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Coolera/Strandhill v. Curry in Sligo SFC. Much bigger for me and most lads I spoke to this week!

Good man Magpie! Don't believe the hype! 

If anything Armagh pioneered this type of stuff.

I think you'll find that Cain pioneered this kind of stuff, when he slew his brother, Abel. :d

For Subbie's attention, John Allen is the former manager of the Cork senior hurling team.

He has a column every Friday in the Irish Times. He's talking through his chapeau in it this week though:



Mind games the key to Reale success

Fri, Aug 17, 2007

Mostly Hurling:The former England rugby captain Martin Johnston was the subject of a recent television documentary. I was encouraged to hear him talk of going to the stadium before a big game to do his mental rehearsal. He spoke a few times about rehearsing games in his mind. It reminded my of how often lately we have heard Padraig Harrington talk of his sports psychologist, a man in whom Padraig seems to have complete faith, writes John Allen.

In Denis Walsh's fine piece on Dónal Óg Cusack in the Sunday Timesrecently, Cusack talks of doing his mental rehearsal before big games.

Walk into any big bookshop and see the number of books on the subject of mind preparation for sport.

Yet in hurling and football we haven't yet embraced sports psychology. There's reluctance in some quarters to even discuss the topic. It's seen as a weakness of some sort to have to resort to such abstractions.

We just don't seen to believe we can train our minds. There's a huge lack of understanding of the subject.

We seem to forget the times when we carefully rehearsed the story we would tell our parents when as 16-year-olds we arrived home at five in the morning, or the story we had ready for teachers when we didn't have homework done, or what we were going to say to sell ourselves in the job interview.

And were we not the stars of the show in the games in the back garden, imagining ourselves scoring the winning goal in Croke Park? We usually rehearsed these to perfection, yet we fail to rehearse for the big sporting occasions we prepare so thoroughly for in every other way.

Surely it makes sense to believe that if we can go some way toward controlling our thinking then we can go some way toward having a better life and achieving our goals.

But there are, of course, some "believers" in our sport and there are teams who use sports psychologists.

Where the mind goes everything else follows. Did not every great invention start as an idea in somebody's mind?

There definitely is a lack of understanding on the topic. There is also a problem specific to the amateurs who play our games - there is not enough time to find out more about, or to practise, mental rehearsal, imagery or visualisation.

"Imagery" is a way of programming your mind and body to consistently perform close to your optimum.

For best results imagery should be practised every day. You should see yourself achieving your goals and successfully executing the skills you are trying to hone.

This technique takes time to perfect. You have to be persistent. But in the long run it will lead to greater concentration and an overall improvement in performance.

Visualising yourself performing well in a game will help to programme you for success, since your subconscious mind does not differentiate between what you see with your mind's eye and what you see with your physical eye. Imagery is a way of creating a new reality.

Terry Orlich has written an excellent book on the subject, In Pursuit Of Excellence.

The preface has a quote from the American writer Gail Sheehy: "If we don't change we don't grow. If we don't grow we are not really living. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. It may mean giving up familiar but limiting patterns, safe but unrewarding work and values no longer believed in."

Many players now set yearly goals, in the pursuit of which they plan their season. Of course to achieve those long-term goals they have to also set short-term ones. These goals are what make up our week-to-week training plan. Maybe it's now time to add in imagery as well.

Wayne Dyer's book You'll See It When You Believe It encourages us to imagine ourselves achieving. He says we get essentially what we believe in. So if we believe in hard luck and are always satisfied with being runners-up and persist in using the language of losers then that thinking will be borne out in our lives.

But if we believe and see ourselves achieving great things then there is a far greater chance we will succeed.

So, Damien Reale, it's time for you to add this technique to your training over the next fortnight. Remember, you can practise this anywhere. Do it every day. You just need to relax, close your eyes and take yourself into your imagination.

The referee has just blown the final whistle. Suddenly you are surrounded by a forest of jubilant, green-clad supporters. You are being slapped and clapped and pushed into the maelstrom. See yourself making your way through the heaving crowd to the Hogan Stand. Maoir and gardaí usher you to the place of honour. Picture your team-mates hugging and hollering. Hear the sound of the madness out on the field. See yourself shaking Nickey Brennan's hand as you get ready to lay hands on the Liam MacCarthy Cup. See yourself wiping the sweat from your forehead. Look at the miles of smiles that stretch out before you. Listen to Nickey, then lift Liam to the sky and listen to the sounds from the sea of green as it echoes around Croke Park. Then deliver the happiest, most ringing acceptance speech that has ever echoed around the hallowed stadium.

