The AFL is an extremely competition industry. The difference between first and eighteenth might be huge on the scoreboard but in the tangibles it is miniscule.
Every team has talent, every team is fit, every team is full of competitors, every team has a clear game plan ingrained from precise a preseason and every player who takes the field gives every ounce of effort.
Every club is searching for an extra one per cent that can elevate it above the rest.
Where does that one per cent that lie?
Why do we see upsets in results throughout the years? Why do we see variance in a team’s output each week?
Jack Dyer used to say that football is a game “played mostly between the ears” and the role of sports psychology has long been recognised as a crucial element of success. But in a time where professional athletes are placed on a pedestal, poor performance due to mindset isn’t tolerated by clubs and fans.
After blitzing the NAB Cup how can the Brisbane Lions get blown away by a team tipped by many to finish on the bottom of the ladder?
Since upsetting Geelong in the 2008 grand final how can the Hawks then lose the next 10 encounters?
How did Melbourne get beaten so convincingly in Round One by a side they had bettered only three weeks earlier?
Following the Demons’ loss in Round One, players and club officials have been quoted using phrases such as “we didn’t see this coming”, “mindset”, “shell shocked” and “I can’t explain this”.
Director of sports performance Neil Craig said the club didn’t bring “to the game a level of effort, intensity, competitive spirit, call it what you like…”
We’ll call it mindset, and fans might ask why players can’t find the right “mindset” to play AFL football?
What do players actually mean when they say their “mindset wasn’t right”?
AFL Players’ Association psychologist and wellbeing services manager Dr Jo Mitchell says reaching optimum mindset for sporting performance is crucial but difficult to achieve, especially with the range of expectations and distractions players and teams carry.
“Have you ever been driving from home to work and suddenly you are there but mentally you are elsewhere. It’s that experience where physically your body is there, but mentally it is off somewhere else. You are actually not present,” Dr Mitchell said.
“It takes such an effort to tune in every week. They work so hard, they train so hard and they have so many messages coming at them. It’s really hard to know how to tune into what’s important and filter what isn’t important and lift their performance week after week.
“If you want to perform at your best, whether that’s as an athlete or a parent or in any aspect of your life then you need to be there for the important bits. You need to be mentally and physically present in that space.”
Those distractions are referred to as “stories”. They can be individual; a player who has had an argument with his girlfriend or carrying an injury. They can be team orientated narratives such as, ‘this win will set up our season’, or ‘we should beat this team’ or ‘we have lost nine games in a row to this team’.
They serve to create noise that distracts the individual from what is the focus.
“You need to acknowledge those stories, unhook from them and move onto what is important,” Psychologist and AFL Players’ Association wellbeing consultant, Anna Box said.
The Players’ Association run programs for players based on the concept of mindfulness; a process of awareness that involves paying attention to what is relevant to performance in the moment as opposed to being caught up in thoughts or analysis that only serve as a distraction.
“On the field you need to be in the moment, if your head is going back to what happened a few minutes earlier in the game you are not mentally there and present and ready to respond to the next thing to happen,” Dr Mitchell said.
Mindfulness is most commonly associated with meditation but Dr Mitchell says the distractions of modern society mean we aren’t as strong at “attending” as we used to be. The AFL Players’ Association delivers initiatives to help players build their mindfulness skills by tuning in to performing practical every-day things
“The idea is that you tune into your senses. If you can touch, taste, hear, see and smell you are present. If you are analysing what you can touch, taste, hear, see and smell you have disconnected again. But if you are just in that moment observing and are present in that process – you are being mindful,” Dr Mitchell said.
“By spending two or three minutes every day when you brush your teeth attending to the process and noticing when your mind drifts and noticing where it has gone, you need to practice the ability to unhook it and then bring it back. It sounds simple but it is actually hard to do.”
Mindfulness has been employed outside the sporting arena by bodies such as the US Marines and Dr Mitchell says it has been embraced by some AFL stars but still has connotations of being “a bit hippy or a bit mystical”. Her team are trying to communicate to the players that their minds require as much training as any other parts of their bodies.
“It’s about working out the neural pathways in your brain that actually help it to fire to become stronger. We want to build a super pathway rather than a really faint connection so that you are really in the right space to be mindful,” Dr Mitchell said.
Professional athletes commonly use techniques such as imagery in their preparation for sporting performance, but Dr Mitchell says mindfulness is a more effective technique because it allows the mind to be flexible and adapt to whatever the game throws up.
“Nothing is actually real except your lived experience, I think imagery can be helpful in some circumstances but also it can get in the way as well. Life throws up things you aren’t prepared for, things don’t go to plan,” Dr Mitchell said.
The programs also serve to help players recognise their own individual stories and those of the team. The narrative for the Demons might have been full of expectation built on the confidence that comes from a strong preseason.
“We are all human and if you don’t train that ability to be present and be in the moment variances in the game can throw athletes,” Dr Mitchell said.
“Nothing replicates a game like a real game. So until you have actually been in the match you don’t know how you are going to respond. I think some players don’t have the flexibility to respond to whatever turns up, because they haven’t had that practice yet.”
The Lions and the Hawks displayed the inevitable rise in effort that comes following a bad loss. Why does this happen? Why does it take adversity to stun the players into action? How often does a team win the week after its coach is sacked?
In response, Dr Mitchell and Anna Box both select the same word – Novelty.
“When there is a novelty happening in our environment it tunes us back in again. So rather than running on autopilot and getting lost in whatever your stories might be and going through the motions when something like that happens, it gets your attention and the collective attention and you can determine what is important,” Dr Mitchell said.
“Something novel can be a trigger, because it’s arresting. It stops you in your tracks and it does break that autopilot,” Box said.
Mick Malthouse famously tried to deny the notion of “coming to play” after his Collingwood side were beaten by Adelaide by four points in Round One of 2009. “If you can’t get up for Round One then when can you?” the fans ask. Despite a torturous pre-season of tuning their bodies, Dr Mitchell believes clubs can benefit spending more time building the players’ minds.
Through the Manage Your Mind program players will have the tools to change this and ensure their mind is as flexible as their spine. The program will be a key component of the football apprenticeship program for first year players.