Shining through in Sport - Holy smokes, Joe!

There are certain times in sports when moments or a series of moments conspire to enthrall all those involved. People with any appreciation of sport can bask in these moments of history unfolding before their very eyes. These are moments that leave a glow for their privileged viewers for many days and years after. Some of these include:

Cork V Waterford 2004 Munster Final


Real fans applaud Barcelona's 3-0 winning performance in Bernabeu


Michael Jordan's 63 against the Celts


Can't think of too many other ones for the moment. Munster have a few, Keane V Juventus in Champions League Semi-Final, Paul McGrath V Italy in 1994 World Cup. Haven't been privy to too many of these days, but I was last week.

Report from Hurling Blog
"WIT have won an incredible Fitzgibbon cup final after 2 periods of extra time. It finished WIT 1-29 LIT 1-24.

Level at full time, level after extra time 10 minutes each half (0-25 to 1-22) and then into another extra time of 5 minutes each side. WIT had to equalize twice to force the first and second extra times and they were a point behind going into the final period of 5 minutes. Then they hit an incredible purple patch spurred by an Eoin Reid goal. They also needed two incredible one on one saves by keeper Adrian Power to keep then in it, one a full length reflex save, the other smothering a forward".

An incredible haul of 1-16 still didn't reap the deserved rewards for the gifted Joe Canning. His 4 sideline cuts was a feat that is akin to 2 holes in 1 in a round of golf or 4 goals from outside the box in soccer. What conventionally gifted players can only manage once or twice in game he did 4 times from incredible distances , including one on the stroke of full time which would have sunk lesser teams. Anyone not fluent in Irish will still be able to make out the word 'privileged' around 1:45



There were times when the crowd were almost giddy in anticipation every time he stepped up to hit a free, including 2 100-yarders out on the wing, or a sideline cut. Not to be outdone was the WIT net minder who showed incredible levels of bravery and telepathy to pull this save off late in the game.


Individual performances shining out from the crowd will always be what inspires and delights. Right, got to get practicing on those cuts.

Sport - All- Ireland Football Final

Provincial rivals Cork and Kerry face off tomorrow in All-Ireland Gaelic Football final in Dublin's Croke Park. This is a novel pairing for an All-Ireland final as under the old system it would have been impossible for these teams to meet beyond the provincial final/Munster final.

Kerry are the aristocrats of gaelic football whose players typically have a natural grace and style on the ball with a DNA primed and steeled for All-Ireland glory. Cork, the greatest sporting county in Ireland, are the aristocrats of hurling but tomorrow the footballers have a chance at grabbing a lifetime of bragging rights over their neighbours. All the years of hurt and defeat in provincial games could be wiped clean with possession of the Sam Maguire cup.
Skills of Gaelic Football


All-Ireland day in hurling and football are biggest days in Irish sport. Croke park is the greatest field in a land of fields. And tomorrow the players of Cork and Kerry will step into that famed cauldron but only one team will emerge glorious and be forever remembered.
U2 - Croke Park

Art - Sports Photography

I wrote last week about how I found it so easy to appreciate photography. A good photo, like any piece of good art, will make an impression that will resonate for long after its first viewing. I have never needed to know where it's from, what it's about, or who took it to appreciate its brilliance. Nonetheless, some sports photos can make an even greater initial impression. This genre of photography is definitely more subjective. Captures of a classic sporting moment will resonate far deeper with someone who is aware of its background. Sports photos can create an instant rapport, a yearning for that frozen moment in time which still reverberates in the now.

When I was younger, I would read all I could about Muhammad Ali. I had a poster of this photo below on my bedroom wall.


Visually, the photo is stunning. The colours and shadows are subtly balanced and the two boxers are positioned so perfectly you would think it was posed. The image encapsulates so much about Ali - his strength, braggadocio, beauty, power. He is so utterly dominant over Liston who is floored and submissive. The crowd seem relatively emotionless and the surrounding darkness refocus your attention on centre stage - on Ali.

Despite its naked brutality, boxing seems to be the most photogenic and cinematic of all sports.


And no better subject than Ali.

The Irish sport of hurling also lends to striking images.

