The 16th Man- Home advantage.
Newbridge or nowhere is still fresh in the memory and Kildare made home advantage real whether it acted as a placebo or not to getting the win. How real is home and advantage and how can we use it to our advantage as well as negate it when playing away?
Because of it’s intangibility, home advantage is difficult to nail down. It essentially comes down to a few small factors that we can either use to our advantage or become impaired by. Years research suggests that the main facets of home advantage can be encapsulated by three categories for Gaelic Games.
Learning
When we train we consciously and subconsciously, through our repeated actions, learn about our own environment – our pitch. We learn the constraints of the sidelines, the depth of the pitch, the pace of the ground and become familiar with the shooting areas in varying conditions.
Coupled with this are the habits we learn. Our seating at our “own spot’ in the dressing room, our side of the pitch, our warm-up area. All these small factors we learn over years of training on our home patch become familiar and ingrained in our muscle memory (no thinking required on game day). Some may be superstitions, even so they provide us with a comfortability leading into a battle that can create an advantage. This however takes regular training on the home venue, not just the night before for a kick/puc around!
Travel
An obvious factor is travel. At home we have a small journey with which we are extremely familiar. For away teams journeys can cause stress in many ways. Be it traffic, wrong turns, stiffness or being late, all these elements can lead to stress before a game which are unwelcomed obstructions to game day preparation.
Crowd
We have all played games in front of hostile crowds or at inhospitable venues.. They’re loud, unwelcoming and energetic.This feeds into the energy of the team and vice versa. Every goal, point, block and shoulder all get positive affirmation from the home supporters. This accompanied with feedback for the referee on every call he makes can subconsciously influence the referee- they’re only human! If a cohort of supporters are…. well, unsupportive, this can have a negative effect so bring the right crowd!
So home advantage can give your team the edge. Make the most of it. Make the dressing rooms your own with posters and music. Generate comfortability and familiarity. Train on the pitch you will play on. Bring a crowd.
Away team? How do you negate home advantage if you are playing away? Visualisation , walk throughs, arriving early to a new ground, plenty of kicking and shooting in warm up are all helpful. During the warm-up use as much of your half of the pitch to become familiar with the dimensions- tight sidelines (deceivingly big/small) Is it arrow or wide, for short/ long Kick/puc-outs. And if you can bring a noisy crowd of your own!
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