How often would you wash your jeans? The odd questions that can decide a sporting career
AMERICAN INQUISITION: Wicklow goalkeeper Mark Jackson in the closing seconds of the Tailteann Cup semi-final defeat to Limerick at Croke Park. Jackson was one of four Irish kickers to enter the NFL’s International Player Pathway last year, an experience that included an intense interview session. Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
IMAGINE this. You fly halfway around the world in pursuit of a professional sporting dream. The people who will decide whether that dream lives or dies are sitting across the table asking questions that vary from straightforward to the downright bizarre.
Your future depends on how you answer.
How often would you wash your jeans if you wore them once a week?
What kind of car best describes you?
If you are at a restaurant and find an empty table, but there is a stack of napkins on there that look like they haven’t been touched, do you throw them away or use them?
What is one thing you would change about yourself if you could?
How many ways could you use a brick in a minute?
Welcome to the strange theatre of professional sports recruitment. These are the sorts of questions that have reportedly been put to hopefuls in American football and Australian Rules. When Irish athletes make the trip for the combine, the focus at home tends to be on the testing floor: The 2km time trials, 20m sprint tests and standing vertical jumps.
Last month, four Irish footballers were invited to Melbourne to take part in the AFL and AFLW combine. Tyrone’s Aoife Horisk clocked the fastest 20m sprint time with Meath’s Mary-Kate Lynch coming in second.
As well as the physical, they face a different kind of examination in the corporate suites.
Clubs are listed alphabetically in a long corridor, where prospects are interviewed over and over.
“It is about his or her character, leadership, drive, commitment, ruthlessness. It also depends on the values of the club,” explains former Cavan footballer Nicholas Walsh.
He made the move Down Under to join Melbourne originally and went on to coach at two different clubs, GWS Giants and St Kilda.
“How does that person align with our values? For example, if you were asked if you were to cut any player on our list to make space for you, who would it be? Some clubs do that to see how competitive and ruthless you are. Others want to see your leadership and the support you could give the group.”
WICKLOW goalkeeper Mark Jackson was one of four Irish kickers to enter the NFL’s International Player Pathway last year.
He, Down’s Charlie Smyth, Monaghan’s Rory Beggan and former Ireland U20 full-back Darragh Leader attended the combine in Indianapolis, the annual showcase for American college players ahead of the NFL draft. That included an intense interview session.
“Basically, when we got to America to train for this, it wasn’t something we looked at until the week before we went to the combine,” says Jackson.
“Then the guys in the programme started doing prep interviews. They did one or two, because Irish people don’t talk themselves up and you wouldn’t promote yourself, whereas Americans are the opposite. They will tell you they are the best in the world. We struggled with that.”
The importance of understanding the person behind the player requires no explanation. That is established practice by now. But how that person talks about themselves, as a player and as so much more, is a different matter.
Tall poppy syndrome still has deep roots. Self-praise is a delicate subject in Irish culture. Any hint of boasting can produce a sharp reaction. Look at your wan. Who do they think they are?
In America, Jackson was already outside his comfort zone on the field. Now he was being asked to step even further out of it, to talk about himself.
“The morning of it, we were brought into a room in a hotel. The only way to describe it was like speed dating. You go from table to table, there was probably 10 team officials at each one. They were peppering you with questions.
“You start at a table for five minutes, they ask you whatever they want. A bell goes and you go to the next one. There must have been eight to 10 tables. This just went on and on. An hour straight of them peppering you. It was about everything.
“Standard stuff like when you started and mad questions too.
“There were four Irish lads together over there. So they would ask, Are you the best of the four? The next Irish guy is a few yards away. They can hear what you are saying. Then they were like: Who is the worst? You don’t want to say anyone but they are pushing you. It is mad questions like that. Another was: Your favourite musical instrument.
“One lad, I can’t remember what team he was from, but he got out his phone on Spotify and said, ‘Put on your favourite song there.’ So he let it play while we were all sitting around the table.
“When we were prepping, we planned that we would shake hands with all of them before we sat down. Be nice and whatever. I did that at the first table, second the same. I got to the third and tried. The guy went: ‘We don’t have time for this. Sit down.’ You are knocked for six right away.”
And the question in response is obvious: Why? Why go through this process? It is often compared to job interviews, but the value of that particular adult ritual is questionable as well.
Studies show the insignificance of a unstructured 30-minute interview as a predictor of long-term performance.
This is why clubs try to have a clearer interview protocol. That is why they ask off-the-wall questions.
“There is a lot of research on the profiling of athletes,” says Walsh.
“Some questions they would ask give an answer that fits inside a box. That answer reflects their learning or communication style. For example, a question like: ‘If you were a coach, how would you set us up for a game?’ Problem-solving is a big one. It is common in a job interview now to do some version of an aptitude test. This is the same thing. If someone throws you a left-wing question, are you a doer or a ponderer?”
Going through that interview gauntlet can be a bewildering experience. Clubs are constantly refining the process because it has to keep evolving. There are numerous examples, particularly in the machine that is the NFL, of questions so irrelevant or inappropriate that they’ve become folklore.
Players learn something from it, too. Jackson was invited to train with the Pittsburgh Steelers after the combine before he returned to Wicklow. At that stage, he knew what they wanted to hear.
“I went to Steelers rookie camp and all the lads were in the room, everyone had to stand up and say one thing about themselves. I wasn’t sure what to say, but we had been prepped talking ourselves up. Anyway eventually, it came around and was my turn. I stood up and said, ‘Hi. I am Mark. I have never played a game of American football before, but I can bang a football.’
“It was mad. All the lads started roaring, ‘Yeah! Talk your shit!’”
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