Consider most speeches, sermons, presentations, and you'll easily remember how they struck you in terms of interest, stimulation and motivation. However - in terms of content, what is easiest to recall? Almost always its the first and the last things said. And in terms of immediate impact and effect, it'll be the LAST things said.
Team players are particlarly vulnerable to the closing content of half time talking - and it impinges (often dramatically) on the collective and individual nature of their play in the second half as their internal representations of those final comments get played out by their physiology.
Typically half times are laced with comments from lots of players, each feeling they've got to chip in with their 3-pen'orth. A lot of it is based on negatives - stop doing X, don't do Y, if we do Z we're gonna lose - and since the unconscious mind processes positives and negatives alike these get processed as "doing X", "do Y", "do Z", "we're gonna lose" and so on. Plus - like everything pulled into the foreground, if you leave it there then it will take seed in the mental foreground of the players and (almost magnetically) they will be drawn towards doing it.
Last Saturday my team were just ahead at half time. They are young and easily influenced and guided, and I wanted to make sure that the last things said were by me and were positive, and that my voice would go with them into the second half. I got them enjoined into a huddle, with no talk - just deep breathing and looking into the eyes of team mates whilst I spoke. I guided them to playing patterns and trusting themselves and each other's abilities. It took 30 seconds - and the benefits lasted well over 40 minutes. I got exactly the desired effect - and they got exactly the outcomes they wanted.
Simples!
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