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At the same time, on an individual level, you'd still expect players to play hard and be focused, right? I think that's where this applies. While the players on the field might not be the best players, they're still gonna play their best. (...I was hoping the extended analogy would translate to life, too. But I'm not seeing it.)

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Even then it's far more complex. Using football as the example rather than rugby, if a team is winning with minutes to go you'll often see them taking the ball to a corner flag and trying to kill the game, rather than still "playing as if it's nil-nil". On the other hand, there are times when a team who has a lead will adapt to defend the lead (changing tactics, taking off attackers and replacing them with defenders, etc.), will then concede a goal, and will end up worse off than if they'd kept the offensive strategy that gave them the lead.

I'd say the 'nil-nil' approach is the safe option. You CAN achieve greater things in the context of a season by conserving energy where appropriate, but it's a lot easier to get it wrong and end up losing net energy.

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