England’s finish-line phobia has grown so acute that you are left wondering in what ingenious way might they manage to throw away their next game late on.
A looping intercept pass with the clock in the red, maybe? A penalty for having 16 players on the field? If there’s a way of grasping defeat from the jaws of victory on the run they are on, they seem to be able to find it.
Closing a game out just seems to be beyond Steve Borthwick’s side, whose last five losses this year have come by an average margin of three points. And the problem is all in the mind according to leading sports psychologist Don MacPherson.
‘What is going wrong, in its simplest terms, is a loss of concentration at a vital time,’ said MacPherson, whose 30-year career across elite sport has seen him work with the likes of Damon Hill, Pat Cash and Bath Rugby. ‘The last quarter of a match is where most of the pressure is. Where distractions – scoreboard pressure and the what ifs like ‘what if I drop the ball, what if I give a penalty away, what if I miss this kick’ start the monkey in your mind chattering away and drag you away from the here and now.
‘England’s players are not dealing with the pressures so they are losing concentration. If, as is the case with this England side, they have been in the situation of losing these games before, then there’s some post-traumatic stress disorder going on as well.
England are struggling to see games out recently and are finding new ways to do just that
Their last five losses this calendar year have come by an average margin of three points
The problem is all in the mind according to leading sports psychologist Don MacPherson
‘If you could listen into the minds of the England team in recent matches the monkey chatter you would be hearing would be “oh no, another tight game, we mustn’t mess it up this time, not again, surely”.
‘We are looking to be watertight in the last quarter, we want the brain to work as efficiently as possible under pressure so players are far more likely to make good decisions, but we have been making poor decisions in the last 20 minutes.’
And England’s rap sheet is a long one. From leading in the 83rd minute at Twickenham last weekend only to be caught around the outside by Max Jorgensen, to a botched scrum, Harry Randall pass and George Ford drop-goal attempt the week before to deny them a famous win against the All Blacks, it is all getting a bit too familiar.
Borthwick’s side also led both Tests in New Zealand this summer when the clock hit the hour mark, only to finish one and seven points behind at the full-time whistle, after France snatched a last-gasp victory to round out the Six Nations in March.
Seven of England’s last 12 meetings with South Africa have been decided by three points or fewer, including the last time they faced off – the agonising 16-15 defeat in last year’s World Cup semi-final confirmed by Handre Pollard’s 78th-minute penalty.
Bucking the trend will not be easy.
‘There’s a virus spreading through the England camp of players becoming more and more fearful,’ MacPherson told Mail Sport. ‘It’s almost a pandemic of anxiety. And the first thing anxiety does is to kick common sense and logic and good decision-making into Row Z.
‘They’re not concentrating on the plan any more, they’re concentrating on not losing.
‘England are not going to be miles in front against South Africa. They know if they are going to win, it is going to be another tight finish. So they need to get over this.’
‘There’s a virus spreading through the camp of players becoming fearful, ‘MacPherson said
MacPherson details how England can get over their in book How to Master Your Monkey Mind
Steve Borthwick (pictured) and England psychologist David Priestley will be busy on Saturday
England team psychologist David Priestley could be a busy man at Twickenham on Saturday if they are to snap their four-match losing streak, the longest by an England team since they made it five in a row in 2018 under Eddie Jones while on tour in South Africa.
But how to get over that mountain? MacPherson, whose book How to Master Your Monkey Mind deals with overcoming mental negativity, has a five-point plan to help.
1 – Mental rehearsal. ‘With Steve Borthwick’s input, I would record each player a 20-minute audio specifically for the South African game on the plan for the last quarter so each player knows his role inside out. This is how to go into a game more confident that they can close a game out and win because they’ve seen the Hollywood movie in their heads.’
2 – Private one-to-ones. ‘It can be difficult to talk in front of others so I’d want to speak individually to the players who might feel they haven’t been at their best in the last 20 minutes to find out what their monkey chatter has been and give them a menu of mind-management tools to select from to deal with it.’
3 – A last-quarter trigger. ‘Whoever the captain is on the field at the time, be that Jamie George or Maro Itoje, should tell themselves to ‘lock in’ when the game goes into the last 20. Then he should pass the ‘lock in’ message on. Lock in. Lock in to the game plan.
4 – The two-question test. ‘In the closing stages the players should ask themselves two simple questions: ‘Where am I?’ and ‘what time is it?’ Wherever you are in the world, however much stress you are under, the answers to those questions are always the same: ‘I am here’ and ‘the time is now’. That’s how you stay in the moment. I’ve used this with Ryder Cup golfers.’
5 – Breath control. ‘In every pause during the last quarter each player should make a conscious effort to slow his breathing down. That brings an immediate feeling of being in control of your thoughts and therefore your motor skills. And it is the motor skills that are being affected by the leaks in concentration.’
Taking a few deep breaths might also be good advice for England fans rapidly approaching the point of exasperation.
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