Training & Practice Quote by Richard Gough

The line reads like locker-room folk wisdom, but its real punch is that it treats identity as something built in public, by watching other people under pressure. "Young player" signals apprenticeship: a stage where talent is raw but standards are borrowed. Gough frames improvement as a scavenger hunt for "good points", and that phrasing matters. He isn't chasing a single hero or a pure model; he's assembling a toolkit. It's pragmatic, even slightly unsentimental: take what works, leave the rest.

The pivot from skill ("he does this well") to conduct ("he conducts himself well") quietly widens the definition of performance. In competitive environments, competence and character are usually marketed as separate brands. Here they're fused. The subtext is that demeanor is not a decorative virtue; it's an edge. How you carry yourself becomes part of the craft, a learnable technique rather than a moral badge.

The repetition of "pick up" is telling, too. It implies proximity and attention, the mundane habit of noticing. Greatness isn't framed as a lightning strike but as a series of small thefts from the best versions of other people. It's also a soft rebuke to the myth of the self-made prodigy: even the confident voice speaking now began by copying.

The context is muddied by the attribution: Richard Gough is better known as an antiquarian than an athlete, and the dates don't fit modern "player" talk. That mismatch underlines the quote's portability; it survives because it describes a transferable process of becoming - skill, yes, but also posture, restraint, professionalism - learned by looking outward before you can fully look inward.