Getting past the defeatist mindset

GAELIC GAMES ALL-IRELAND FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP QUALIFIERS:THE WEEKEND proved yet again the intense difficulty facing defeated provincial finalists in the final round of the All-Ireland football qualifiers. This year saw a wipe-out of such counties, the first time since 2004 this has happened.

Overall the fate of teams who lose provincial finals throughout the 10 years of the GAA’s qualifier format has been strikingly poor with a defeat to victory ratio of 2:1.

Disappointment plays a role, as does the frequently short turnaround time before having to face a team coming from a win or even a run of success.

According to Enda McNulty, All-Ireland winner with Armagh and now a sports psychologist and principal in the performance consultancy Motiv8, there are a variety of reasons behind this trend.

“They are still applying old, pre-2001 mindsets – when you’re beaten, you’re out. Teams still struggle to adapt to the new situation and have difficulty in getting their heads around that. Unfortunately, they believe that defeat remains defeat.

“But defeat does not have to remain defeat. It may be the best thing that can happen to a team, but in most cases it’s not seen as an opportunity to develop.

“Adversity can be your friend. Tyrone and Kerry have proved that. Armagh proved that after losing to Kerry and Galway in 2000 and ’01. Few teams understand this concept and few can shift mindset after defeat.

“A lot of teams undergo psychological and physiological changes after a defeat. If they were really flamboyant, aggressive and confident before defeat, that frequently changes.

“Their physiology also tends to change. If you look at the physiology of Monaghan versus Kildare and compare it with Monaghan versus Armagh, it’s like looking at two different teams.”

The experience of most teams is that having six days to recover from a defeat and build up to a meaningful performance places a significant burden on players and management alike.

“I think the lack of recovery is more to do with emotional and mental recovery rather than physical,” says McNulty. “Sigerson teams can play three games in three days. Players are also experienced in playing two games in two days with, say, club and county or club and province. Nobody is alien to that.

“There is more pressure on the time available to prepare, to settle your tactical systems and work out who picks up who in terms of marking and so on.

“The mental challenge is that the focus remains on the past, on the game just played rather than on the next game. Players, teams and coaches tend to focus on weaknesses rather than on things they did well, and as a result confidence gets rattled and there’s not a realisation that ‘we control our confidence – the last game does not control it’.

“Look at the top soccer teams. In the Premiership, a team can recover from a bad defeat the previous week or a bad performance in Europe to come out and play really well. That’s because they’re used to it; it could happen eight times in a season. That’s not the experience in the GAA.”

A significant contributory factor to the defeats sustained by beaten provincial finalists last Saturday was the emphasis all had placed on winning a provincial title. Sligo had won Connacht three years ago but only twice previously in GAA history and were in the unusual situation of being roaring favourites against Roscommon.

Between the others, Louth, Monaghan and Limerick, was a staggering cumulative waiting time of 189 years for a provincial championship. In the case of the latter two, the pursuit of that prize had become almost obsessive, whereas Louth’s first Leinster in 53 years was cruelly expropriated by a refereeing error.

In the need to adjust targets, McNulty sees difficulties.

“A lot depends on the goal or mission at the start of the season. Monaghan made no secret of the fact that theirs was to win the Ulster championship. Whenever that mission failed, what could Séamus McEnaney (Monaghan manager) do? Go in and change all the goalposts? It’s very difficult for players to re-focus.

“At the start of the season the goal should be to win the All-Ireland and then the provincial championship – to play to potential in the national league and develop a better game plan, to have a really enjoyable year and to improve by 20 per cent.

“Motivation is an important element – it gets mentioned all of the time by teams and media. What does it mean? It means the team is confident, composed, instinctive and enjoying what they’re doing. You can see who has it at the moment: Tyrone, Kildare, Dublin. You can see when it’s left a team.

“For teams who have set great store by winning the province the effect on momentum is like a juggernaut hitting a mountain.”

A decade’s experience indicates it’s hard to bet against the mountain.