It wasn’t that Jomo Sono was deluded as most of us started believing. And neither was the boss of Jomo Cosmos smoking anything untoward (his white socks were still intact last Wednesday night).
Far from it, for Big J was as sober as they come – intentional even – when he spent the whole season insisting his club wouldn’t get relegated.
The learned ones call it reverse psychology and Sono was hoping it would work wonders for his team.
Having played the game to very high standards, the man regarded by many as the greatest star South Africa has yet produced, knows just how tough it can be handling pressure.
And as a coach he has always worked at diverting it from his players.
Jomo did his best to ensure his boys don’t endure any pressure this season, speaking of how he believed in them and how all they needed was luck in front of the opposition goals as they did everything right in the other two thirds of the field. While that was pretty big of him, this was perhaps also his downfall.
Pressure can be good, especially if that pressure is brought to bear on the players in a positive way.
Making his boys realise just how much they stood to lose should they not stay up would have helped inject some bigger drive in the team.
Yet against Black Leopards at Daveyton’s Sinaba Stadium on Wednesday night, one sensed that the boys did not have an idea of the enormity of the task in front of them if they were to stay up in the Premiership.
Earlier, club PRO Lucky Mhlathe confirmed this much during a radio interview where he spoke of how good it would be even if they won 2-1. Really? Cosmos needed to win by seven goals in their last two matches to make the play-offs.
And when the match started, Cosmos’ approach did not resemble that of a team in need of a goal avalanche, their attacks very sporadic instead of the incessant ones they delivered after going 2-0 down.
It was at the end of the match that ended 2-2 and confirmed Cosmos’ return to the obscurity of the National First Division (NFD) that one picked up the folly of the reverse psychology.
One picked up from listening to some of Sono’s employees and daughters at the stadium exit that Cosmos were used to their yo-yo tendency of spending one season in the elite league and one in the NFD.
“We’ll be back,” they proclaimed as the players filed out of the belly of the stadium towards the bus.
“Well done, boys,” Sono’s daughters told the players, before going on about how it won’t be a problem to return to the elite league as their dad’s club “has the money”.
Daddy himself is of this view, Big J speaking of how “we’ll be back in four months’ time”.
“After four months, we’ll just be playing friendlies because we’d have guaranteed our return by then already,” Sono told all who cared to listen
With the boys showing little sign of hurt at going down, it was no wonder the players hardly looked to have an idea of the danger they’d been under throughout the season.
Should he get Cosmos back to the elite league, as he promised he would, Bra J would need to take a different approach to motivating his players.
This season’s reverse psychology was a total disaster, just as his Michael Jackson-style white socks and black formal shoes with tracksuit pants attire was on Wednesday night. – Sunday Independent