IT HAS been said that ‘90 percent of the game is half mental’. What is going on in the heads of our professional A-League players lately?

Yogi Berra, a famous Major League baseball player of yesteryear was famous for his twisting of the English language and simple logic. He is credited with having made an observation something along the lines that 90 percent of baseball was mental, the other half was physical.

The quote has been often re-used and bastardised by many an American commentators in recent years, and abbreviated to ‘90 percent of the game is half mental’. I find it an amusing quote/misquote, but it’s undoubtedly appropriate in the context of the A-League of late.

For the Mariners, in recent weeks, it is the sheer unpredictability of their intensity level, and application in any given game, or over the course of a game. It begs the question: ‘What are they thinking?’

Draws that were snatched from the jaws of defeat against Adelaide and Sydney were exciting, but really demonstrated the challenge of playing for the whole 90+ minutes. Three out of the four games last weekend were examples of teams mentally switching on and off over the course of a game with the inevitable consequences.

In my opinion, both the Mariners and Sydney are currently serial offenders at the moment, in that they both seem to struggle to maintain their intensity and concentration until the final whistle nearly every week.

To McKinna’s credit, he at least acknowledged the deficiency against Perth by recognising that the Mariners did not deserve their point; "I think we've deserved the other comebacks, but we didn't deserve this one." Given the size of the mountains climbed against Sydney and Adelaide I suppose it’s pretty hard to argue this point.

However, my concern with the Mariners, and indeed the similar issues apparent in the performances of other A-League teams, is that we are seeing a lot more psychological fragility in this competition than we should probably expect.

I don’t think anyone can attribute what we are seeing to fitness. There are palpable confidence issues with Sydney, Newcastle and Perth, and what appear to be worrying concentration problems evident not only with the Mariners, but with Adelaide, and to a lesser extent, Queensland.

Player mentality, and the coach’s role in effectively managing this, has never been more on show. To me, at the moment, it seems to be a work in progress.

I would speculate that allowing a number of key players to sign with other clubs half way through a short season is also unhelpful, however these guys are full time professionals, with many getting paid well above the average wage.
In Sydney’s case, they need to take the first step and admit they have a problem, but I guess that believing Kossie will ever display any humility is like expecting that Kanye West will one day concede he is pretty clever, but not necessarily gods gift to music.

As an aside, someone recently suggested Craig Foster as technical director at Sydney FC – now that is an amusing idea. It would be the Fossie and Kossie show, where they both have all the answers but no one is entitled to ask any questions.

But back to my point - Sydney playing for 30 minutes and feeling that they deserve a result these days, is as predictable as Alex Brosque falling over when he comes into contact with an opponent.

Johnny Aloisi has been falling over a lot too lately, but somehow I sense he is being climbed over a lot more than Brosque. Both these guys seem to spend half the game on their back sides, and the other half having a whinge about it. No wonder they’re not scoring any goals.

Whilst I’m on the subject of falling over, I get the impression that very good centre backs (like the Og Monster, Costanzo, Moore and Muskie) tend to get away with a hell of a lot. It’s like the referees feel sorry for them for some obscure reason.

I imagine that what the refs must be saying to a usually flabbergasted striker when they have been penalised in a challenge with any of these big softies, is something like, ‘only one knee in the small of the back and the elbow hooked over your left shoulder in that challenge was OK, you backed into him’.

I guess that’s the physical side of the game.

I’ll leave you with another quote, this time from the NFL, where the whole idea of humility is a very elusive one indeed. It is attributed to John Madden, the larger than life former Oakland Raiders championship coach, and now veteran NBC commentator: ‘Self-praise is for losers. Be a winner. Stand for something. Always have class, and be humble.’

The writer has never actually played the whole 90 minutes in his own playing career, but this is likely due to a genetic condition that manifests in an inability to breathe whilst running for more than 60 seconds at a time.