Pressure points to improve

There was much criticism of penalty takers in the recent World Cup, most noticeably when fans and critics of the England team were scornful of highly paid players who could not score a penalty when faced by a wide-mouthed goal and a keeper.

The New Zealand Herald even ran a front page piece where it asked ordinary soccer fans to score penalties. Most succeeded. The implication was clear - if they could do it, why not those who are paid hundreds of thousands of pounds?

The answer, of course, is that your salary means nothing when it comes to a penalty at the World Cup.

Payment has little to do with it. But pressure does.

It is a special kind of pressure. It's not simply the pressure of a difficult task. Generally speaking, a top sportsperson accepts that such a task should be successfully completed.

Kicking a ball into the corner of a goal 12 yards away, or throwing to a lineout target for an international hooker should not be that difficult.

But this is the pressure that turns a task into a tyranny - the tyranny of expectation. The more you getpaid and the better you get, the higher the expectation and the more intense the pressure.

But, while everyone could see the England penalty-takers were suffering from a crisis of confidence, what is it that gives some penalty-takers the ability to slot the ball into the net and others to duff it? What is it that enables some sports stars to endure the pressure and score while others wilt and don't?

After talking to sports stars and from my own background, I believe there are two answers to that - experience and routine.

Expert goal shoot Donna Loffhagen is one example. In netball's 1999 world championship final, she missed key goals in the dying seconds, even though she had an outstanding 90 per cent success rate. It shocked the country and she was accused of cracking under the pressure.

Interestingly, she says the semifinal was more nerve wracking: "I felt more pressure against Jamaica because the level of expectation was so much higher. The 1995 team had not made the final which was seen as a major failure and we simply had to make it this time round. Anything less was again a failure."

Experience is vital for sportspeople in knowing what they must do when the pressure hits. For Loffhagen, part of the problem was that she hadn't had her hands on the ball for some time. She cites the fact that, in the last six minutes of the 1999 final, she hadn't touched the ball and that was a reason for her lack of rhythm under the hoop.

"To shoot, you need to be relaxed but at 21 [in 1999], I had not been put in that position enough [close, high pressure games]. In Manchester in 2002 [when the Silver Ferns won Commonwealth Games gold], I was confident in my ability because I had learned through experience.

"Now, in the same situation, I can recognise when pressure is getting to me and go and get my hands on the ball, use a buzz word or use my teammates to gain strength."

Former All Black fullback Allan Hewson kicked a famously intense penalty to win the series against the 1981 Springboks. Hewson felt the pressure when he stepped up to take that kick and while he maintains he put the pressure on himself, he also knew the wider context. "With everything that had gone on during that series, I remember thinking it simply had to go over," he says.

But most importantly, he wanted to take it and had the experience to do so. "I was sort of thinking it had to go over more than thinking I may miss it. I had confidence because of what I had done up till that point. For me, it was knowing that I could do it because I'd done it in the past."

Contrast that with the faces and body language of those English footballers. They did not want to be anywhere near the penalty spot. English football players have only failure to draw upon - they have never won a World Cup shoot-out.

It explains why German coach Jurgen Klinsmann wanted his team's semifinal against Italy to go to penalties because the Germans have had nothing but success from the spot from which to draw strength. In fact, England squandered more shots in their last shoot-out than Germany has missed in the last 30 years.

This is not to say the German players would not feel tension when it's time to take a spot kick. It means they know from past experience what to do and think. It also does not say that those who've failed in the past will never cope with high pressure situations. Experience, be it good or bad, can light the way forward if learned from.

That's where the usually reliable Darryl Tuffey is at the moment. Tuffey's last spell in one-day international cricket included his infamous 14 ball over. Tuffey agrees with Loffhagen about the need for involvement in pressure situations.

"In the West Indies in 2002, they needed 12 off the last over to win. The ball was sort of thrust on me and I hadn't been doing that much bowling. All I felt was real pressure," he said. The Windies got the runs.

Tuffey says he bowls best when his mind is clear - meaning, perhaps, he is focused on the things he knows he must do to get the job done rather than the external implications of the reality he faces and the consequences of a poor outcome.

"Looking back, I'd say things go bad when I think of bad outcomes like: I hope I don't bowl a full toss and get hit for six because we'll lose and everyone will be let down rather than to think hit the hole [blockhole] and give up a single," he says.

That's why he doesn't dwell on his last international spell and will return a better bowler.

"Now I reckon I'll look to draw on past success. Think back to the good days and how I was feeling and what I was doing."

Again, the value of experience. So what about routine?

To cope under pressure, many sportspeople turn to routine. Routines provide tasks to focus the mind and, as long as those tasks are developed through experience, provide a means of shutting external pressures out and getting the job done.

Perhaps you can argue that Michael Campbell's eye exercise in the portable toilets before his US Open victory didn't physically improve his eyes' ability to see the putt's line.

But it does boost the belief he has in the exercise to clear externally-generated obstructions in his mind's eye - obstructions that stop him from naturally rolling the ball into the hole as he has done a thousand times on the practice green.

Routine doesn't necessarily mean doing it time after time. Sometimes, the routine is simply about mentally transporting yourself to a place where you know you can win.

Triathlete Hamish Carter talks of how, at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, he got wound up with the situation, the need to win, to fulfil the massive public expectation he felt upon him and forgot to just go out and swim, bike and run.

At Athens in 2004, he took a 'just do it' attitude and remembered he once had fun competing in triathlons. He won.