SOCIETY
PURE SPORT
A new book on sports psychology hopes to straddle the worlds of academic
knowledge and practical application. Louise Holden speaks to one of its
authors, UCD Professor Aidan P. Moran
S MARK Williams stood up to take a crucial closing
A
shot against Ken Doherty in the final of the World
‘Every one of the top
Snooker Championship 2003, a studio microphone
picked up the strains of Why, Why, Why, Delilah?
20 golfers in the world,
Was it cockiness, inattention or sheer eccentricity
that brought a song to Williams’ lips as he closed in
on the world title? According to UCD Professor Aidan P. Moran,
for example, has a
it was none of the above: it was sports psychology in action.
“Top athletes work hard to ensure their performances are not
travelling sports
interrupted by distraction, loss of focus or nerves. Williams was
singing to block out any distractions that might hinder his path
psychologist who goes
to the championship.”
Moran and John Kremer have just published Pure Sport, a
unique take on the subject of sports psychology. While
everywhere with them’
bookshop shelves are brimming with pop psychology works for
golfers, amateur athletes and weekend footballers, and
university libraries house multiple theses on the psychology of
elite performance, publications that combine the two genres are works by examining positive psychology and finding routes to
hard to find. Moran and Kremer are well placed to straddle the emulate it. “In general, psychology focuses on the disordered or
academic and practical worlds of sports psychology as they are the damaged. With sports psychology, the focus is on what makes
both researchers and practitioners in the field. someone outstandingly good. Sound sports psychology is a two-
Moran is Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Director of way street between theory and practice. Where an athlete has
the Psychology Research Laboratory at the UCD School of discovered a mechanism that does not fit with the theory, but
Psychology. He has won international recognition for his works, that discovery should feed back into the theory.”
research on concentration, mental imagery and athletic Sports psychology has been around for many years, since
expertise. He is also a psychology consultant to many of Ireland’s Norman Triplett’s 1896 discovery of ‘social facilitation’ when
leading athletes and teams and is a former official psychologist observing cyclists. Athletes in cycling teams, Triplett noted, were
to the Irish Olympic squad. able to cycle faster than those alone. Since then, the field has
Kremer is a reader in Applied Psychology at Queen’s grown gradually to gain its current critical place in professional
University Belfast and he has been actively involved in sport and sport.
exercise psychology since the mid-1980s as a practitioner, “While there remain a few pockets of scepticism about sports
researcher and teacher. psychology, most top athletes and managers now use a sports
“This book is for everyone, from beginners to elite perform- psychologist in some capacity,” says Moran. “Every one of the
ers,” Moran says. “Because of the way it is put together, readers top 20 golfers in the world, for example, has a travelling sports
can draw on exercises, examples, theory and practice based on psychologist who goes everywhere with them.”
approaches that have been found to work in real sport.” With the growth in the area has come an explosion of self-
Sports psychology, unlike many branches of the discipline, help-style books for amateur and professional athletes, but
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PAGE FORTY EIGHT UCD CONNECTIONS
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