Doyle gets shooting help from rugby ace O’Gara

NOT for the first time in his career, Kildare’s John Doyle is the leading scorer in the All-Ireland Football Championship, but this year he’s had one of the country’s greatest ever kickers helping him out.

Ireland and Munster out-half Ronan O’Gara spent most of the summer on an international tour of the Southern Hemisphere but before departing for New Zealand, and before Kildare began this year’s championship campaign, he was on hand for a specialist place-kicking training session with Kildare’s dead ball specialist.

O’Gara, no stranger to top-scorer lists, would surely approve of Doyle’s return in 2010 – so far he’s clocked up 1-35, which is six points better than Dublin’s Bernard Brogan (2-26) in second place. Of that total, 25 points have come from frees, although Doyle’s biggest tally came in Kildare’s only defeat of the campaign so far – 0-9 (7 frees) – when they lost out to Louth in the first round of the Leinster championship by 1-22 to 1-16.