1. Belief
No matter who the opposition is, what kind of reputation they have or that they won last year’s competition, if you buy into their aura before even taking the field, the game is lost before it’s even started. Over the weekend a couple of our players mentioned how they thought they were going to get destroyed by this team because that’s what happened last year. This kind of attitude, if heard by other team members, can grow like a cancer and spread rapidly. It puts doubt and fear in the mind and counters all thoughts of a positive outcome. All the great preparation you had done throughout the week goes out the window and it’s an uphill battle with a dreary outlook.
In order to remedy this thought pattern, it is essential that players buy into the coaching strategy, the game plan that’s been put in place specifically to exploit the opposition’s weaknesses and play with confidence as a team. Players need to learn to trust teammates, have self confidence and absolute belief in what they are trying to achieve.
2. Resilience
The definition of resilience is have the power or ability to return to the original form or position after being bent, compressed, or stretched; having the ability to recover readily from adversity. In terms of the mental skills of rugby, this is crucial. We have all experienced that time when the opposition scores unexpectedly (or otherwise), and as a group, heads drop. It’s being able to bounce back that separates the mediocre from the great.
In the case of the weekend just past, we lost our captain and best player inside the first five minutes. As you can imagine, our players saw him leave the field and became deflated, not that we were all brimming and full of confidence from the outset. No matter what we said or how we encouraged the guys, they lacked resilience in the face of adversity and let it get the better of them. Allowing such emotions to impact the game took us further from contention and added to the mental woes we were enduring.
When something like this happens, a team needs to rally. It is in overcoming adversity that a team grows, gains confidence and a mental skill of rugby.
3. Perseverance
No matter what the score blows out to, perseverance and endurance will always keep a team in the contest. We have all heard the typical sayings of “fight until the end,” empty the tank,” and “leave nothing on the field.” These sayings are all good ones for they describe exactly what needs to be done. You will always feel a small sense of accomplishment if you put in 100% effort and leave nothing on the field.
Now referring back to the weekend’s game, we did show some perseverance. Down a considerable deficit, no captain or team confidence, a few players demonstrated some great mental skills of rugby that subsequently earned them some points in our man of the match rating system. Through these efforts of endurance and perseverance, we made our way down the field, earned a penalty and kicked for touch, secured the lineout, drove over the line and scored a try at the death. At least we remained in the contest and never rolled over. It is through the efforts of resilience that perseverance occurs, and it could potentially be the most important one.