Ballet- Irish Style by Johnew on Flickr.com

Sport - Psychology

I recently found Martin C. Perry's outstanding website on sports psychology. One section of the site comments and analyses current sports events, from GAA to golf to tennis, from a psychological perspective.

He recently commented on Padraig Harrington's first Open Championship win.

It follows the revelation of Harrington's astute mental preparations. In the psychology of sport, it is wise to prepare precisely for the outcomes that you want.

Golf: Padraig Harrington - Future History

When assessing why a Open Championship play-off has been won by one player and not the other, you have to take into account age and experience. You have to factor in the quality of their game. Then and most importantly of all, you have to throw into the mix their mental application. How they would be thinking about themselves. Their last afternoon's work. Victory spurned. Their opponents. Any slivers of doubt and uncertainty would tilt the advantage away from them.

When we learn of Padraig Harrington's attitude to the play-off, it starts to become clear why he is now the Open Champion. When he went to the putting green, he looked at Bob Rotella and said, 'I'm good. When you see me out in the play-off, doing this with my hand (waving it in the air like a salute) you are going to think I'm waving, but I am raising the Claret Jug to the sky'.

This is the mental preparation of an Open Champion. He is preparing exactly for the outcome that he wants. He is establishing a mental blueprint. Creating future history. Like Muhammad Ali and his famous pre-fight predictions.

Harrington's raised arm to the crowd technique works on a number of levels. Firstly it puts him in the state or feeling of an Open Champion. A place beyond hope or maybe. Doubts removed. I am the Open Champion. This allows him to negotiate the play-off as the Open Champion in waiting. A place of strength.

Secondly the feeling becomes powered and enhanced by the ringing applause of the crowd. They are confirming him in his intention. Endorsing him. He is holding the Claret Jug aloft. They are applauding him. Should we be surprised that this outcome manifests itself twenty minutes later? As Marcus Aurelius said, 'You become what you think about'.

Sergio Garcia would have to be even better mentally prepared to win this battle. This play-off may not have come down to who was the best player. But who had done the smartest mental preparation. Padraig Harrington's thoroughness was worthy of a true champion.

I particularly like the line "You become what you think about". There is another great article on Meath's recent win over Galway in the football qualifiers. The principles apply for any team sport. It highlights the signs that show a team that doesn't really believe in itself.

GAA: Galway - In Search Of Trust

It's early in the first half of the third round All-Ireland football qualifier. Galway are enjoying plenty of possession against Meath. So far so good. It's not the possession thats the problem. It's what they do with it. Simple passes to colleagues are on. Play it - now! Keep the flow. Build momentum. Establish a rhythm. Give your colleague confidence. Show your faith in him. Build sequences. Create trust. Assess - Decide - Execute. That's the formula.

But no. Passes are delayed for no strategic advantage. Momentum is lost. Everything is safe. Too safe. Too cautious. For no gain. Poor decision making leading to poor outcomes. Shortly after, Meath score two decisive goals. They don't lack clarity of purpose.

These are classic signs of a team not in harmony with each other. Good teams play the simple ball. They find their rhythm. That tempo dictates the movement of the ball. It becomes contagious. Everyone wants to get involved. Trust builds trust. It feels electric. Watch Manchester United at their best. It's all rhythm and tempo. Football you can set to music.

When players are not given the simple pass, you have to ask why? Does the player with the ball not trust their colleague with possession? Is this not in the game plan? Have the team been over coached? Over coached so that they can't make a decision for themselves. This can happen. Or are players frightened of making a mistake. Scared of the risky ball. Playing in a culture where mistakes are not tolerated?

All of this can have an impact on decision making. A simple game is made difficult. The team know it. Uncertainty prevails. Everything becomes a struggle. Compounded by defeat. Only straight talk and honest appraisal can rid the team dynamic of these unwelcome ghosts.

Check this site out.

Sport - Bigger than this

Ever so often someone comes along and redefines the principles of a sport by being awesomely superior to everyone else. At their peak, they seem to become bigger than the very discipline they practice and are often deemed as a possible threat to the sport itself. Athletes such as Wilt Chamberlain, Sonny Liston, and Tiger Woods have all done this in the past. One of the athletes to do that in recent times was Mike Tyson.

