A Tale of Two Mindsets

The ERC Final was won by the top six inches of the Leinster players. It was a lesson in the mental skills required for success in elite sport.

Let’s set the scene. Northampton totally demolishes Leinster for forty minutes. They score three tries to none. Their scrum humiliates the Leinster pack. Even with a prop in the sin bin, Northampton take a tight head from the men in blue. The Saints smash into tackles and rucks. Their physical abrasiveness forces error after error from Leinster. The blue team look stunned, shattered. They have no answer for the raw aggression of Northampton. The Northampton team are full of energy and belief. They look impossible to stop.

Then there is half time…..

The teams return to the field with only one change to the thirty players who started the game. The ground conditions are the same. There is no wind advantage to either team as the roof is closed. It is exactly the same as the first half yet, all is about to change and the extraordinary is about to occur.

The next forty minutes are an amazing, complex and complete reversal of the first half. Leinster demolishes the Saints scrum. How is this possible? The same players pack down and the outcome is the opposite of the first half. Leinster push Northampton back.

Leinster create break after break and physically bully any player in a Northampton jersey. The men in blue pulsed with energy, belief and command. Their body language was one of dominance, aggression and self confidence.

In one of rugby’s greatest ever games, Leinster produce an astonishing seventeen minute blitz that left Northampton broken beyond repair. The Saints who less than twenty minutes before hand were completely dominant, now are humiliated and bedraggled.

Leinster lift the Heineken Cup amidst scenes that only happen in Hollywood movies. I could scarcely believe the images that appeared before my eyes. It was not the demise of Northampton that was captivating; they were reduced to interested bit players. It was the staggering ascendancy and the imperious actions of Leinster that appeared almost super human that literally caught the breath in the back of your throat.

In the media box Denis Hickie was working ten meters away from me. While on air we looked at each other with delight, awe and wonder. With his microphone still on he silently mouthed the word “unbelievable.” It was just that, truly unbelievable.

How could this occur? How could this second half be so different from the first? How could Northampton move from dominance to being dominated in a matter of moments? How could Leinster recover from being embarrassed at the contact area to ripping the Saints apart?

The answer is both simple and complex. The players did not change physically, they changed mentally. What were Leinster thinking in the first half? What should they have been thinking?

What did they start to think in the second half?

The answer to those questions will give you the key to the change in that game. Brian O’Driscoll says Jonny Sexton sparked the team with words. What Sexton did was change the mind set of the team.

To quote Brian Ashton, “Mindset drives performance.”

To put it simply, Leinster changed their mindset. Their subsequent actions generated a change in mindset from the Northampton players.

I have being saying for some years that the next massive gain in sport will be the ability to unlock the mental power of athletes. In the greatest performance in European Cup history, Leinster proved that attitude determines the situation. The situation does not determine the attitude and the key to performance in finals is mostly in the mind.