Martin's Rugby Coaching Forum

Hi there, it was very interesting reading the material on the Internet.

We have for the past 3 years a very good team and always perform the best during the season but come playoff time we fall flat. I believe something must be wrong with our mental preparation because we always perform the best on the field but when it matters we fade away. We lost last Saturday against a team which we beat 29-0 at home in the first round. We lost 20-13 on Saturday and we know we are better than them.

So if you have any answers how we can improve the mental side of our players we will appreciate it. We are living in a small rural community so we don't have the necessary knowledge or skilled people to really get the guys in the right frame of mind.

Yours sincerely,

David Moon

Hello,

Thanks for your email. Yes, I see you lost that last game and understand your concern having poor results later in the season. Some of my thoughts:

Is there a fitness issue? Overtrained? Do you know the signals of overtraining? Sometimes it is better to train less, trust on all the hard work you did with the team earlier in the (succesful) season and be happy and confident with that.

Are other teams perhaps getting better, what caused the home win and what was the difference with the second game you lost? Benchmark the performance.

And then on the mental side. Teams can freeze up indeed. I always try to focus my teams on the zero-zero mentality, have them stay away from the results and the score board. This takes quite a lot from the coaching approach, the team anticipation and is a long term thing. Everything from the coaching perspective to the players should be focussed on execution & individual performances. Tell the players why they are succesfull (what they do!) and how to repeat that.

Focus on outcome, players tend to forget what brought them success earlier.

Difficult to advise through the email, hope this helps.

Cheers,
Martin

_________________
Martin, Rugbyhead