An investigation into university football coaches' team talks

Abstract

Team talks have been defined as coaches gathering the players of their team in order for the coach’s thoughts to be delivered to the team, a practice common across team sports (Vargas-Tonsing and Bartholomew 2006). This study investigated the team talks of university football coaches from two teams, audio recording thirty team talks and conducting semi-structured interviews with five players from each team. Data was collected from the three team talks delivered across five games during the 2022/23 season played by each team. The study aimed to examine and compare players’ perceptions of team talks in relation to previous literature, and considering the philosophical underpinnings of the research. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the results, informing the interview schedule and identifying emerging themes in the subsequent dataset. Themes found were ‘Opportunity to Influence’, ‘Player Input’, ‘Team Talk Duration’, 'Instructional Content vs Motivational Content’, ‘Positive Feedback’ and ‘Use of Humour’. Each of these themes is discussed in relation to the Multi-Dimensional Model of Leadership and Leadership Scale for Sport, with consideration for elements of each proving productive in aiding coaches’ understanding of players’ preferred behaviour (Chelladurai 2012). In contrast with some previous team talk research, this study applied a focus to team talks taking place prior to games, at half time of games and following the conclusion of games, in order to account for the varying contexts in which team talks take place and the significant impact this has been seen to have on players’ perceptions of coaching behaviour (Raya-Castellano et al. 2022). The study accounts for the context-specific intricacies that surround the delivery of each team talk, noted as crucial in gaining further understanding of players’ perceptions (Vargas and Short 2011), which is found to be essential in understanding players’ perceptions of team talks. Favour for player input during team talks was noted among players when such context is considered, whilst no optimal duration for team talks is evident. The thesis concludes that team talks in university football settings provide opportunities for coaches and players to impact the motivation of players and players’ perceptions of coach leadership.

Date of Award	1 Mar 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Abertay University
Supervisor	David Lavallee (Supervisor) & Jonny Glen (Supervisor)