Does tag of favouritism put Leinster at a disadvantage?

Leinster are 2/9 favourites to beat Scarlets today. Favourites again. These days it’s almost their default position.

Having just won the European Champions Cup and with a team freighted with Grand Slam-winning international players combined with their recent form, they are likely winners in most people’s eyes.

The Welsh side are the defending league champions, who beat Leinster in the semi-final last season, and Leo Cullen's side have been playing down their favourites tag, pointing to the absence of Robbie Henshaw.

Leinster are European Champions, say Scarlets, and the final is in their “home” ground in Aviva Stadium. They are definite favourites, say the Welsh. But is that necessarily a good thing for Leinster’s chances of completing the league and cup double?

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It has long been understood that the feelings and thoughts that athletes have when they are expected to win are different to those they have when the expectations are that they will lose.

Recent research has examined the psychology of whether it’s an advantage or disadvantage to be a favourite versus an underdog. And it is not totally straightforward.

High goals

In general, the favourites tag is given for a reason and in the case of Leinster it is because the team and individuals within the team have attained high goals at club and international level.

Leinster expect to win and generally when high expectations are set higher level performances follow. Being favourite, and the confidence that instils in individuals and teams to perform, have a positive benefit.

But recently a paper called Quitting: The Downside of High Performance Expectations put a different slant on the idea of the favourite tag being an irredeemably a good thing.

“When we set high expectations, people generally perform at higher levels,” says co-author of the paper Prof Maurice Schweitzer. “But in competitions, when you’re the favourite and you begin to encounter some difficulty, that’s more threatening than if you’re the underdog. What we found essentially is this: When the going gets tough, favourites are more likely to quit.”

Okay, so quitter might be a swear word in rugby. But in men’s professional tennis the study found a 20 per cent increase in the rate at which tennis players walked off the court when they were just barely favoured to win versus just barely the underdog.

“Prior research had told a very clear story about the benefits of being the favourite and all of the things that come with that. We felt like there was something missing from that narrative,” says Prof Katherine Milkman, one of the other co-authors.

“People who expect great things are going to have more trouble with adversity. The point is that it’s challenging to have the pressure of the world on your shoulders in ways that we haven’t previously appreciated.”

In other studies researchers explored possible reasons why people are so attracted to underdogs. In one of them participants rated underdogs as higher in effort. In other words, people liked underdogs more because they thought they worked harder. That even extends to athletes.

Nothing to lose

Studies conducted with players showed that 75 per cent of professional athletes preferred to be the underdog. The overwhelming reason for the answer was that they had “nothing to lose”.

Of course Leinster knows all about the vagaries of favouritism from last season after Scarlets ran in three first-half tries in the RDS semi-final to set up a 21-10 half-time lead. Leinster, 1/3 favourites, were then outscored 6-5 in the second half as Scarlets held on for a comprehensive 27-15 win.

Not the first time either. Ospreys v Leinster, Magners League Grand Final 2010. Leinster were 4/9 to win but Ospreys beat them. Ospreys v Leinster, 2012 Pro12 Final. Leinster were odds on at 2/5. Ospreys won again.

That was before Cullen and his Leinster team re-established the status quo with the Welsh side after a one-way 38-18 win in Aviva Stadium last month in the Champions Cup semi-final.

So, all is good from the Leinster viewpoint? Not entirely. The clear message coming from Prof Milkman is one of buyers beware.

“When everyone is looking to you to always be a star, there’s something that comes with that that’s not so great,” she says. “And we need to be much more mindful of that.”

Mindfulness. Sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past. Leinster are on it. Right?