Eve

Is it the same kind of underlying practice when you're working with athletes at a different level?

Would, if you were working just as a hypothetical, a penalty shootout for a kind of an amateur football club versus the likes of the Irish national team, is the principle the same?

I'm interested in what you said there about kind of on the training pitch, these players could perhaps score, you know, any amount of penalties on the training pitch.

And then, of course, it is such a different environment when you're after playing 120 minutes of a match.

There's millions of people watching on the TV and then the stadium and then you're standing up and you have the weight of a country on your shoulders.

Because we've talked to many ex-professional footballers in the past week.

I'm asking them, you know, how worth it is it to practice penalties constantly in the lead-up to these tournaments?

Like, is it even worth it?

Some say no, you can't replicate that environment.

Some say yes, you need to be practicing so consistently.

But I suppose, from your point of view, what's the value in...

in the form of training you can do there?

Or is there more value in how you can train your mind for these events?

And how, when you yourself are coaching athletes through situations like this, what sort of methods are you using to ensure that they can get the best out of that moment?

Can you see in athletes that you've worked with throughout the years, whether that be rugby players or GAA players or players that aren't even on a team like golf or boxing, can you see improvements in a short space of time or when you're working with athletes, is it more of a long term project?

And when you're kind of working with athletes and you're going through, as you mentioned, like processes like sports hypnosis, this athlete is consciously choosing to work with a sports psychologist.

Is there still a little bit of resistance from some athletes involved?

to getting help for their mental well-being?

Or is this now such a huge part of this whole kind of elite sports that more and more athletes are kind of recognizing that to compete at the highest level, this is something that they need to be doing?

And I suppose just finally, because we need to let you go soon, but when you look at, say for example, a player who missed a penalty in a shootout of the importance that the Ireland one had, how is a recovery from such a huge event in someone's career?