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I know some people will think this is all complete and upper tripe (ha!-food gag!) . But the blogs are interesting stuff for anyone who is interested in their own health.

how about someone post a diet for the common man, its way too easy to put on the beef once you stopped playing football, and spent half the day looking at a computer

If you've a bit of time watch the video here. Will answer your question very thoroughly.

http://www.drbriffa.com/2012/02/15/interview-with-matt-edmundson-about-escape-the-diet-trap-and-other-things/

Jerome Johnson surely worth a place

FAO anyone who is in to the ould sports science side of thing ( like geeks like me!)

The blogs on the below website I find interesting. Thousands of them there so you'll never get bored!

http://www.drbriffa.com

If the All Ireland club champ was played in the summer months, would Crossmaglen be as successful?

Neil, I'll refer to my earlier statement. Professional rugby is a full time game that utterly leans on sports science for any edges it can find. But the fellas who were put on the wing as kids because of their speed are still the quickest on the team as fully grown adults. That, my friend, has got f**k all to do with speed coaching.

Would agree mostly.

Saw a documentary about Ajax Amsterdam running trials for thousands of kids about six or seven years old from around Holland

What the coaches looked for, they said, in a player was SPIT, that means, in order:

Speed
Personality
Intelligence
Technique

The characteristics were in that order deliberately i.e they felt speed was something they could not alter very much and so kids who didn't have it, didn't make the cut.

http://www.cricketeurope4.net/DATABASE/ARTICLES2/articles/000051/005166.shtml

An MBE in waffle is what he should have got!

That's a no to my original question I assume.

You may be right, he could in all well be a chancer. However, the fact that these guys are actively seeking him out  must mean something.
Chancers are nearly always get found out. Either he is a very talented chancer who has yet to be found out, or he maybe is good at whatever he does. However, without seeing him in action it is hard to gauge an opinion on him, which was what my original post was about.

No. I don't know him. He features prominently in the Lions 2005 video. That's where I formed the impression he was a guffer. Massive self-confidence, a guy like Harrington who spends so much time in his own head he must be going mad, would be right down Alred's street.

He's more of a smooth cheerleader than a good kicking coach in my view.

Good luck to him, his smoothness has got him an MBE.

Here's a bit from an interview with him.

On his website there's a reference to Gaelic football, and Alred's attention to detail begins with the most obvious element.

"One particular thing is that the Gaelic football is quite like a little pellet — it's not like a soccer ball, it's slightly smaller and the sweet spot is closer to the ground. If you could have the luxury of teeing it up a little, it'd be a little easier to hit. Also, the Gaelic ball still has three panels in the squares on the surface, so I'm not sure it flies particularly true.

"You can line a kick up, it'll spin perfectly and feel good off the foot, but it may not fly quite true sometimes. As a result you try to put more foot on it, and that puts sidespin on it — hence right-footed kickers like kicking from the left side.

"Gaelic football is very interesting — a lot of the players kick around the corner when kicking out of hand, and in coaching them it can be quite a sea change to get them to work on the body shift when kicking rather than wrapping the foot around the ball. I enjoyed a session I did with Gaelic and rugby players in Omagh, the interaction between the players was fantastic."


Bit rich of him I think to come along, with zero experience of Gaelic football, and lecture a guy like Johnny Doyle of Kildare ( I think this happened), who has spent thousands of hours honing his technique.

That's my spin on it (ha!)

That wasn't your original question.

To answer your second question, I think he's a smooth operator who, I'm sure, puts across various confidence tricks and visualisation techniques to players. I would imagine he's a bit of a cheerleader for the players, who become somewhat reliant on him.

Think they'd do as well without him.

Just my opinion.

He's more of a poor man's Enda McNulty / Jimmy McGuinness than a good kicking coach.

Recently moved into golf, acting as coach to Harrington. Ridiculous in my opinion. Why can't Harrington trust himself?

http://www.independent.ie/sport/golf/harrington-backing-rugby-guru-to-help-kickstart-his-revival-2989262.html

Do you know the man? Johnny Wilk and O'Gara seem to have a high opinion of him

Good luck to them. I think he's a chancer.

Does anyone have any ideas how to kick the ball further off the ground? I can score from anywhere inside about 35 metres but I'd like to be able to get it from further out.

