I’d imagine a sports psychologist is likely to increase your pleasure in playing the game if they do their job right?
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the psychologists job is to make you think it’s enjoyable
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I’d imagine they are employed by county boards because, well, sure they have wan over there.
I doubt their remit is to make sport more enjoyable.
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Course they couldn’t.
The basic skills like kicking the ball over the bar are dying out of the game.
I’d put more focus on improving that than all these spoofer trainer types.
Id say more players are better at kicking points than in the past. More two footed players too. It’s just the fitness levels and tactics make it harder to do so. (I wonder are point scoring totals even down overall)
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I do think that the hand passing element needs to be looked at. It is making possession retention much easier without much skill being required. I am loathed to introduce another rule for referees to deal with but some curtailment on the number of hand passes in a row is really called for in my view.
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Forget not, hiring a sports psychologist got Donegal from ranked 23rd in the country to their 2nd ever All Ireland in the space of two years. There’s value if it’s done right.
Well, if you think that’s all there was to it.
No handpassing in your own half would be interesting.
The games on tg gold are a good reality check. If you think lads were better at kicking points in the past, you are very mistaken.
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I do. Maybe the mucksavages down your way are too mentally rigid to embrace change. Thankfully, our lads were not.
I’m more talking about 10-15 years ago. We’d great Kerry, Tyrone and then Dublin plus mayo teams.
Even the current Dublin team isn’t a patch on the six in a row team.
The pick of Ulster would struggle to match the great Tyrone team.
How would they be? They are about five years older.
My point is for all the money invested in coaching and youth teams the standard is pretty crap across both codes in the gaa.
Even the current Kerry team outside of Clifford is very average.
Mayo, Donegal, cork, Tyrone and few other major counties have fallen off a cliff in recent years. The standard of player just isn’t there.
In hurling the big three have never been weaker at the same time arguably and If you were to pick their best players they are nearly all 30 plus. Waterford/Wexford would barely field a good team between them.
Dublin/Limerick are carrying the can in both codes but the majority of their sides are build around fellas who’ve been around for five plus years.
There is no way all these coaches or whatever they call themselves have proven to be value for money.
Dublin/Kerry have won well over half of all football titles and this will continue to be the way due to population and tradition.
Cork, Tipp and Kilkenny will win 3/4 of the hurling titles due to player pool & tradition and if you include Limericks new found cash/structures that will be 80%+.
The standard of the current Kerry compared to the 00s team who didn’t get it all their own way is chalk and cheese.
The standard is not good.
Tipp, cork and kk are in dire straits hurling wise.
The standard of club hurling in cork is woeful by all accounts too.
Somebody is making a killing off all this expert coaching.
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@endakenny for all the talk about limericks money I watched the 2018 final followed directly by the 2023 final.
I think 13 started both. Wod and Peter Casey came on in 2018.
Honestly if you didn’t know better you’d think the 2023 side was a completely set of players. The difference was insane in pretty much every aspect of the game.
If Limerick 23 meet Limerick 18; the 18 side wouldn’t keep it picked out to the current team.
Maybe it’s all down to kinnerk and kiely but I don’t see how it’s money anyway.
Limerick are definitely the exception rather than the rule at the moment.
The extent to which the top teams in both Gaelic football and hurling seem to be heavily relying on lads around 30 or older is mad.
In football, Dublin are still relying on the older lads. Galway are relying on Comer, Walsh and Conroy. Derry are relying on Rodgers and McKaigue, Armagh on Soupy, Grugan, Murnin, Morgan, Mayo on the remnants of the great team, Donegal seem lost without Michael Murphy.
In hurling, Clare are relying on Kelly, O’Donnell, McInerney, Conlon, Cork on Horgan and Harnedy, Tipp on Noel McGrath, Kilkenny on TJ Reid and Walter Walsh. Shorn of Canning, Galway are done for.
I can scarcely think of a genuine frontline player under the age of 24 for any inter-county team in football or hurling at the moment. Who is there? Butler and Cody for Kilkenny? Rodgers for Clare? Joyce for Cork? Lee Gannon for Dublin maybe.
There just seems to be very few real stars on the horizon, it seems like a lost generation.
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I think it’s pretty mental seeing the Irish rugby team unashamedly and deservedly having a lock of beers between games in the world cup and GAA teams that can’t even win a championship match on booze bans for nearly half the year. Naming dummy teams, and giving interviews of rolling cliches from start to finish with complete terror that the opposition might be given something to put on the wall of the dressing room. This tells me that most current GAA managers have an incredibly low opinion of their own and/or their players abilities.
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