His life story almost reads like a parody of a gutter-to-glory boxing story. Absent father, arrested 38 times by the age of 13 ,kept in juvenile detention centres until his boxing talent was noticed. He was then passed on to legendary boxing trainer Cus D'amato, who later became his legal guardian. D'amato became a father figure for him and helped develop (along with Kevin Rooney later)hand speed, accuracy, coordination, power, and timing along with his awesome natural strength.

Cus D'Amato


They also developed excellent defensive techniques with a Peek-a-Boo style where he slipped and weaved out of the way of the opponent's punches while closing the distance to deliver his own punches (you can really see this at 0:39 in the second clip).
Tyson's Training Routine


Tyson won 19 of his first 22 fights by knockout, 14 of which came in the first round. At the age of 20 years and 4 months became the youngest heavyweight champion in history.At that time he was around 222 lb (101 kg) with approximately 5.5% body fat, and 5 ft 11 in(180 cm).

Knock-outs


D'Amato died in November, 1985, relatively early into Tyson's professional career. I think it would be far too simplistic to say this was the genesis for the troubles Tyson was to experience later as his life and career progressed. He later became heavily influenced by Don King and as a result got rid of his white trainer, Rooney. Known to be a gentleman one day, but capable of committing reprehensible acts the next, it's hard to figure out if Tyson was just a lost ghetto kid that never replaced the father figure of D'Amato or had the raw savagery of his boxing overtaken his persona. Undoubtedly, he was led astray by the people he surrounded himself with , like King ("I found out that someone I believed was my surrogate father, my brother, my blood figure turns out to be the true Uncle Tom, the true nigger, the true sellout. He did more bad to black fighters than any white promoter ever in the history of boxing"). Whatever your opinion, it's hard not to resist looking at the eye of the human storm, a glimpse of the god-given destructive powers of man.

Final Countdown (Cheesy song - excellent vid)

Sport - Choking and Chokers

Some of us are blessed with more natural ability than others. That doesn't mean you have to be naturally good at something to excel. Ability can be drilled and trained. You may need to augment that ability with other factors such as heart and hunger, but it can be done. The problems start when you doubt that ability, natural or otherwise. When you have to think about something that you should be doing naturally is when the problems start. Here's a great article on choking.

The Art of Failure
By Malcolm Gladwell.

There was a moment, in the third and deciding set of the 1993 Wimbledon final, when Jana Novotna seemed invincible. She was leading 4-1 and serving at 40-30, meaning that she was one point from winning the game, and just five points from the most coveted championship in tennis. She had just hit a backhand to her opponent, Steffi Graf, that skimmed the net and landed so abruptly on the far side of the court that Graf could only watch, in flat- footed frustration. The stands at Center Court were packed. The Duke and Duchess of Kent were in their customary place in the royal box. Novotna was in white, poised and confident, her blond hair held back with a headband--and then something happened. She served the ball straight into the net. She stopped and steadied herself for the second serve--the toss, the arch of the back--but this time it was worse. Her swing seemed halfhearted, all arm and no legs and torso. Double fault. On the next point, she was slow to react to a high shot by Graf, and badly missed on a forehand volley. At game point, she hit an overhead straight into the net. Instead of 5-1, it was now 4-2. Graf to serve: an easy victory, 4-3. Novotna to serve. She wasn't tossing the ball high enough. Her head was down. Her movements had slowed markedly. She double-faulted once, twice, three times. Pulled wide by a Graf forehand, Novotna inexplicably hit a low, flat shot directly at Graf, instead of a high crosscourt forehand that would have given her time to get back into position: 4-4. Did she suddenly realize how terrifyingly close she was to victory? Did she remember that she had never won a major tournament before? Did she look across the net and see Steffi Graf--Steffi Graf!--the greatest player of her generation?

On the baseline, awaiting Graf's serve, Novotna was now visibly agitated, rocking back and forth, jumping up and down. She talked to herself under her breath. Her eyes darted around the court. Graf took the game at love; Novotna, moving as if in slow motion, did not win a single point: 5-4, Graf. On the sidelines, Novotna wiped her racquet and her face with a towel, and then each finger individually. It was her turn to serve. She missed a routine volley wide, shook her head, talked to herself. She missed her first serve, made the second, then, in the resulting rally, mis-hit a backhand so badly that it sailed off her racquet as if launched into flight. Novotna was unrecognizable, not an élite tennis player but a beginner again. She was crumbling under pressure, but exactly why was as baffling to her as it was to all those looking on. Isn't pressure supposed to bring out the best in us? We try harder. We concentrate harder. We get a boost of adrenaline. We care more about how well we perform. So what was happening to her?

