The recent innovation for the broadcasters of the Six Nations to show footage from inside the dressing rooms during half-time of matches gave viewers a glimpse into the differing routines of the Ireland and England squads in Dublin.

Footage showed England’s backline and replacements sitting in an L-shape, being addressed by senior assistant coach Richard Wigglesworth as head coach Steve Borthwick looked on. Footage into Ireland’s camp showed a more fluid environment, with players standing or sitting in small groups talking with their head of strength and conditioning Aled Walters at the centre of the scene.

It raised the question of just how important these critical moments can have on high performance, given how much time and details are devoted to the pre-match preparation.

Anyone involved in team sport at any level will have borne witness to the vagaries of the half-time activities, from a team-mate finding relief in a quick cigarette to the kind of “hairdryer” treatment made famous by Sir Alex Ferguson, the former manager of Manchester United, dished out to a team that is losing. But in the highly pressurised environment of international sport, what actually works?

Eamon Devlin, an adjunct professor at Oxford University, set up a bespoke company last year called Minute 9, which offers their services to coaches, clubs and teams about how best to maximise their half-time.

A former managing partner in a legal firm in Zurich, the idea came to Devlin when he was studying a Master of Science degree in psychology at Brunel University in London.

His dissertation was on half-time team talks, focusing on Gaelic football. His research unearthed some startling results. As he broadened his research by completing a doctorate at Leeds Beckett University, he found that across many sports, there was an alarmingly low level of player satisfaction at how half-time breaks were run.

Devlin had his own personal experience of seeing how a heavy-handed approach by a coach could have negative consequences.

“When we were living in Zurich, my daughter Zoe was playing for an Under-10s team just outside Zurich and they kept getting hammered… 6-0, 8-0, 10-0,” recalls Devlin. “And the more the team lost, the more the coaches berated these young girls. I am a coach myself and after they lost one game 24-0 and I decided to time how long the coaches spoke to the girls.

“They lectured the girls for nine minutes. Zoe went and got her bag, we walked back to our apartment, and she said to me: ‘Dad, I am done, I am leaving football. I can take defeats but not coaches making me feel bad about myself.’ I remember thinking, there must be a better way to communicate with players than this.”

‘Therapy sparked my interest in how the brain works’

Devlin’s interest in psychology deepened when he required therapy after suffering a breakdown that was linked to his childhood experiences growing up in Crossmaglen, a village that was badly affected by the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

“The therapy sparked my interest in how the brain works, and I decided to take a Master’s and had to choose an advanced research project. I had been a coach myself and remembered searching on the internet for how to give a good half-time team talk. I thought there would be hundreds of papers, but I only found nine peer-reviewed papers on half-times in the world.

“And what research there was, 80 per cent was from a coach’s point of view. So, I thought, ‘Maybe we should ask the players, because they are an important part of the half-time equation.’

“So I asked some elite Gaelic football players what they thought of half-time: what do they like, what do they not like, what motivated them, what were their tips for coaches?”

After transcribing 10-and-half hours of tapes, Devlin found that not many players were happy.

“Three things stood out. The first was information overload. Coaching groups are getting bigger and bigger, it is like an arms race in professional sport. The second was the coach’s inability to handle their own emotions. The half-time speech was more about the coach and how he felt, rather than the players. And thirdly, it revealed that what the players wanted most was to rest, rehydrate and re-energise with food and water and to be with their team-mates. What the players want and what the coaches want from the half-time team talk were different things.”

Devlin broadened his research to other sports, and interviewed 85 coaches including people he knew had an interest in half-time like Arsene Wenger and Sir Clive Woodward, who had redesigned the half-time protocol when he was head coach of England’s World Cup-winning side, and found there was a similar problem across all sports.

In response he set up his company last year, with a small team of leadership coaches, including Chris Martin, a former regional academy coach with the Scottish Rugby Union, and has since been hired by some major clients, including Real Madrid, Manchester United academy teams, Southampton FC and Oxford City and Australian Rules side Brisbane Lions. In rugby union his clients include a Six Nations side, Racing 92 and Felipe Contepomi, Argentina’s head coach, whose side will play the British and Irish Lions in June.

“We ran some tests with a football club last summer to see what players remember from a half-time talk,” he added. “The manager gave a neat three-minute talk which was pointed and well directed but when we asked the players at the start of the second half what the manager had told them, the results were very poor. There were some broad themes remembered but little detail.

“In football there is increasingly the challenge of the number of languages, but it can also just be information overload. One client we monitored spoke to the players for a total of 27 minutes from pre-game, half-time and post-game. That is around 4,500 words, which is a lot to take in.

“Sometimes there are more coaching staff than players, which is like a classroom where there are more teachers than pupils. One of the first steps is to clear the room. You should only be in the dressing room if you have something to add.”

Looking at rugby specifically, which tends to have a more structured half-time with players split into units, Devlin says that the key is to keep the coaches out of the dressing room for as long as possible.

“Three things tend to happen when the coaches walk in,” he added. “Players stop eating, stop drinking and stop talking. Emotional regulation of rugby managers tends to be better than others, partly because they sit up in the box and don’t get involved in pitchside incidents.

“But the players are speaking less. One of the things we have identified is that anxiety and loneliness is a significant problem at half-time in professional sport. It might seem odd as everyone is part of a team. But there is only one full-back for example. Our research generally has revealed that if a player has had one or more bad experience at half-time that memory can mentally scar them.

“I spoke to one player and as someone who has experienced it, I would term it as post-traumatic stress disorder. Players have been threatened or put up against a wall.

“I say this at any level, whether it is under-fives or a national rugby team, if your players are on the ground when you walk into the room before you speak, walk into the room, take nine seconds, look around the room and ask yourself what’s the best thing you can do to help those players have a better chance in the second half.

“You’ve got three choices. Is it technical information? Is it practical, or is it inspiration? The latter is rarely used, which surprises me. I often give an example of a rugby team that might be losing by 20 points at half-time. I say to coaches, ‘Look, the players are not feeling good anyway, so rather than shout at them, why not line up all 15 players and remind them why you picked them on the previous Thursday. Tell them what their skills are and why you believe they can turn the game around in the second half.’”

Devlin feels it is important to provide coaches with an array of options to get their message across, including colours, video presentations and music. “One of the songs we use is Weightless by Marconi Union because it is designed to bring people’s heart rate down,” he adds. “Physical contact such as hugging, or high-fiving and eye contact are also very effective. Laughter is also important. We tend to see that teams that are laughing tend to be more successful. The half-time routine should be designed around the players, not the coaches. That can mean posing them three questions to answer themselves during ‘player time’ and then the coaches come in and give their view on the three questions.

“It is important that the players retain control of the match and not have it wrestled from them by the coach. Most of what the coaches are saying, the players already know, so it can just reduce their self-esteem. If speaking doesn’t help the players, then don’t say anything.”