Mind Games

Having watched last week’s match between Rondebosch and Bishops, and reading the subsequent reports my thoughts turned to what changed from last term’s encounter to this. As someone who does mental coaching for teams and individuals and has worked a lot at schools level I often look at alternative reasons, rather than that of poor scrums, handling errors or incorrect tactics, for the reason behind results. Whether rightly or wrongly I offer some opinions, but I hope to give some thought on issues of the mind in sport on this site going forward.

A 28 point turnaround is certainly a significant one, and although the weather was far different this time around, had some other things changed that perhaps influenced the big derby game? Firstly, did complacency have a part to play in Bishops not winning the game? Statistically Bishops were the stronger side this year and there is always a danger that too much importance is placed on these stats. Perhaps this could have led to Bishops not totally ‘turning up’ mentally on the day. Secondly, when preparing sides for derbies I always emphasise the importance of sticking to what works for you. Sportsmen can learn a lot from past successes and failures, to work out how best to approach games in the future, and one of the powerful things of mental coaching is to unlock what exactly works best for teams and individuals alike. Bishops’ change of approach (yes, conditions may have decided this) was uncharacteristic to say the least and in a pressure situation, it is always best for teams to stick to what they know and to where they feel comfortable. Sport is an uncomfortable space in that it creates pressure and hard-work and thus finding comfort in areas such as preparation, tried and tested game plan, the warm up etc is always advisable. The pressure created by change in an environment like that can be big.

From a Rondebosch point of view, I think a few things worked in their favour mentally too. For starters a good run of form, and the return of their kingpin player made a huge difference and would have injected confidence into them. A settled build up to a big match can have a huge impact, as the things that work for a team are fresh in their minds. Most people gain their confidence from their results in the recent past and thus RBHS’ confidence was higher than usual. However due to recent form, Bishops do seem to have a mental upper-hand on the Bosch lads, which is difficult to overcome. My sense is, had Bishops started down-wind, the result would have been largely different – in fact more like the 1st term result. Often teams like to start into the wind and then have the wind at their backs as players get tired, however I thought it was a blessing for Bosch to have the wind in the 1st half, as it gave them confidence and belief that they could win the game after having that dream start. I often talk about an attitude of ‘owning the field’ in a big game. This is difficult to describe, but it is a sense of one team having a cocky sense about them where they expect things to go their way and back that up with maximum effort, physicality and swagger. I have always felt that Bishops have been one of the best exponents of this, but this seemed to be missing for large parts of the game for some reason.

As I said, without interviewing the players and coaches one cannot decide on exactly what happened in the players’ minds last Saturday, but I have offered some thoughts as to what may well have occurred. The intrigue of big sporting battles keeps many a Saturday evening round the braai going, and will continue to do so. From a mental point of view it will also be interesting to see the Springbok story unfold and to see if they can return to their dominant ways as well, as not all appears 100% well there. I look forward to writing again soon.