At championship point, Novotna hit a low, cautious, and shallow lob to Graf. Graf answered with an unreturnable overhead smash, and, mercifully, it was over. Stunned, Novotna moved to the net. Graf kissed her twice. At the awards ceremony, the Duchess of Kent handed Novotna the runner-up's trophy, a small silver plate, and whispered something in her ear, and what Novotna had done finally caught up with her. There she was, sweaty and exhausted, looming over the delicate white-haired Duchess in her pearl necklace. The Duchess reached up and pulled her head down onto her shoulder, and Novotna started to sob.

Human beings sometimes falter under pressure. Pilots crash and divers drown. Under the glare of competition, basketball players cannot find the basket and golfers cannot find the pin. When that happens, we say variously that people have "panicked" or, to use the sports colloquialism, "choked." But what do those words mean? Both are pejoratives. To choke or panic is considered to be as bad as to quit. But are all forms of failure equal? And what do the forms in which we fail say about who we are and how we think?We live in an age obsessed with success, with documenting the myriad ways by which talented people overcome challenges and obstacles. There is as much to be learned, though, from documenting the myriad ways in which talented people sometimes fail.

"Choking" sounds like a vague and all-encompassing term, yet it describes a very specific kind of failure. For example, psychologists often use a primitive video game to test motor skills. They'll sit you in front of a computer with a screen that shows four boxes in a row, and a keyboard that has four corresponding buttons in a row. One at a time, x's start to appear in the boxes on the screen, and you are told that every time this happens you are to push the key corresponding to the box. According to Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, if you're told ahead of time about the pattern in which those x's will appear, your reaction time in hitting the right key will improve dramatically. You'll play the game very carefully for a few rounds, until you've learned the sequence, and then you'll get faster and faster. Willingham calls this "explicit learning." But suppose you're not told that the x's appear in a regular sequence, and even after playing the game for a while you're not aware that there is a pattern. You'll still get faster: you'll learn the sequence unconsciously. Willingham calls that "implicit learning"--learning that takes place outside of awareness. These two learning systems are quite separate, based in different parts of the brain. Willingham says that when you are first taught something--say, how to hit a backhand or an overhead forehand--you think it through in a very deliberate, mechanical manner. But as you get better the implicit system takes over: you start to hit a backhand fluidly, without thinking. The basal ganglia, where implicit learning partially resides, are concerned with force and timing, and when that system kicks in you begin to develop touch and accuracy, the ability to hit a drop shot or place a serve at a hundred miles per hour. "This is something that is going to happen gradually," Willingham says. "You hit several thousand forehands, after a while you may still be attending to it. But not very much. In the end, you don't really notice what your hand is doing at all."

Under conditions of stress, however, the explicit system sometimes takes over. That's what it means to choke. When Jana Novotna faltered at Wimbledon, it was because she began thinking about her shots again. She lost her fluidity, her touch. She double-faulted on her serves and mis-hit her overheads, the shots that demand the greatest sensitivity in force and timing. She seemed like a different person--playing with the slow, cautious deliberation of a beginner--because, in a sense, she was a beginner again: she was relying on a learning system that she hadn't used to hit serves and overhead forehands and volleys since she was first taught tennis, as a child. The same thing has happened to Chuck Knoblauch, the New York Yankees' second baseman, who inexplicably has had trouble throwing the ball to first base. Under the stress of playing in front of forty thousand fans at Yankee Stadium, Knoblauch finds himself reverting to explicit mode, throwing like a Little Leaguer again.



Which brings us to Mayo, a team that seem to ooze confidence at times but four times in ten years, 1996 to 2006, failed miserably when it mattered most, all-ireland day.

They lost after a reply in 1996 and seemed primed to win against Kerry a year later. They played poorly and came up against the most naturally talented footballer of recent times, Maurice Fitzgerald. Even gifted footballers couldn't train themselves to imitate this man.


Although, they're not that clear in this clip. I love the screams of disbelief around 3:05