Saw this post earlier but got distracted before I made a comment. No, I am not a great admirer of effort. Effort with skill, effort with determination, effort with purpose, effort with application, sure, I admire that greatly. But effort put in for the sake of making an effort is just a bit dense, which is why I always put skill above everything else. You can coach anyone, with pretences to being better than they are, eventually to make an effort. Coaching skill is far, far more difficult. Which is really why we loved Le Tiss. His skill was so high that he often made other skilful players look dense running around making tremendous efforts, while he could make the most exquisite skills seem easy. In fact, effortless.