How My Tamworth Teammates And I Were Able To Go Toe-To-Toe With Spurs Explained With Science

(MENAFN- The Conversation) It's fair to say me and my team-mates at the non-league football club Tamworth FC were pretty keyed up as we prepared for our FA Cup third-round match against Premier League giants Tottenham Hotspur on January 12. We're 96 places below them in the football pecking order and we all have day jobs (in my case as a sports psychology lecturer at Nottingham Trent University).

Unusually for us, we met at Drayton Manor Hotel for“pre-match”, where we could eat and relax prior to the game. Usually, especially if it's a Tuesday night game, it's a manic rush to eat, prepare and get yourself from work to the game. So under normal circumstances it's hard to establish a set pre-performance routine to focus on regulating arousal and anxiety levels and build confidence. But as someone who teaches this sort of thing for a living, I'm always telling students how important it is to prepare properly.

On this occasion, though, we were playing one the the most famous sides in England, if not the world, and a team renowned for being successful in cup competitions. So the preparation was particularly important when you're so highly motivated and trying to control your nerves and excitement.

To the match itself. Spurs played a strong side, including England international James Maddison among others. By all accounts, we matched Tottenham for 90 minutes, holding them to 0-0, and even having chances to nick the tie late on – in which case, we would have etched ourselves into FA Cup folklore.

For extra time, Spurs turned to the cavalry. They brought on club captain Son Heung-min and Dejan Kulusevski – the last thing I personally wanted to see when cramp had started to set in. Spurs' fitness, and the introduction of those top-quality players, eventually saw them break our resistance. They ended up strolling to a somewhat flattering 3-0 win. It had almost been one of the unlikeliest shocks in modern FA Cup history, but wasn't quite to be.

So why were a part time team, who train twice a week, with most players working full-time, able to match international footballers for 90 minutes? Undoubtedly, an important factor was the game being played at Tamworth's home ground. Much was made of the fact Tottenham's players, who are used to world class facilities and luxury, had to get changed in portacabin changing rooms.

But perhaps the biggest leveller of all was our artificial 3G pitch . Most teams, even at our level, find it difficult to play on if they don't use one regularly – let alone Spurs' players, who are used to playing on surfaces like grass carpets akin to a billiards table or bowling green.

Previous research has defined home field advantage as“the consistent finding that home teams in sports competitions win over 50% of the games played under a balanced home and away schedule”. It found that football teams whose home games are played on artificial pitches have a distinct advantage .

Then there was the added motivation of it being the game of our lives. We all love an underdog right? For David v Goliath, read Tamworth v Spurs. Research suggests that when you are labelled as the underdog it can serve to increase the emotional psyching up for the event and motivate the underdog to exert an even greater effort to achieve victory.

More than thinking about winning the tie, before the match we told ourselves we just wanted to do our team and our fans justice and at the very least make it competitive. This helped us to more than match Spurs over the course of the game – and, for a few minutes at least, believe the most unlikely of wins was possible.

So, what's next for us? As I discussed in an interview with ITV straight after the match, for me and the rest of the players, it was back to the reality of work on Monday morning. To say that was quite a comedown is an understatement. I was asked by a colleague,“How are you feeling?” and I found myself struggling to answer, as I couldn't really make sense of that myself.

You often hear the term “post-Olympic blues” from Olympians who have achieved a lifetime ambition by winning a gold medal and wonder what's next – or how anything else in their life will compare to that one momentous moment.

Playing an FA Cup game against Tottenham is not quite in the same stratosphere as competing at the Olympics. But I was asked in an interview on Monday morning if it would be the highlight of my career, and it was tough to process that. For most of us in the team, that's likely to be the biggest and best game we ever play in.

The UK Sports Institute, which provides psychological support to Olympic athletes, has coined the phrase “performance decompression” for the process of“embracing and making sense of what you've gone through at an important competition, and then moving on” after an Olympic games. Or post-Spurs, in my case.

As part-time players, we don't have that chance to decompress. Instead we come crashing back down to Earth with the Monday morning alarm clock. But it's starting to sink in what an achievement it was for a non-league team like ours to not only get to the third round of an FA Cup, but to more than match Spurs for 100 minutes or so.

A surreal day, amazing experience, and one that I'm so proud to have been part of. Memories to last a lifetime.

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