David Gower Quotes

I played football because I loved the game - but I didn't enjoy the focus on not making mistakes and the culture being essentially one of blame and a little fear.

What I went through in 1976, it's the same today: It's about all the pressure that you feel, the anxiety, the family, and everything that surrounds the Games, and then getting there knowing this is your big chance, and you're able to come through. It's such a satisfying thing.

Rampone and the other experienced players gave me plenty of support when I first came into the national team in 2013.

It means a lot to you, to be out there. The highs are pretty high, and the lows are pretty low. You know, it's easy to feel like you let the team down. I mean, at the end of the day we still got to figure out a way to get through the tie.

I couldn't imagine being from a country where all the pressure is on a particular player.

I think it's very hard for coaches to work with me. They'll no doubt have a good CV afterwards, but at the same time they're under a lot of pressure.

It's fun to be there with the guys, to practice with them, arrange the balls, do this, do that, but when you play you can get some of this nervousness out of your system.

In front of the world, all of a sudden I'm a great athlete and I'm put into an environment with 25 other women and I'm expected to go to team meals, team functions.

Defensive players kind of have that two-faced kind of way of being able to be very aggressive on the football field and going out there and getting there job done. At the same time, from my own incidents and my own personality, I'm much a person that's very likable and lovable.

I want to be on the field. It's a better place to talk to the guys. It's a relaxed atmosphere. You want to make sure you know what's going on, not just with the hitters.

Increasingly, it becomes evident that managing a ball club is a psychiatrist's job. In a short series, the mental attitude of the combatants is everything.

When things are going well, everyone's coming into training, having a lot of banter and joking about and enjoying things, and when you are not, it's not that feeling, because the expectation level is to win.

I wouldn't be in football if I was nervous. You have to look forward to games.

When I used to play, the manager would tell us that you are as good as your last performance. That made all the players more hungry to finish strong.

Growing up, I was often put under a lot of pressure. Being an athlete, I've been dealing with pressure for a long time.

Obviously, it is good to have competitiveness in the team and that urge to want to beat the driver next to you, but at the same time, I think we are gonna respect each other.

Every young lad's dream is to play for England, but when you get the chance, there's bound to be pressure and a few nerves.

When he was a player, I was always close to Jim Fregosi.

I think we all have had better days in competition.

I have spoken with many former athletes, and they tell me the best time they had was in sports. I listen to them and use their experience in my career.

I play in front of 70,000 fans week in and week out, and I may drop the ball in practice, I may run the ball the wrong way, but once it's game time, it's game on.

If a player is trying to intimidate a skilled player on your team, what do we want? We want our skilled players playing, so we shouldn't be doing that.

You find sprinters testing other sprinters' mental capability. But these are my good friends on the track. I don't think we need to do that.

At the same time, it makes me feel like I have to prove myself to the new guys coming in as well as prove myself to the coaching staff, which is a good bit of motivation for me.

These guys were the best. They were the best at their positions and made playing the game easier. And at the same time it made it so much more enjoyable.