NRL Finals: Tactical periodisation wins mind game

The biggest crock in sport is the line about having nothing to lose.

South Sydney halfback Adam Reynolds is swamped by teammates during the semi-final win over St George Illawarra. Picture: Brett Costello

The biggest crock in sport is the line about having nothing to lose. South Sydney coach Anthony Seibold has used it before Saturday night’s NRL preliminary final against the Sydney Roosters, and what a nonsense it is.

If the Rabbitohs are beaten by their arch enemies at Allianz Stadium, Adam Reynolds is unlikely to be cartwheeling up the tunnel while shouting, “Doesn’t matter! We had nothing to lose anyway!”

The Rabbitohs have everything to lose. They can deny it until they’re cardinal and myrtle in the face, but they have just as much to lose as the Roosters. Um, the match. Um, a place in the grand final. Um, the chance to win the comp. They both have just as much to gain.

In trying to start a mind game, Seibold has lost the first one. The fact of the matter is the losers between these famous old rivals will be totally and utterly devastated. To suggest anything else does not ring true, and the Rabbitohs mentor knows it as well as anyone else.

With tattoos of Bob Marley, Michael Jordan and The Joker inked on his flesh, mirroring three sides to his personality — the laid-back, the intense and the pest — Reynolds is coming off an incredible high. He’s revealed his extraordinary calm in slotting three field goals against the Dragons has stemmed from the Rabbitohs’ use of a revolutionary training system known as “tactical periodisation”.

A selection of the world’s greatest coaches, including Manchester United’s Jose Mourinho, have used it. Seibold has introduced it to Redfern this year and one of the match scenarios has been to get Reynolds in position to break a deadlock in the dying ­moments of do-or-die contests. It’s no half-baked kicking of one-pointers, and tactical periodisation is no walk in the park. It’s a high-energy, lightning-fast, full-throttle simulation of precise match situations … done again and again and again for the past 10 months at Souths.

Reynolds tells The Australian: “We give ourselves scenarios in training where we’ve got two sides on the field, we have a scrimmage and we set up situations you get in a match. We might be down, we might be up, and then we have to play out the rest of the game.

“He’s a smart coach and he’s obviously thinking ahead with things like this. It’s paid off. Coaches do a lot of digging around for new strategies to help you get better.

“We’ve implemented this one into our training schedule in the pre-season and kept it going through the season, and I really do think it’s paid dividends.”

Tactical periodisation gets the players to train at faster-than-match speed. Every session forces quick decision-making under ­fatigue and pressure. One entire training session can concentrate on a single passage of play. Ball-in-hand. Ball-out-of-hand. Transitioning between attack and defence. Off-the-cuff. Head-down. Safety-first. Caution-to-the-wind. Scoreboard pressure is key to it. When the same scenario appears in a match, players feel as if they have more time on their hands, more clarity. It’s match simulation at breakneck speed, which goes some way to explaining how Souths have become the quickest team in the comp. They train even quicker.

The coaching method is the brainchild of a Portuguese university lecturer named Vitor Frade. It’s been used extensively by Mourinho; he described it as his “secret weapon” while keeping it under wraps for years. Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola and England rugby coach Eddie Jones have jumped on board. It’s ­become a staple program in Seibold’s first year in charge at the Rabbitohs.

Asked if last-minute field goals are part of the equation, Reynolds nods and says: “We might be in a training situation where we’re down by six points. We need to score a try. Then I need to kick the goal. And then we have time for one set to get up the field for a field goal.

“This isn’t among ourselves. There’s proper opposition. We’ve trained for all the situations you get in a game. We might be holding onto a lead, trying to come back from being down, all sorts of stuff. It makes training intense and what happened on Saturday night, I definitely think it’s helped us there.”

Reynolds’ hat-trick of field goals against the Dragons has come under the most extreme pressure. When for the first time this season, in Souths’ first sudden-death final, there’s been everything to lose.

“I’m a pretty calm person on the field and I just think that’s my job for the team,” he says. “You’ve got fullbacks and wingers who need to catch the bombs that go their way. That’s not easy, but it’s their job to get that right. When we get into field goal territory, when we need one (point), that’s my job. There’s no added pressure there. It seems like a big play in the game but really, I’m just doing my job.”

Asked if he nails his one-pointers in tactical periodisation, Reynolds says: “No. I don’t always make them. You have your good days and your bad days. But the more you practise it, the better you become. You do repetition after repetition after repetition. You learn what you’re doing wrong, how to correct it.

“When you’re putting yourself in this situation all the time at training, you’re increasing your chances of getting it right in a game. When it comes off like it did the other night, the emotion is pretty hard to put into words, to be honest with you.

“You’re pretty overwhelmed at the time and you have to bring yourself back to earth pretty quickly — but there’s no other feeling like it.”