If Limerick play with the same intensity again, Damien, ye might not need any extra help, but it's worth a go anyway.
© 2007 The Irish Times

I think you might be massaging the figures there a little Sligeach.

Fifty yo-yos for a jersey is a once-off expense, unless you buy a new one every game you go. If you do, stop - you're wasting your money.

The 25 yo-yos for the train went to CIE, or whatever they're calling themselves now. 25 seems cheap, actually - I'm told it's sixty to Cork and back. Nice. I tried to look it up just now on their website, but it seems I'm far too stupid to be able to operate the interface.

The twenty yo-yos you spent on food went to Ronald McDonald, of course, and the hundred bucks on booze went to Mr Quinn, Mr McGrath or Mr Tree, depending on your choice of venue.

So the GAA itself only soaked you for the cost of the ticket - which would be much higher if it weren't for corporate sponsorship. The corp sector isn't good, but it is a neccessary evil. At least corporate sponsorship doesn't promote competing codes, as the opening of the ground does. But Pandora's Box has been opened now, and we'll just have to live with the consequences.

I agree with everything that's been said here. Shane Ryan has always seemed a good bloke. One of the many mysteries about Dublin media coverage is how Ciarán Whelan is so often portrayed as one of the best midfielders in Ireland when he's not even the best on his own team.

What is it about Irish sporting bandwagons that they're so vomit inducing?

Now, now Tayto - people in glass houses, you know. 

You know how you normally get De Dubs, that lifeblood of the GAA and all that we hold dear, jumping all over you if you express an un-Dublin thought, like maybe they could turn up on time for their own games? Why aren't they defending poor Tommy? Why isn't someone in sky and navy blue diving over the hand-grenades being tossed at their former Duce? Ah me - how quickly they forget....

I sometimes wonder if Roscommon support in Ballaghaderreen is as strong as the Rosseroos would make out. Unless I'm greatly mistaken, a second club was founded in the town some years ago that took part in the Roscommon County Championship, but I think it only lasted a few years before folding. I'm open to correction on this.

The story is in the current edition of the Mayo News: http://www.mayonews.ie/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2074&Itemid=39

Bitterly disappointing from a Mayo perspective, of course, but it's very hard to blame the lad himself. Best of luck to him if he thinks that's the best thing for him. He has only the one life to live, he might as well make the most of it.

As for Mayo, thank God for the Rugby World Cup to take our minds off our woes...

Anyone with a 9/11 interest could do worse than "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11" by Lawrence Wright.

For GAA books, Denis Walsh's "Hurling: The Revolution Years" and Breandán Ó hEithir's "Over the Bar" would be clear of the field for me.

As for holiday reading, I'm hearing great things about "Crystal" by Katie Price. I'd say you'd learn a lot about the world outside the GAA reading Ms P. 

In a round about way i believe hes sticking up for Mickey Moran.       

Brolly isn't sticking up for Mickey Moran. You are. Which is fair enough, of course.

As for what Brolly said about Conor Mortimer and his marker, isn't he completely correct? Isn't that exactly what happened?

Storm in a teacup. Michael Commins looking for a handy column for himself in the Mayo News. This sort of stuff has passed most people by in Mayo - in other years, after so few All-Star nominations in 2004, the wailing would have been long and loud. I don't remember anybody at home complaining at the time though, as we all realised that performance counts, and Mayo didn't perform.

It's interesting that it's Joe Brolly, of all people, having his little cut at C-Mort. You might remember some Cavan posters taking a cut at Conor for gesturing to the crowd in the Mayo v Cavan game at Castlebar. When I read it, I immediately thought of Brolly in his blowing kisses days. Brolly backed up the showboating, as another thread here testifies. Conor doesn't. That's the difference. If people want to Brolly to stop picking on Conor, tell him to put McGoldrick in his pocket and feed him on farts next time Mayo play Derry in the Championship. Otherwise, you have to take your licking.

I don't think the Shark's Mayo sideswipe is GAA-oriented Sammy. Although it certainly affects your home-town so maybe you're right have your feathers up. 

As for El Goocho - dammit, my dollar says it's McStay. The military training would give him that sort of training in under-cover, behind-the-lines ops. Is that you Kevin? Come on now, tell the truth and shame the divil. 

From this morning's Tribune. Thin gruel again I'm afraid.




Spent Mayo face painful cycle of regrowth
Malachy Clerkin


As he stood with his arms folded by the side of the little press trailer in Celtic Park last Saturday night, it was tempting to wonder what Mickey Moran was making of the whole farrago that was being played out down in front of him. Knowing both sides as he did, would he have seen those final 24 minutes, in which Derry made a levelscore game into a 10-point win, coming? Would he have seen the six wides Mayo kicked in the 10 minutes before Colin Devlin's goal . . .

those high, wayward, missthe-netting-behind-the-goals wides . . . and thought to himself that there was every reason to suspect a Mayo collapse? Was he, above all, pondering to himself quite what a reception his name would have gotten at the next Mayo County Board meeting if it was him down on the sideline and not John O'Mahony? It's hard not to think he'd have been entitled.