I would always have thought that Maurice Fitzgerald and Bryan Sheehan's techniques ( Sheehan based his on Maurice Fitz, they are from the same club) were as close to perfection as you could get.

But Cluxton kicks the ball in a very different style and has a very very good record. He cuts across the ball where Sheehan and Fitzgerald would kick the ball at a point just below the big toe. His go straight at the goal in a direct line over the balckspot where Fitz/Sheehan curl in from a point outside the black spot of the crossbar. Cluxton aims at the blackspot where Fitz/Sheehan do not.

For the Sheehan/Fitzgerald style

Head down all through (until well after you've kicked the ball. When you lift the head, as in golf, the whole kick/swing plane changes)
Kick the ball with a point on the foot just below the big toe (this will come with practice though)
Keep the same number of steps in the run up ( five is enough I think, no need for Charlie Redmond/Anthony Tohill Riverdance type run ups)
Approach the ball at about a 45 degree angle

That's a lot to be remembering!

Just keep kicking and the natural kick will find itself. It's like when you're practicing kicking off the hands after not kicking for a while.

The first few shots might be poor, then you'll kick one over. You'll try and replicate this good one and again and again. Muscle memory will then kick in and say 'here is the correct body position and foot point for kicking the ball'

I think the same principle is true of all sports. The likes of Dave Alred (an England rugby kicking coach and one of life's chancers in my view) giving advice to the likes of Kildare players like Johnny Doyle (I think this happened) is complete madness I feel.

I could give you all the techniques you like, but your body will automatically do the right techniques if you practice enough!

My fee is $100 a word!

Great game the Cross v Errigal Ciaran game. What Crossmaglen have, I think, is to play at a fairly even level all through whereas the opposition, like EC today, will raise their game in the first half but be unable to sustain that for the sixty minutes. The typical pattern will be opposition winning first half by 1-3 points maybe, but Cross winning second half by 6-8 something like that.

Don't know how Mark Harte gave McConville MOTM . For me it was between Stephen Kernan, Aaron Kernan or Peter Harte. Marginally, I would go for Stephen Kernan.

Won €60 on a  €20 3/1 double of Crokes-7 and Cross -4 (both evens individually)

All Ireland shaping up to be Crokes ( they will murder Castlehaven, who are terrible) v Ballymun/Portlaoise and Cross v Brigids.

Astonishing interview with Joe on Marion Finucane this morning. I'll stick up a link when it's available.

Is it along the lines of the Daily Mail article? Parts of that were very deep.

Interesting question.

There used to be a phrase in Kerry back in the thirties and forties and fifty which said 'West Kerry backs, townie forwards' which meant that the Kerry team would be made up of West Kerry backs who would have been perceived as tough and hardy ( Tomas O'Se is from west Kerry, point proven!) and that the forwards would have been from town teams and that would have meant Killarney or Tralee.

Because there are so many small rural clubs in Kerry ( of the 60 or so teams in the county league, about 50 are rural, if you would count the likes of Stacks, Mitchels, Na Gaeil, Rahilly's, Legion, Crokes, Kenmare, Listowel, Laune Rangers, St.Mary's, Dingle and Castleisland as the town clubs)

I think it is one of the positive aspects of Kerry football that the Kerry minor team is, by and large, Kerry's best team and that a guy from a tiny club like Templenoe ( the club of the Spillane's) has as much chance of representing Kerry as the guy from a big club like Stacks or Crokes. And that feeds through to senior level and no club has really dominated a Kerry team at any point. ( Dromid Pearses, club of Declan O'Sullivan and Jack O'Connor is a tiny parish, with no real village at all.)

Down the years,certain teams have had big representations from time to time but the Golden Years team was an exercise in democracy, with nearly every sector in the county represented ( If you look at the 1975 team and where they were from it shows the spread ( East Kerry, Tralee, Tralee, North Kerry, West Kerry, North Kerry, Tralee, Mid Kerry, North Kerry, Mid Kerry, North Kerry, South Kerry, Tralee, North Kerry, South Kerry)) . Very even.

Anyhow, very democratic compared with Cork where a guy from a small junior club in west Cork is hugely up against it compared with the guy from Nemo Rangers.