The Doctors Chair: Toying with players emotions can backfire on managers

Derek McGrath took a risk last week and it almost backfired.

He decided to try and force a response from his players, and the Deise's season almost ground to a halt as a result. Our sports psychology consultant Emmett Hughes tackles the issue of managers trying to use players emotional state to win games, and how such an approach is high-risk. *** What the Waterford team experienced last week - when watching a video of the injured Pauric Mahony speaking to them on the bus before the Munster semi final - is a really modern method of tapping into the emotional state of players. I imagine it was designed to get them so charged up that they would blow Cork away to honour their injured teammate. However, the manager Derek McGrath mentioned afterwards that he felt it may have backfired slightly, as his team were 'flat' or 'drained' in the opening 20 minutes. They did, eventually, recover to win. Players are aware of their own emotions when they're playing, training and performing, and they're aware of how 'activated' they are in regards to a certain situation. The problem for McGrath last week - and for any coach - is to try and find the right balance between knowing how activated players need to be, and what the consequences of being over- and under-activated are for each individual. It's something that Tipperary manager Eamon O'Shea mentioned, last year, when his side lost lost in the Munster championship. He felt his side had 'too much desire' in the last quarter to go and win the game. He spoke afterwards in describing a situation where he felt his team had wanted to win almost too much, and that's why they lost touch with their performance. They let an emotion take over and it lost them the game. Emotion is not a bad thing, it can help to drive a huge amount of positive things. But if an emotion clouds the judgement or the process that is required to win a game in any players mind, then clearly it's a negative. The relationship between a manager or coach and their players is crucial because he will know-or at least should know-how to prod and provoke the right emotional response from his team and its parts, i.e the players Everyone needs a slightly different approach and knowing exactly the approach the full-back needs compared to your corner-forward can be the difference between a manager who has players 'playing for him' rather than the man he replaced who players may have 'turned against.' In my experience, players need to find their own niche in terms of how they get ready for a game and very few need their activation levels increased. Very few need to be whipped into a frenzy to go out and perform to the very best level of their ability. They won't have to be shouted at, or have to wipe spittle from their eyes after a rousing address from a manager. But of course everyone is different. Players are unlikely to tell anyone explicitly what buttons to push to get them to respond in the right way. For managers, it sometimes could be trial and error to see what approach works best I've talked before about the traffic light scenario with mental skills with keeping your cool and not reacting to provocation or sledging. I think it can apply to this as well. You don't want to be sending out players as if the game doesn't mean anything, but it's equally as dangerous to be sending out a team as if it's a war and a battle. When I speak to groups, I try to get people to think of the example of a boxer. How hyped-up do they get before stepping into the ring? Generally they don't seem to be over-activated at all, and the reason for that is because they have hundreds of decisions to make in the minutes ahead, and they can't afford any judgement to be clouded by emotion. Players need to make more and more decisions in every game they play, and the debate rages as to what kind of mental state they need to be in to make those decisions. A manager or a team needs to have as many things as possible under their control as they can. A player's emotional state feeds into that. It is very difficult to ascertain the positive effect of staying calm because it's invisible. From a scientific point of view it's hard to really define the impact of emotion of any players performance because people are not aware a lot of the time of how emotionally charged they are. Most people in fact try to play down their performance or their activation level during a game. It can have a huge effect but you can't draw a straight line between a player that may have got a bit angry and then his performance directly increases, or a player seemingly relaxed or switched off and his performance dipped. I think it's certainly in our culture to get quite involved at an emotional level and that cannot be a bad thing. I think a crowd or spectators can also have a big impact on how a players and team's emotions change during a game. It can depend if a team is the underdog or the favourite but, personally, I think I'd be worrying about getting a performance first and then let the crowd do its own thing. At the same time I'm not foolish enough to think that impact can be negated 100%. I don't think I've seen too many Irish people every stay ice cool in a game. Even someone like Brian Cody or Eamon Fitzmaurice can have their 'Davy Fitzgerald' like moments of passion on the sideline, and you wouldn't be human if you were able to stay detached from the game all the time. You can contact Emmett here