Hi Warren,
I like some of your action shots, especially the first 3. You are putting in the effort. (I'd love to know how you market and deliver the shots).
The last shot I would hold back unless you had no others of the players. As I said previously, and not being a professional sports shooter, but just one concenred with managing to get the shot, I'd rather shoot wide and crop than to exclude half the ball or an important limb, without which a great shot is ruined.
We are way beyond the days when every pixel mattered. What counts here is not wasting the shot.
Now guys like Nill track action like lions track the one animal in the herd they are about to kill. The aim and timing is great, the focus just right and the make it.
Otherwise hunting lions and photgraphers that frame closely come home with less than they hoped for.
The problem is that the 1.6 factor in the 30 D alread gives a lens capture equivalent of 136mm and this does seem to be a vicious chooper-off of limbs and balls.
So do you have a short focal length lens? A 50 1.8 is a bargain. I know it is sports sacrilage, but you could get all the action then crop to taste.
What do you think?
Asher