glasgow Korfball Club to discuss the 2021/22 Scottish Korfball League season.
Pat is fresh off the back of leading Glasgow to the club’s first league title, breaking the dominance of Edinburgh Mavericks who had been champions since first winning the league in 2017. Glasgow have often competed well over the years, having taken wins over title rivals Edinburgh Mavericks and Edinburgh City in the past, but had struggled to create the consistency required to take the title. Pat reflects: “Glasgow Korfball club have for most of their history been under-performers. In my nearly seven years in Glasgow, they have a single 2nd place finish, and in the history of the league they have never finished top of the table. To add to that culture of near misses, Edinburgh Mavericks had something of an air of invincibility surrounding them following a period of several years without a loss.”
Photo Credit – Glasgow Korfball Club
Asked about how he had managed to turn around the fortunes of the club from underachievers to national champions, Pat explained “The 21/22 Glasgow squad was an experienced and committed one. I was lucky as a coach that 10 players made up the squad for most of the season and was able to focus my efforts on specific gameplay elements, building chemistry and promoting a culture of positivity and of belief. I knew that I didn’t have to make major changes, we had great individuals and real depth to our squad.”
When asked about the changes that were made, Pat started with the structural set up that allowed him to be a successful player-coach: “One reason for the success was having a designated 1st team training session where we could work at a high intensity and in groups that matched our divisions. Another reason was the presence of both Calum Lindsay and Drew Clayton as assistant coaches. They would regularly slow drills down to contribute specific technical insight that I had not considered, this allowed me to focus on broad concepts and make sure as a group we were moving in the right direction while trusting some high-level coaching to my most experienced players.”
Photo Credit – Glasgow Korfball Club
Reflecting on how these structural changes led to a change on-court, Pat added: “I would consider this a partial success, as a group we played extremely well in patches, and we had some phenomenal individual performances. Challenging our players to play without a rigid attacking structure, with shared responsibility, to make good decisions and execute at a high level is tough. There were definitely moments where there was some doubt, some spells in games where we weren’t able to put it together. Playing with the same divisions week in and week out has huge benefits but also carriers a degree of inflexibility; when one of our divisions was struggling against Mavericks in the second matchup of the season, I as a player-coach was slow to react and hesitant to break up our tried and tested divisions. This led to our only loss of the season.”
The Glasgow team were praised by some of their rivals as being very well organised and disciplined in their gameplay. Discussing the tactical changes that were made, Pat added: “The squad identity was very much one of grit and resilience which gave us a real focus and intensity defensively, but grit will only get you so far offensively. Most of our training sessions were spent working on attack. Movement without the ball, decision making and awareness with the ball were the focus of most of our training sessions all the while working with rigid divisions in an effort to make sure that everybody in a group knew their role and how to help their teammates. My belief is that consistency and repetition will breed success, the main challenge for me was to consider how to keep training interesting while working on the same principles for weeks at a time.”
When asked about the key moments in the season, Pat picked out a number of matches that defined the campaign: “There were a couple of real high points for me this year. Beating Edinburgh Mavericks for the first time in 5 years was a great feeling. Credit where it is due, they have been dominant for years and have continued to win despite the target on their back, they must take a lot of credit for the standard of korfball in Scotland; everybody else has had to raise their game just to get near Mavericks. The other high point this year, and I think the biggest testament to the growth of the team, was the final game of the season against Edinburgh City. We have come out narrow losers to City many times over the last few years and in what was a physical, scrappy game we came out on top because we didn’t lose our heads.”
Finishing off the interview, Pat was asked about where he saw the future of Glasgow and ended by saying: “What we did this year is hopefully just a platform for more success in the future and I would give all the credit to the players. As a coach it was very easy to make minor improvements to what was already a talented group all I had to do was facilitate a small change in mindset and make the most of what we had. The team’s buy-in and commitment to training and making themselves available is what meant we were successful.”
