Key man for Saints has been team builder John

From SOUTHERN DAILY ECHO February 14th, 2001 | By John May

LET'S dispel one or two assumptions about John Syer straight away.

There's no leather couch in his office, nor are there any ink blots or pictures of Sigmund Freud on the walls.

Players going in to see him will not be asked to discuss their relationship
with their mothers, nor will he dangle a watch in front of them in an attempt to hypnotise them and regress back to their childhoods.

Syers' office at Saints Staplewood training ground is in keeping with his
Role at Southampton FC. His base is in a portable building, tucked away behind the fences and contains a desk, and as many chairs as he needs to get in to conduct a session. It's all very low profile for somebody who is cited as having a key role in Saints fortunes this season, not least of all by the players themselves.

Syer first came to attention when James Beattie mentioned him in despatches
during an Echosport interview for the role he has played in improving the
mental. But even Syers title at The Dell team builder hints at a wish to keep him
under wraps.

That's understandable as the mere mention of a sports psychologist is enough
to send some people off into the realms of fantasy involving shrinks.

In Saints' case it's something of a necessity as any link involving boss
Glenn Hoddle and sports psychology is likely to produce the inevitable kneejerk
reaction. You can almost hear the laptops being bootedup as certain national newpapers prepare to retread the old ground and trot out the links with Eileen
Drewery. Nothing could be further from that. What Syers does is not mumbojumbo, or halfbaked New Age magic cooked up by daytrippers to Glastonbury. It's common sense to the extent that his team building techniques are used in the hardnosed world of business by such firms as Amoco, BP and BT where the methods used by Syers’ Sporting Bodymind company simply confirm that it's good to talk. Because it's some way removed from muddy knees and training ground shuttle runs, there is still a stigma attached to sports psychology in professional football, but it's a blinkered shortsighted manager who poohpoohs anything that might give his team an edge over the opposition.

Minds are more open Stateside, where Syer has worked with the Chicago Cubs baseball team, and the Cleveland Brown American Football franchise.
"The season I did with the Cleveland Browns was interesting," says Syer, a softly spoken man with a resemblance to Peter Cushing. "The degree of professionalism there was incredible. They've got a staff of 13 coaches, and three people working fulltime in the club's video library."
"They have a big amphitheatre, like a large theatre in a university. At the start of the day, the head coach will talk to all the players first, and when he's finished a screen drops down to divide the theatre in two, with defensive players on one side and the offence on the other, and then the other specific coaches take over."

Syer added a psychology qualification to his language degree, and says: "When I first started out in 1979 with a guy called Christopher Connelly there was very little in the way of sports psychology in this country, but plenty in the States." Syers' own sporting background was as a player and then national coach to the GB volleyball team, but the British Olympic Association were among the first to recognise the validity of sports psychology and he was psychologist to the British cycling team for ten years, his highlight coming when Chris Boardman won his 4,000m pursuit gold in Barcelona in 1992.

"I worked with Chris before the final, we went through certain routines,"
says Syer, and fittingly he was there at the end as Boardman handed him his cycle after his gold medal winning ride.

His first contact with a professional football club was with Spurs: "I worked there from 1980 to 1985 when Glenn was there as a player and that's where we first made contact."
"I've also worked with Jim Smith at QPR and at Watford, when Steve Perryman
was manager. I've also worked with cricket clubs, including Essex."

It's possibly no coincidence that those clubs enjoyed success during the time Syer was involved with them. Recently he was called up by the Dutch Olympic men's hockey team to work with them specifically on penalty corners.
The Dutch won the gold medal in Sydney on a penalty corner.

Section News; Edition MID; Page 46

From NEWS COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA, February 14th, 2001

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