A rollercoaster like no other left Parramatta playmaker Mitchell Moses to concede his team had attitude issues but sports psychologists suggest there is reason to believe the Eels can be a genuine premiership threat on the eve of the finals.
Two sports psychologists have delved into the mindset issues that have plagued Parramatta’s season and exposed a gulf between their best and worst so vast it cast doubt on their title hopes.
The Eels will play for a place in the top four when they meet the Melbourne Storm at CommBank Stadium on Thursday night. A win would mark Parramatta’s second over the Storm this year and set up a qualifying final showdown with Penrith – another team they’ve beaten twice this season.
But the Eels have also dropped games to Canterbury and the Wests Tigers, both bottom-four teams at the time, leading Moses in June to admit players were guilty of “trying to do their own thing” against teams they are expected to beat.
“It’s more of an attitude thing. It’s coming together as a team, and not trying to do individual stuff by yourself,” the Eels halfback said. “When we face the top teams, we put in a big team performance. One to 17 is on fire. When we face teams we’re expected to beat, everyone is trying to do their own thing.”
Parramatta coach Brad Arthur is adamant there will be no such problems in September, saying there is little more his side could want than the top-four finish guaranteed for the victor on Thursday night.
Mitchell Moses and the Eels are chasing a top-four spot.Credit:Getty Images
University of Canberra sports psychology professor Richard Keegan suggests Parramatta’s record against Melbourne and Penrith – premiership winners over the past two years – can be traced to a motivation driven by challenges and desirable outcomes.
“They call it approach motivation, ‘Give me, give me, give me, I want that’, versus avoidance motivation, when you’re trying to avoid something bad happening,” Keegan said.
“It’s playing not to lose versus playing to win. The equation changes from nothing to lose to everything to gain against the big teams. It can switch to quite a lot to lose when you’re expected to win. The flavour of motivation can change things. If you get people motivated with the right emotions and feelings, that can lead to a very different experience and performance. It’s big.”
Whoever finishes fifth will be staring down the barrel of a sudden-death showdown with either the Canberra Raiders or Brisbane Broncos in week one of the finals.
The Australian Institute of Sport’s former head of sports psychology Jeff Bond says a mindset issue exists in sport that sees higher-ranked teams often guilty of effectively telling themselves “I’m the best here and therefore I will win”.
“Without them consciously doing it, their brain is saying to them ‘All you’ve got to do is show up and go through your plays, and you will win because you are the better team’. In other words, they’re setting the wrong goals,” Bond said.
“They’re setting a goal which says ‘I want to win and we should win’, whereas it ought to be more about the quality of their play. Their aim should be to go out and not just win, but to actually execute the best quality processes they can.
“Their job is to win, of course it is, because teams don’t survive if they don’t win, but the reality is on game day, you’ve got to be on the execution of quality processes. That’s part of the deal, the wrong type of mindset and the wrong type of goal-setting. What that results in is a slight reduction in intensity.”
Stream the NRL Premiership 2022 live and free on 9Now.
News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.
