Might as well since I've put this up for the fans. Pics can be found at http://www.essence-of-light.com/eagles/jets, although if you don't follow the teams, them possibly the captions will be a bit curious!
Although, with the given DOF in these shots, manual focus would be very useable. But then I'm getting lazy! I will be on manual focus tomorrow though probably.
Autofocus needs getting used to as much as the next aspect of your camera. Other than that it's just practice and more practice. The more familiar you are with you camera, the more time you spend with it up to your eye level, the more chance you have of getting good sports pics.
The standard of competition helps as well. The better the sportsmen, the better the resulting pictures usually.