As England prepare for their Rugby World Cup semi-final tie with New Zealand, the ability to cope under pressure is sure to be front of mind for Head Coach Eddie Jones and his backroom team.

As such, university academics have published research detailing the key building blocks needed to develop team resilience in elite level sport.

The research is the latest in a series from the Sport Psychology Research Group based at Loughborough University’s School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences.

The group is made up of Dr David Fletcher, of Loughborough University, Dr Paul Morgan, Head of School - Human and Social Sciences at Buckinghamshire New University, and Dr Mustafa Sarkar, now at Nottingham Trent University.

The project included a prolonged season-long study of a leading English national league-winning semi-professional rugby union team. Here, data was collected across multiple methods, including interviews, observation, and field notes.

Once analysed, five key pillars were identified:

-  Inspiring, motivating, and challenging team members to achieve performance excellence

- Developing a team ethos based on ownership and responsibility

- Cultivating a team identity and togetherness based on a selfless culture

- Exposing the team to challenging training and unexpected/difficult situations

- Promoting enjoyment and keeping a positive outlook during stressful periods

Dr Paul Morgan said: “The key factors identified provide advice and guidelines to coaches and managers to develop robustness within their teams. It goes without saying that at the elite level a certain edge of resilience is expected to bring success.

“By breaking down each pillar and implementing key practices, teams will become harder to beat in periods of difficulty during play.

"We are seeing a number of teams exhibiting this during the Rugby World Cup, such as Wales, New Zealand, and England. These teams rigorously rehearse and practice how they will collectively respond to setbacks during matches (eg such as losing key players to injury and receiving tough officiating calls), and maintaining working communication channels.

“There is an increasing emphasis on developing a strong leadership group to navigate pressurised situations and this will be very evident during the final phases of this World Cup.”

Speaking about the semi-final between England and New Zealand, Dr Morgan said: "New Zealand will need to handle the pressure of having the opportunity to be the first team to win the World Cup on three consecutive occasions.

"Both teams are extremely well prepared to deal with pressure and setbacks and will have planned meticulously about how to exert pressure on their opponent to force errors while maintaining their own discipline.

"Sir Clive Woodward’s 2003 England World Champion winning side frequently practised ‘Thinking Correctly Under Pressure or T-Cup’ and both England and New Zealand will display similar approaches on Saturday.

"There are two key aspects to this semi-final:

"1)  Which Head Coach has planned the most effective game-plan

"2) Which team can execute the collectively agreed game plan under the most extreme pressure of a semi-final."

Dr David Fletcher, Senior Lecturer in Sport and Performance Psychology at Loughborough University, explained: “A lot has been said and written about psychological resilience at an individual level, but our research suggests that resilience also occurs at a group or team level.

“Rather than simply aggregating individuals’ levels of psychological resilience, it appears that team resilience is, to quote Aristotle, ‘greater than the sum of its parts’.

“For any team performing under pressure, it is critical that it focuses on building not only individual capacity but also on interpersonal relationships, shared processes, and group functioning.”

The full research paper, titled ‘Developing team resilience: A season-long study of psychosocial enablers and strategies in a high-level sports team’, has been published in Psychology of Sport and Exercise and can be downloaded here.