Kildare have been among the most impressive performers of the Championship thus far: while their defence has been fine - they've conceded 1-20 in two games thus far - their attack has been scorching, hitting Laois for 1-21 and Meath for 2-16 in a couple of Tullamore turkey-shoots.
The Lilywhites are beginning to flourish in the second year of Cian O'Neill's reign, and last night we earned an insight into some of his methods on RTE's new four-part look at the changes in Gaelic games, in GAA Nua.
The show went behind the scenes at Kildare training, and revealed the novel approach O'Neill takes to training, in order to improve his player's skills.
The players sometimes train while wearing "occlusion goggles", which partly obscures their vision. O'Neill explained their benefit to Dara Ó Cinnéide:
We're always looking for those marginal gains. We use ancillary equipment all of the time, to improve different skills. Take, for example, occlusion goggles. These are fascinating tools that we use to improve visual awareness, spatial awareness, anticipation of the ball.
Because they occlude the lower portion of your vision, a lot of it is in relation to developing the kick-pass, the hand-pass, a ball is coming to you, picking it off the ground.
Because you can't see the last three or four metres of that, and you can't see when the ball is striking your foot, it enhances the player's ability to do that under pressure, and at speed, when they are not wearing the goggles in competition.
Here are a few screengrabs to illustrate their use:
Host Dara Ó Cinnéide spoke to Balls yesterday about the show, which can be read here.
