What this Lions series is teaching me about creativity
My father-in-law is a mad rugby supporter. Because of this, I am a mad rugby supporter. Being obliged to watch and listen to test matches with running commentary has made me rugby-pilled. Case in point – I’m writing an article about rugby while pretending to write about creativity.
Growing up I wrote off sport as something that wasn’t for me. I wasn’t good at it, so I wasn’t engaged. I couldn’t win. What I was into was the creative stuff – music and art. Practices where winning didn’t seem as important. Now I’m a creative in an ad agency, and winning is important again.
Watching rugby now flips the script. It silences my anxiety about KPIs, insights and lateral thinking. The goal is clear – get ball to try line.
The parallels to creativity are there. You need grit but also a strategy. Players need to know when to run it themselves, or when to pass. The effort of the team can overcome singular efforts i.e. 1+1=3.
It’s not all roses though. Spending more time in the community you learn – there is a stoicism amongst Aussie rugby fans. Australia, at the time of writing this, sits 6th on the world rankings. The world cup exit in 2023 still looms over this team. The domestic competition doesn’t produce results we’re used to in the NRL. We are mid.
We face up to NZ teams who have more resources and depth, with mixed results. The end of the Super Rugby season saw one Australian team, The ACT Brumbies, reach the semi finals. It was the same old story, getting knocked out by The Chiefs in Hamilton (NZ). I remember the post game footage showed the players sitting on the field with a thousand yard stare. They’d put everything out onto the field, and the result didn’t go their way. Crushed.
Just recently the British and Irish Lions, a team of the best players from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales wrapped up a tour of Australia. They dominated our club teams, and won the three match series against the Wallabies. I wondered – with all these challenges, why do our players still do it to themselves? How important is the winning bit?
Recently my family and I got the chance to meet-and-greet some players from our national team. I lined up with a group of 10 year olds for the chance to talk to the ACT Brumbies fullback, Tom Wright. I asked him how he deals with it. Here is what he said:
“It’s how it goes. Someone’s got to win, someone’s got to lose, onto the next. That’s it.”
I don’t even know if he thought about it before it came out of his mouth. Simple.
It’s a given in his world that it’s part of the game. And to extrapolate for the sake of this article, it’s a bit of self-preservation from someone in a tough job.
As a chronic overthinker who loves to win – it’s a great reminder. A rugby player’s job is to play rugby. A creative’s job is to come up with creative. It sounds clichéd, but winning and losing are distractions. The goal is to care about the work, not the outcome. And it’s important to come to terms with that, because I simply can’t win them all.
Ryan Williams is a Graphic and UX/UI designer at OOTS.
