Martin O’Neill scoring an own goal by keeping players in dark
According to the Irish Daily Mail’s veteran and respected beat reporter Philip Quinn, O’Neill leaves it until an hour or so before kickoff to reveal to his players the starting lineup.
Thus Aiden McGeady was stunned to learn in the dressing room that he was starting in central midfield against Germany. Shay Given did a double-take before the home game against Poland when learning he’d got the nod ahead of David Forde to start his first competitive international since Euro 2012. The last day against Scotland, Jeff Hendrick was the startled one who’d to get his head around the fact that he was starting.
For all the other storylines and sideshows, the Irish international football scene produces — the latest Delaney embarrassment, Roy’s latest quip or outburst; Dunphy’s latest championing of an Andy Reid or Wes Hoolohan; the inadequate and outdated culture and structures of the game in this country — we’re amazed more people haven’t been amazed by this concerning sign that O’Neill may not have adequately adjusted to the international scene and the times. Naming the team until the last hour might have been how it worked in his day, or at club level, another endearing Cloughism.
However, it’s not best practice now.
It was one of the first hints for Rio Ferdinand that David Moyes was not for Manchester United. A few months in, Ferdinand publicly declared that the new manager was leaving it too late to reveal the starting lineup.
“You spend a lot of nervous energy thinking ‘Am I playing?’ or ‘Am I not playing?’ and you’re just going round in circles in your head and turning into a madman.” That is the point. So much of performance comes down to managing nervous energy.
In some cases it helps to let individual players only know late on that they’re in. Davy Fitzgerald famously told Shane O’Donnell only a couple of hours before the 2013 All Ireland final replay that he was starting. He knew his player, knew how overly-cerebral he could be. How Brian Clough handed and handled Roy Keane’s debut — against Liverpool, at Anfield — is also the stuff of legend.
However, for the most part, players need to know earlier.
Rainer Martens is an international leader in the area of coach education and known as the father of American sport psychology. For him, one of the primary causes of athletic over-anxiety and underperformance is uncertainty: about the outcome, about how they’ll play. How do you reduce it? His first practical recommendation is to let athletes know well in advance whether or not they’ll be playing.
Not abiding by it would backfire seriously on Ger Loughnane in his time with Galway. Their first meaningful championship game was in his old stomping ground of Ennis against a mediocre Clare team. It was only in the huddle just before the national anthem that Loughnane revealed to his players the starting 15. Galway duly played like a collection of individuals who’d just met and lost.
One sub from that night would later confide he wouldn’t have been able to come on in the opening minutes had a teammate to go off injured; his head was reeling from his omission. In trying to keep his team on edge, Loughnane had tipped them over.
A few years ago, as a sport psychologist consultant, I was working with a team that went on a glorious championship run, virtually unprecedented in its history. Towards the climax of our season we narrowly missed out on the result we wanted. Speaking afterwards to a player, he said he was thrown when the morning of the game management informed him he was starting. Up to then, he had always been an impact sub. In his visualisations he’d been coming off the bench. While stuff often crops up and every man must be ready to step up, there’d been no such emergency in this case.
The lesson would be absorbed. I was working with a basketball team that made it through to a national cup final. An international player back from playing in Europe had performed exceptionally well coming off the bench in the semi-final. The coach could see the team was overly-edgy in training, especially the starter most vulnerable to making way. Ten days out from the final, upon my advice, the coach informed both players their places in the playing rotation would be the same as it was for the semi-final. It made the difference.
That’s how the top inter-county managers work. Four days or so ahead of a championship game they’ll call each player individually. Omitted players have time to get over their disappointment, while starters can mentally rehearse their performance. It helps to know who else is playing too.
Jack O’Connor tells the story of getting a phonecall from Brendan Guiney five days out from an A v B game ahead of the 2006 All-Ireland final. Guiney was a resident member of the B team, hadn’t played a minute of competitive action all season, yet he wanted to know who he’d be marking. So, he went and pictured giving Paul Galvin a harder time than the Finuge man would get in Croke Park. And yet our international soccer team....
O’Neill could argue soccer is different to Gaelic; that coming from a 50-game plus season as he’s accustomed to in the club game, you need ways to keep players on edge and avoid being dulled from the rigours of a lengthy season, but even on that scene it’s questionable. International football is a lot like championship Gaelic football. You’ve a short programme of games. Every game counts.
If you’re a Shay Given ahead of that Poland game, you should be able to picture the night before what back four is playing in front of you instead of all making introductions to each other less than an hour before kickoff; that unfamiliarity was probably reflected in that tentative first-half display and the rest of Ireland’s fitful performances.
Imagine Ireland rugby coach Joe Schmidt leaving it as late as O’Neill to inform his players who is playing.
At his level, you don’t just surround yourself with “football people”, but high performers au fait with best sports science practice. You facilitate individuals having time to see and feel through their mind’s eye the way they’re going to play. You may well go through a visualisation together. As Solomon observed all those years ago: “Where there is no vision the people perish.”
O’Neill must paint one for his team. Letting them know earlier what that team is would be a start.
