BEING CHALLENGED can land on some people like a dropped Steinway. Others smile as they stride on. So when Finn Russell began chatting to Ollie Lawrence after arriving at Bath, the reaction of the England centre and reigning Premiership Player of the Season was as positive as you’ll get.
“It’s easy to tell you my work-on at the moment is to ‘just keep getting better’, but I’ve just got to keep getting better and make each performance better than the last,” he begins about striving for more improvements after a stellar first season with Bath last time out. “And that’s the challenge really. Because when you start playing well, it’s very easy to just be happy with that.
“I remember when I first came into Bath this season, Finn said to me, ‘You had a good season last year but can you do it again this year?’ And I was just like, ‘Well, yeah, I guess we’ll have to see.’ Having that sort of challenge to better my last season and previous years is something I’m always pushing on. And I’m thinking about how I can get on the ball more. About defensively making more reads and just finding a way to be better there. And it’s the small things and the soft skills with offloads and making more line breaks, beating more defenders… I’m always trying to keep bettering myself in those aspects.”
We, too, quite like being challenged. So we posit that in the pursuit of improvement in games, there is also a
