Beyond the Team Talk: Half-Time as a Coaching Environment in Elite Women's Field Hockey

Abstract

Half-time represents one of coaching’s most compressed and constrained environments. Beyond tactical instruction, coaches must make sense of an evolving match situation while working with players and support staff to shape the conditions for a coordinated second-half performance. Guided by a social-relational perspective, this qualitative study explored half-time experiences in an elite women’s national field hockey team. Data were generated through observations, interviews and focus groups with players and coaching staff. Reflexive thematic analysis was organised around four themes: Leading the Way, Inside the Room, Against the Clock, and From Reflection to Readiness. Findings suggest that effective half-time practice depends on recognising that coaches and players do not always experience or prioritise half-time in the same way. Reflecting on how half-time routines are structured may help establish shared expectations and better balance competing tactical, emotional and relational demands. More fundamentally, by framing half-time as a distinct coaching environment rather than vehicle for tactical instruction, this study encourages coaches to critically reflect on what half-time is intended to achieve and how its limited time can be used most effectively.