The Leinster rugby coach was interviewed on RTE last weekend and, speaking of his team's chances in the European Cup, he described qualification for the knock-out stages as "the carrot at the end of the tunnel". At first, I thought this was a bad case of mixed metaphor (which is often preferable to a good case of mixed German wines, but that's beside the point). For safety reasons, the only thing standard English allows at the end of a tunnel is "light". As a humorous twist, the light may be attached to the front of an oncoming train; but either way, the textbooks are silent about carrots.
Yet, on reflection, I'm not sure it was a mixed metaphor at all. I don't know much about carrot-growing, but I know mushrooms are grown in tunnels. Carrots may well be grown there too, especially in Australia, where the Leinster coach comes from and where horticulture is probably very intensive.
The carrot at the end of the tunnel could represent the culmination of much hard work for a grower. When all the other carrots in the tunnel have been weeded and sprayed for green-fly (or orange-fly - I don't know!), the sight of the last one may be as welcome as any light for a grower. I'm sure that's how it is with mushrooms (although there wouldn't be any light at the end of a mushroom tunnel, anyway, because mushrooms are grown in the dark).
In this context the words were secondary. The point was player motivation, a subject about which Australian rugby coaches know all there is to know. And if the carrot idea works for Leinster, who's to quibble? It's also in keeping, incidentally, with the vegetable symbolism of rugby in these islands. The Irish, English, Welsh and Scottish teams are represented by the shamrock, rose, leek and thistle, respectively; while other countries (mostly more successful) adopt an animalistic approach - with cockerels, springboks, wallabies and pumas. True, when the British and Irish teams combine, they do so as the "Lions". But if they really wanted to scare the southern hemisphere teams, they'd drop this now in favour of a mad-cow motif. A variation on the New Zealand "Haka" suggests itself, and you can imagine the intimidating effect.
On the subject of motivation, Wednesday's International Herald Tribune had an article about a new book called Managing Workplace Negativity. Written by Gary Topchik, it identifies the "14 types of negative people - from pessimists to rumour-mongers, to the it's-not-my-job types" - who between them cost US companies an estimated $3 squillion dollars a year. Or something.
Notwithstanding the fact that he sounds like a Playboy bunny-of-the-month, Mr Topchik has lectured on the subject for many years and has now recorded his "strategies to defeat negative behaviour" in an easy-to-read volume. If followed carefully by companies everywhere, the strategies are 100 per cent guaranteed to make him a lot of money. They may even help companies too.
The book is particularly concerned with pessimists, "who see life as a tunnel that will never end", says Mr Topchik, apparently unaware that he was fitting neatly into the theme of this week's column. But pessimists can be reformed, he insists, and the recommended approach is to identify their negative habits and suggest alterations. An example would be getting someone to answer the phone with "Good morning, how can I help you?" rather than "Yeah, what do you want?".
Just changing their language can have a positive impact, is the messsage. And this may be the current thinking among sports coaches too - hence the carrot in the tunnel. The carrot's usual role in motivation is a joint one - in combination with the stick. But here too, simply changing the words around could help alter mind-sets. If you ever hear a rugby coach threatening his team with "the light at the end of the stick," you can guess he's referring to the use of an electric cattle prod as a training device. I don't know about rugby players, but that would certainly motivate me.
It's time to sum up for this week. So let me just say that, as all sports motivators know, the darkest light is just before dawn (unless you're a mushroom). And it must have been very dark last week when the captain of the Fulham football team crashed his car and sustained a leg injury.
My colleague Mary Hannigan reported this fascinating account of the accident last Monday. According to a friend of the player: "He swerved to avoid what he thinks was a deer, but it all happened so fast - he also said the animal could have been something smaller, like a rabbit".
An, ahem, understandable mistake, as Mary said, and I only mention it here because (a) rabbits eat carrots, which are (b) very good for the eyes. This provides me with a very neat ending on the theme of rabbits, carrots and tunnel vision. And as soon as I think of it, I'll let you know.
Frank McNally can be contacted at fmcnally@irish-times.ie
