Eve

Hello and welcome to another episode of Word on the Street.

We are back.

We weren't here last week.

It was Prague week because this day, last week, the Republic of Ireland national team were playing Czechia in our World Cup qualifier semi-final defeat on penalties.

I think we're not saying anything that nobody already knows.

It's been a week now.

Rachel, how are you feeling?

No, no.

I was in the breakfast show the next morning and that was maybe less than 12 hours, maybe eight hours after it.

And I was expecting a very cathartic experience and it wasn't.

But we've tried to have a bit of catharsis maybe today.

We decided to look at the penalties from a sports psychologist point of view.

So this is kind of a little special episode.

We've chatted to three people, performance psychology coach Rob Kelly, sports psychologist Dr. Aoife Quinn and friend of the show and former Ireland international Keith Tracy.

They got a wide ranging view, I suppose, on what it means to take a penalty in that sort of high pressure environment from the psychological side of it and from the player side of it.

And I mean, I can't wait for you all to listen to it because my takeaway from all of this is I could never have been a professional footballer and do what they do.

It sounds incredibly, I've taken penalties in my life before, never in any kind of situation like this.

And it's stressful enough on a good day.

So this is the 45th episode of World on the Street, which is a crazy thing to say.

And we're presenting you, yeah, with three points of view.