Titled MY LIFE AS A PLAYER, the workshop was run by head coach David Bright’s wife, Lenah.

The workshop focused on the players’ lives, their goals, motivation, values and the lure of negative outside influences.

Life, says Mrs Bright, is like a cassette being fast-forwarded, which is why players have to take time to reflect on their lives and to meditate on the direction in which they are headed.

At the moment, Engen Santos are the team of the moment. They are being spoken of countrywide and all across the continent. With this comes the allure of fame and money and, if not handled carefully and correctly, the lure of bad friends, drugs and alcohol can create untold damage to a player’s life and football career.

Players responded well to Mrs Bright and discussions were open and honest.

Mrs Bright highlighted a few issues that players needed to reflect on:

1 HAVE A LIFE PLAN

She suggested players focus on their goals, that they place everything about their lives in perspective. They need to understand themselves and know exactly who they are. From this would come clarity on the way forward. In other words, to get ahead, to create the successful future they envisage, they need to first fully understand themselves.

2 LIFE VISION

Players also need to know where they want to go, what they need out of life. For this, they need to understand their current situation and then plan from there as to the way forward. She suggests that players should not allow things to happen to them, but rather that they go out and make it happen.

3 ROLE MODELS

The footballers at Engen Santos are now fast becoming role models to kids and adults, she said. And it was, therefore, important that they conduct themselves in the proper way… so that the youngsters out there can say: I want to be like them one day.

4 MOTIVATION

Mrs Bright impressed on players to be 100% focused on what they wanted to achieve in life and in football. She urged them to push and work harder in their quest to achieve things they had set out for themselves.

5 VALUES

She also spoke about the importance of positive values and morals in players’ lives. Values like integrity, honesty, respect, confidence and trust.

6 GOALS

Mrs Bright stressed to the players that they should set goals for themselves. With a target or ambition to aim at, they would be able to systematically work towards it.

It was a positive, interactive workshop, with players sharing openly and honestly with Mrs Bright their current feelings. There was a good deal of emotional honesty and the entire Engen Santos squad and the technical team came away from the discussion invigorated and motivated to plot and plan the way forward, both as individuals and as a team.

Afterwards, Mrs Bright was handed an Engen Santos replica jersey by defender Sebastian Bax.