For somebody living in Dublin there are, in my view, few things better than getting away to Valentia island. For a start, there are few longer drives for a Dublin jackeen. You might get geographically further away by heading off by airplane but spending a solid four or five hours on the road to arrive to rain and gales, the slates clapping and the fire on… that’s the way to do it. It’s fend for yourself time and sod the elements – just wear the right clothes, accept that you’ll get soaked, and cold, and enjoy the many benefits of warming each other up.

Time away is to give oneself a wonderful sense of space. So it seemed an appropriate time to roll out something that I’ve been thinking about for some time. A column for the Irish Times on the importance of space. Not sure when I’ll ever write another piece featuring Dennis Bergkamp, Isaac Stern and the Japanese concept of “ma”. So fill yer boots.

Sport and music are easy bedfellows. Theme tunes to Match of the Day, BBC Test Match Special and The Sunday Game are etched in the collective memory, associated with dark winter nights or warm, sunny garden days.

The joy of hearing that brass band kick in at 5pm on Saturday via crackly BBC radio medium wave, signalling the imminent arrival of James Alexander Gordon’s voice to read out the day’s football results. Sweet agony, as a sudden change in his cadence while getting to your team’s scoreline might signal joy, or doom.

Music can be a great aid for sportspeople, both in terms of preparation and motivation. One might also consider the possibility of music as non-pharmaceutical performance aid.

The “central governor” theory, first put forward by Tim Noakes, promotes the concept of physical exhaustion not being down to physiological tiredness alone but also about the control of mental fatigue.

What if you can distract the brain from sending signals to the nervous system to say that the body is feeling tired? More than one earbud-wearing road runner might attest to the value of getting lost in music as the pavement is pounded underfoot.

Music is everywhere, including in the vocabulary of sport. Rhythm is something associated with smooth, controlled play; a team might have been said to operate with a fast tempo, or slow. But that tempo is not simply about the speed of events; it is also about what happens between them. The silences. The gaps in time and space.

The problem with space is that in these analytical, data-gathering sporting times it can be hard to measure. It requires measurement of not only geography but time…

Read More: http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/sports-analysis-creating-space-the-name-of-the-game-1.2284842