Is it feasible to view a recreation through sparkling eyes? To sit again and allow what unfolds to take its direction without expectation, opinion, or prediction to cloud the revel?
The extent to which we are swayed by preceding behaviors, consequences, and the burden of records makes it very tough. However, it is feasible if our paintings challenge the various biases that fight to feed our opinions.
The groundswell of derision against some GAA groups destined for an early summer excursion this year is balanced by using the affection other groups are experiencing primarily based on more than one good performance at the start of the championship.
Last week, this column spoke about the momentum killers a crew beneath the cosh ought to install to take the heat off them for a moment or two to regroup within the center of a game. It changed into now not meant to signify managers and their education teams ought to be at the chopping block because of a couple of beneath-par showings, as a few vultures selected to think. It turned into simply an offer to help carry the fog while conditions look to worsen before they improve.
However, it does not escape the reality we appear quicker to search for managers and coaches to be moved on than ever before. There is little room for this Premier League-type lifestyle in Gaelic video games.
Let us not forget the amateur popularity that still permeates our national sports, wherein most inter-county managers are volunteering their services, and in several cases, to their native county.
The gamers also have a huge part to play in this, with their commitment to providing a new man every opportunity to build a team of their imaginative and prescient. But preceding reviews again will influence the lens they view this modification at the top. The most significant bias of them all, confirmation bias, is likewise the hardest one to combat against.
An affirmation bias, by definition, is a person’s tendency to look for, understand, and favor information that confirms a pre-existing perception about a person, group, or situation.
In other words, we can look at anything we want to peer to feed our opinion; despite everything, nobody likes to be established incorrectly.
For example, all it will take inside the Munster final between Cork and Kerry the weekend after next is for one Kerry player to release a crew-mate into space with a pin-point kick pass for the general public to resign Cork to a loss due to the fact “there’s that Kerry magnificence”, “that natural capability”.
The truth there may also have been a handful of incomplete kick passes before that or that Cork can also have completed some similarly astounding lift, giving themselves already in the game, are quickly forgotten since one play confirms a belief for plenty watching about Kerry’s “innate” potential.
Now, if you’re a Kerry player, you ought to cross after that bias with the whole thing you’ve been given to in persuading yourself of your authority and capacity dominance. But, if you’re a Cork player, you must paint similarly challenging to see the wood from the bushes and not permit such moments of genius to infiltrate your thoughts about how the rest of the sport will spread.
Tiger Woods had this effect on gamers in his high. Kilkenny additionally. As nicely as Liverpool in the 80s and Manchester United below Alex Ferguson. A couple of performances to convince the opposition that their luck was about to run as the inevitable took place.
Remember Fergie time?
Teams throughout all sports have battled with such biases for years. In rugby, the All Blacks and all of us who report on them want you to shop for the charisma and legend of the jersey.
Yet, their opposition needs to face up to such intoxicating rhetoric, with teams nowadays selecting to name them New Zealand in all dispatches to help dilute the effect of the confirmation bias related to the often all-conquering logo.
As coaches, we must consider the confirmation bias that could underpin our opinion but may also cause different preferences, elevating their unhelpful heads.
