Chelsea have hired the former New Zealand Rugby teams' mental skills coach Gilbert Enoka in order to help develop a winning culture at Stamford Bridge. Enoka spent 15 years at the All Blacks famously helping them to back-to-back World Cup triumphs in 2007 and 2011 and he will now join Chelsea in a short-term consultancy role, according to The Telegraph.
Enoka is most known for his role in New Zealand's rugby union world dominance that peaked towards the end of the noughties. The mental skills coach developed a "no-d***heads" policy during his extended tenure with the All Blacks and his arrival at Chelsea comes after Graham Potter's squad reached 33 members, with seven brought in last month.
This will be Enoka's first foray into football, although he has dabbled in other sports alongside rugby including a six-year spell as a mental skills coach with the New Zealand cricket team and three years with the Silver Ferns netball team.
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Significant incomings with no major outgoings sees Potter with a bloated squad where a number of tough decisions will need to be made every week. The Blues boss was faced with his first last week when he had to leave out four new signings with only three new arrivals permitted to be included in the 25-man Champions League squad submitted for their knockout stage journey.
Despite impressing in his first two Premier League games, Benoit Badiashile was left out of the squad along with Noni Madueke, Andrey Santos and David Fofana. Deadline day arrival Enzo Fernandez, Mykhailo Mudryk and Joao Felix were the three players selected to fill the available slots.
Disappointment regarding squad exclusions combined with a lot of big characters now in the dressing room could be a recipe for disaster in west London and that appears to be why Enoka has been brought in. The 57-year-old instilled an ethos within the All Blacks that no member was bigger than the team when describing what his definition of a "d***head" was.
He said: "People putting themselves ahead of the team, people who think they're entitled to things or expect the rules to be different for them, people operating deceitfully in the dark, or being unnecessarily loud about their work.
"The management might not spot these counterproductive behaviours. The players and leaders themselves should call others out for their inflated egos.
"Our coach Steve Hansen, a brilliant man, once came into a team meeting a few minutes late. As he walked in, one of the senior players stood up and said, 'Coach, you can't be late. Not again, please.' So it's actually the team monitoring this behaviour.
"A d***head makes everything about them. Often teams put up with it because a player has so much talent. We look for early warning signs and wean the big egos out pretty quickly. Our motto is, if you can't change the people, change the people."
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