To the outsider, the vitriol directed towards Moran and John Morrison in those dog days last October seemed small and petty even by the standards of your average collection of delegates in any part of the country. If memory serves, there was at least one sane voice in the wilderness who stood during the heated post All Ireland final county board meeting and asked, not unreasonably, if it was not the case that many in the room would have been more than happy at the start of the year of offered a league semi-final, a Connacht title and an All Ireland final appearance. He was alone, though. Alone and shouted down.

There'll hardly be any of that this year, but that probably has more do with John O'Mahony being one of their own rather than a general acceptance of another double-digit exit from the championship. Already, the talk is of transition and replenishment, with O'Mahony . . . in public at least . . . hoping that the usual candidates for retirement take some time with their decision. But no matter who stays and who goes, maybe the biggest change that should be wrought is a resetting of where the people of Mayo see their place in the general footballing scheme of things.

Because what this year and last year and the two before that have done is pretty much prove the sane voice at the county board meeting last October right. Of course, getting a toasting in an All Ireland final isn't fun, but it's not like at the start of the year with everybody in the county making sure to keep the third weekend in September free. The truth of it is that, far from being the louche under-achievers of lazy repute, two All Ireland finals in three years should be a feat to be proud of in Mayo.

If anything, these are overachievers.

Colm Coyle has a lot to answer for, of course. If he'd just kicked that last-minute Hail Mary in the 1996 drawn final a little harder so that it dropped into John Madden's hands instead of hopping over the bar, then Mayo folk would have their All Ireland.

Instead, there's a bereft feeling and instead of hailing the accomplishment of three more final appearances in the following decade . . . a record Kerry alone can beat . . . loud and long is the wailing and gnashing of teeth when it all unravels as it tends to do.

Those are some high standards for a county that can't exactly say it lays claim to hands-down the best playing talent of the past decade. A county without a proper fullback in all that time. Nor fullforward, for that matter. A county that has had to make do, at different times and for different reasons, without Ciaran McDonald and David Brady and Trevor Mortimer.

A county with only one dual All Star . . . James Nallen in the current squad. And yet, as Kevin McStay has pointed out in the past, the people of Mayo somehow made their side favourites going into the 1997 and 2004 All Ireland finals. But any bit of hindsight, if allied to honesty, will tell you there wasn't an All Ireland in that team.

There's been a lot of talk of a clear-out since last Saturday, with wild estimates of anything up to a dozen players either retiring or being retired. Indeed, O'Mahony made reference during the aftermath to programmes and structures that had been put in place since last October for players who weren't on the current panel in the hope that they'd be ready for next year. Everything smacked of a year that had been written off after the Galway game.

How else to explain that wholesale changes in personnel between a more than decent league campaign and the championship? The starting defence in the league final against Donegal read Liam O'Malley, James Kilcullen, Keith Higgins, Enda Devenney, Billy Joe Padden and Peadar Gardiner. Last Saturday, only O'Malley remained and even then he'd been moved to full-back.

"Derry are further on in their development curve than we are and that showed, " O'Mahony said last week.

He's been around too long and achieved too much at this stage for his words to be dismissed as the weasel excuses of a losing manager. So when he says that last year's beaten All Ireland finalists are further back than a team like Derry who will, at best, make an All Ireland semi-final, it has to be viewed as a sensible and honest appraisal of where Mayo find themselves.

"It's very obvious that the transitional period has started in Mayo football. That was always going to happen. I think it's a great time of opportunity in Mayo football for players to come forth and come into the squad. That doesn't mean that I want everybody else to retire or anything else."

Mayo did phenomenally well to make last year's All Ireland final. Ditto 2004.

O'Mahony knows that and knows as well how far there is to go if they're ever to get back to that point. Mickey Moran knew it too. For others, it might take a while to


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They are right and correct to postpone the games, but they must have been under a lot of pressure not to, the world being as it is. Fair play to them for knowing what's important.

Go ndéana Dia trócaire ar na mairbh.

Has my sweet county Mayo not suffered enough down the years without Carney making an eejit of himself on national telly roaring "TOMMY! TOMMY! WE'RE GETTING DESTROYED TOMMY!" down the mike at someone? Sure Jesus everybody could see that. If that's all the impact Statto had, well, it explains a lot.