A positive attitude works like a charm, says Crows AFLW co-captain Chelsea Randall

SUPERSTITIONS abound in the Crows’ AFLW team, but preparation and a positive attitude, not omens, are secrets to success, says Adelaide co-captain Chelsea Randall.

Abbey Holmes ... always wears two pairs of socks when she plays. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

EVER had a superstition? Or a routine to get you through the day or when you play a sport? What do you do when things don’t go the way you planned? How do you act? What do you say?

Coach Bec Goddard sent me a text the other day after she found my fake pearl earrings in her pocket from a training session five weeks ago.

As she announced at a press conference last week, she told me that she wasn’t sure she wanted to give them back — as we were undefeated and, who knows, maybe they were a good-luck charm.

I agreed, just in case, and told her she could hold onto them until the end of the season.

At the captains’ launch event in Melbourne before Round 1, no one wanted to touch the big shiny premiership cup, except for five-year-old Auskicker Lilly from Adelaide.

I’m told the superstition is similar with the men, and also with many other sports — such as jockeys not wanting to touch the Melbourne Cup at media events leading up to the first Tuesday in November.

I’m not a huge believer in superstitions myself. A bit like our reliable defender Talia “Cougs” Radan; our superstition is not to have a superstition and go with the flow.

However, when something’s working, quite often you don’t want to change what you do or when you do it.

Apart from the coach, there are quite a few in our team that are superstitious.

Abbey “Abz” Holmes wears two pairs of socks when she plays.

Sarah “Perko” Perkins is always the last to leave the change room.

An injured Kellie Gibson congratulates Erinj Phillips after the Crows downed Carlton. She wouldn’t let anyone touch her crutches though, for fear of more injuries. Picture: Sarah Reed

Meanwhile, Kellie “Gibbo” Gibson must run out with a footy in hand ... and told everyone not to touch her crutches when she hurt her ankle against Carlton, because she was superstitious that anyone that handled them would get an injury.

So for all of last week, everyone avoided her like the plague!

The greasy-haired bandits, Courtney “CJ” Cramey, Ebony “Noffy” Marinoff and Sally “Spud” Riley are believers in not washing their hair game day to avoid that uncontrollable fuzziness.

Both Lauren “Loz” O’Shea and I were the socks-up kind of girls ... until we received our new AFLW apparel where the socks are quite short, so that threw that routine out the window!

As an AFLW player, or any sports person for that matter, we must be adaptable and flexible with our superstitions and routines.

Things don’t always go the way we planned, and if we begin to worry about these small things then we begin to take away our focus from our teammates and our role in the game, which in turn can affect our performance.

Having a clear, positive mindset is crucial to prepare for a game, or prepare for work, or school, or anything in general.

When we travelled to Melbourne to take on the Western Bulldogs our plane was delayed, which left us arriving in Melbourne later than we had planned.

Playing the game on four or five hours of sleep wasn’t part of our routine, and our bus was then caught in some serious Melbourne traffic on the way to the game, which made our preparation time in the change rooms shorter than we had planned.

We were determined not to let all that have a negative impact.

Things happen in life that we can’t control, what we can control is our own actions and thoughts.

To find a positive in something that seems like a bad situation can be hard, but it’s about training the mind to think positive thoughts.

If one person has a negative vibe or negative language, it can easily reflect on others.

Hence the importance of not only training our body physically but also spending time around training ourselves mentally.

Originally published as A positive attitude works like a charm, says Crows AFLW co-captain Chelsea Randall