Ciarán Kennedy

THE CLOCK IS winding down. It’s happening again. Leinster are minutes away from dropping out of the Champions Cup. Across the previous three seasons they’ve fallen at the last hurdle – losing finals against La Rochelle (twice) and Toulouse. A home semi-final defeat against an unfancied Northampton Saints team would be the most devastating loss yet.

All day, they’ve been making poor, uncharacteristic decisions. There’s been spilled passes, lapses in defence, breakdowns in communication. Simply put, they look like a team feeling the pressure.

That feeling of stress manifests itself vividly in the confusion which surrounds a late penalty in the Northampton 22. The logical decision seems to be a kick for the posts, allowing them an opportunity to level a game they’ve been chasing. Instead, Jack Conan cups his ears and looks to the sideline for advice before the decision is made to go for the corner. Leinster leave the 22 with no points, again. They lose by three.

Much of the aftermath will focus on Leinster’s perceived mental fragility in these decisive moments. Some will label them ‘chokers’. But what exactly is happening in the brain when the pressure rises on the pitch?

Anne-Marie Kennedy is a sport, exercise and performance psychologist who has worked with Cricket Ireland, Cycling Ireland, Swim Ireland, Horse Sport Ireland and in the GAA, holding a role with Jim Gavin’s all-conquering Dublin football team. Her job involves searching for scientific answers as to how the brain manages high stress sporting situations, and trying to provide athletes with mechanisms to cope in those scenarios.

“The brain only wants to survive,” explains Kennedy. “It’s not designed to make you play the best golf of your life or win Majors or Heineken Cups or whatever, so you have to be aware of how your mind works, when it works for you and when it works against you, and you need to have a plan.”

Athletes dedicate huge chunks of their lives to forming this plan. Every professional – and many amateur – teams work with sports psychologists. It’s become a core part of preparation and performance. Andy Farrell’s Ireland team, who work closely with high performance coach Gary Keegan, like to ‘reset’ by gathering in a circle to take a collective breath after negative moments in-game.

In those pressure or negative moments, the athlete has to try override the natural reaction which is being triggered in the brain’s limbic system – the group of interconnected brain structures which regulate emotions and behaviour.

“Stress is going to happen in a pressure moment, and if you don’t recognise that, the limbic system is going to take over and it’s going to dictate what it focuses on, and that surely is never going to be your sport,” Kennedy says.

When that stress response takes over, the brain goes into that stress state and it just wants you out of there. It doesn’t want you playing, it just wants you off that pitch, not playing as soon as possible, and that’s the survival instinct.”

So, if you’re a Leinster player fearing another Champions Cup failure, the outside world can feel like it is closing in. When the brain labels a situation as a threat, muscles can tighten and working memory capacity can be reduced. Athletes who strive to be “in the moment” can become increasingly aware of external influences such as the crowd. This can be heightened again when it comes to repeat sporting failures.

In simple terms, a rugby player’s brain can recognise a knockout game, or a golfer’s brain can recognise a particular course, as somewhere it doesn’t want to be, based on previous experience.

“Repeated high-profile defeats can create a psychological blueprint in the brain that anticipates failure under pressure. This is especially potent in elite athletes and teams like Leinster, where expectations are immense,” Kennedy says. 

“The brain starts to associate certain environments, finals, knockout games, certain tournaments, Augusta’s back nine, with emotional pain, disappointment, and stress. Over time this forms a conditioned threat response, similar to what we see in trauma psychology.”

While the athlete knows they are not in actual, life-threatening danger, the brain is looking for an exit plan. 

“You’re not comparing it to other big huge distressing psychological or psychiatric traumas, but in sport we’re talking about trauma with a small ‘t’. If an athlete is in a situation that has intense emotions attached to it and they’ve been working hard towards it, that is a small trauma in their experience, and those intense negative emotions are stored with the memory together in the brain.

“The brain encodes emotionally intense losses more deeply, and when similar pressure arises again, the limbic system, especially the amygdala, which is like the smoke detector in the brain, becomes hyperactive. This triggers over-arousal, which leads to cognitive decline, poor emotional regulation, poor decision-making, and physical tension, the exact opposite of the relaxed, flow state needed for peak performance.” 

When this happens, athletes experience a breakdown in skills and decision making.

“These are highly-skilled athletes that are experts in their areas, and if they were playing a friendly they’d be making the right decisions all day, every day.

“With the stress hormone and the adrenaline that’s released (in pressure moments), they’re not breathing correctly, so there’s a lack of carbon dioxide in the body sending oxygen to the brain. That gives you cognitive impairment, so you’re not going to be able to make decisions, you’re not going to be able to think rationally, logically, everything that you’re seeing gets completely narrowed, and sometimes it’s just like, ‘Ah, get the ball away from me as quickly as possible!’ That’s the instinctual part of the brain.

“What I teach with athletes is recognise and understand what your stress response is. Understand how stress manifests itself in your body, in your mind, and you’re regulating that and you’re aware of that all the time, because while you’re playing you have to be regulating in order to make sure that you’re not hijacked by the stress response. Because when you go into that red, it’s very, very difficult to come out of it. And sometimes the damage is done then before you know it.”

That sense of pressure can also be heightened when the athlete is not regularly exposed to those intense scenarios. A Leinster rugby player might win a Six Nations in an Ireland shirt, but could go a full year between feeling the intensity of a tight, knockout game in a Leinster jersey. Rory McIlroy could win all around him in a given year, but only gets one weekend at Augusta.

“That sort of mental resilience is developed through adversity,” Kennedy continues.

“We can simulate it to a certain degree of training but there’s nothing like being in the heat of battle and having to test your fortitude. So yeah, if they haven’t been challenged adequately enough, they’re going to find it hard to respond in the way that they would hope. But it depends what their mental preparation was coming in. Were they doing ‘what if’ scenarios? Have they got strategies for if the game came down to the wire?”

That psychological burden is magnified when it comes to individual sports such as boxing, running or golf. 

Kennedy, who has worked with most of Ireland’s elite amateur golfers and is currently running a golf psychology webinar series, highlights Rory McIlroy’s long, torturous road to achieving success at the Masters.

Augusta became more than a course – it became a symbol of his perceived limitations, triggering performance anxiety and emotional fatigue. The deep upsets and disappointments he experienced at the Masters had left a blueprint in the brain that anticipated and almost expected failure.

“When the stakes are tied to identity, the emotional load increases dramatically. That balance between effort and caring is out of sync and the brain, instead of being in a flow state, becomes focused on outcomes, legacy, and the avoidance of failure.”

McIlroy highlighted working with famed sports psychologist Dr Bob Rotella as a key part of how he finally managed to conquer the Masters. When McIlroy sank the put that landed him the green jacket, Kennedy viewed his emotional response as ‘mental liberation.’

“When he got down on his knees on that green, there you have it. There was the freedom.”

The battle against his own mind finally won.