Relationships between psychological skills and European U19 rugby union tournament outcomes and performance indicators

The purpose of this study was to investigate and identify the psychological skills and strategies related to tournament outcomes and performance indicators in a European under-19 Rugby Union Championship. The sample included a total of 183 elite male U19 rugby players, aged between 17 and 19 years (M= 18.67, SD= 0.51), who competed at the U19 European Championship 2014. These players represented seven national teams ranked by the teams' final classification in the championship, as follows: Georgia (1st place, n= 34), Portugal (2nd place, n= 20), Spain (3rd place, n= 26), Russia (4th place, n= 27), Netherlands (5th place, n= 17), Belgium (6th place, n= 14), and Romania (7th place, n= 45). Athletes responded to translated and adapted versions of the questionnaire Test of Performance Strategies (TOPS; Thomas et al., 1999) an hour before the first match of the tournament. Summary matches' statistics and the final ranking position (inverted) of the national teams were retrieved from an official website. Correlation results showed that a more frequent use of self-talk, emotional control and goal-setting strategies was positively related to points, tries and conversions scored, whereas imagery levels were positively associated to penalties scored. On the other hand, higher levels of negative thinking were positively correlated to points, tries and penalties conceded, whereas higher activation levels were negatively related to points, tries and conversions conceded. The teams' final ranking was significantly predicted by goal-setting (beta= 0.21), imagery (beta= 0.17), activation (beta= 0.32) and negative thinking (beta= -0.16) levels (R-2= 0.11, p= 0.005).