Limerick, Meath and their belief to succeed

This past weekend in the GAA saw two champions keep their hands on their titles. Limerick hurlers held off a spirited Kilkenny comeback to retain the Liam McCarthy and the Meath ladies footballers repelled Donegal to secure their place in the All-Ireland final and keep themselves in with a shout of retaining their Brendan Martin Cup.

What was fascinating to watch was these teams ability to excel in pressure situations. Again, both these teams had faced similar experiences in their previous games, both squeezing through tight encounters. But it cannot be a fluke that they maintain this standard. Let takes a look at this from a sport psychology perspective.

The lens I am going to view this through is the concept of self-efficacy. Psychologist Albert Bandura (1997), originally proposed the concept, in his own words, as a personal judgment of "how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations”. In layman’s terms, self-efficacy is a person’s belief in their ability to succeed in a particular situation. The Limerick hurlers and Meath footballers definitely had a strong belief in their ability to succeed in those particularly difficult situations they were in.

We can see where self-efficacy could be viewed in the games - how the players responded in the difficult situations. The players know they have the skills and abilities to succeed - which is often the case with most players - but these guys also have the belief in their abilities when it gets tough and the obstacles are at their largest. Take for example this clip, where Meath are under a strong Donegal press but manage to overcome it and work the ball up the field for a score. There is a demonstration of this belief in ability in a situation - the ability to retain possession under severe opposition pressure with the game on the line. So where does this self-efficacy come from?

"The most effective way of developing a strong sense of efficacy is through mastery experiences”, Bandura explained. So completing a task successfully strengthens our sense of self-efficacy. In sporting circles you often hear people say; “experience is vital” or “their experience got them over the line”, and this is perhaps how we could link what that actually means. On the flip side, failing to adequately deal with a task or challenge can undermine and weaken self-efficacy.

So it is interesting to note that both these teams experienced tight games in their previous round of games - both against Galway. If you look through their games over the last few years both teams have overcame these situations which has undoubtedly led to this self-efficacy. If we think back to the the Dublin team of the 2010s, whilst being all conquering they also had their share of tight games which helped their belief to overcome future tight situations.

John Kiely’s post game interview also gave a demonstration of self-efficacy off the field. He talks about how the team has overcame issues throughout the year so we can see how self-efficacy can be applied off the field as well as on the field. It is worth noting that displaying developing self-efficacy in other domains can help translate to feelings of self-efficacy in sporting scenarios as well.

Hopefully this article has given you am insight to self-efficacy and how it can be really important in those tight situations. It could be considered the underlying property to lots of psychological concepts that talk about, for example, confidence and resilience.

References

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. New York: Freeman.