At my sister’s birthday party yesterday, we watched the last quarter of the Port Adelaide v Hawthorn AFL game, which, in the end, was won on the last kick of the match to put Port Adelaide ahead for the first time since early in the second quarter, and give them second place on the ladder.

With a minute to go, Port Adelaide was still 7 points behind: 2 goals required to win. A goal with 47 seconds to go by Daniel Motlop (a story in itself: as in this story in the Age, “In similar circumstances only a year ago on the same ground, Motlop had taken a spectacular mark and missed his easy chance to kick the winning goal.”)

Motlop attributed his goal partly to having a little less pressure on him: it wasn’t to win the match, only to get to within 1 point of doing so. Opposing Hawthorn players of course saw fit to remind him of last year’s miss before he took the kick.

So much so was the incident last year an issue that Motlop and the club coach, Mark Williams, returned to the spot the night before the game and did a rerun: Motlop kicked the goal.

A great example of the power of mental and, in this case, physical, “rehearsal” to trigger the same successful action later. Same for finding a way to create thoughts to make the kick feel like it had less pressure on the outcome.

Then came the last kick of the match — only a goal would ensure victory — and Port Adelaide player Brett Ebert faced a tough angle. With 3 seconds to go, he kicked the goal.

Here’s the focus and thinking that ensured he would succeed. He says in the story:

“We looked at that during the week as a group, anybody in that situation, if you get one chance to do it, well obviously Mots missed and obviously he was disappointed, but it was good today to kick the goal. I never thought about missing it so that was good.“ (highlighing mine).

That’s the mental power of the right focus!