Many Thanks everyone for your responses so far. Very much appreciated and some interesting points made.
Firstly, in response to @kubeek - it is interesting about your comment about measuring the magnitude of the total acceleration - i.e. the acceleration in the direction in which the ball is travelling. If I could use a single axis accelerometer to measure this value and combine this with some other measuring device to give me the launch angles that would give me the translational accelerations in all 3 axis I require. Still need to figure out the rotational values though.
@Sceadwian - Your suggestion of using 2 xyz axis accelerometers is interesting - are you suggesting that with this configuration you could measure both the translational acceleration and the rotational speed? You are right about the sensors circuitry needing to be able to handle the forces involved. Accelerometers come with 2 ratings, firstly a 'measurement' rating and secondly a 'survivability' rating. I guess it is just a case of choosing one with the necessary ratings that would handle the forces involved in kicking a football. I have even come across an accelerometer the measures 60,000g with a shock survivability of 100,000g!!! As far as any other circuitry or components (e.g. RF Transmitter, Power supply etc..) I am not sure how this is rated or affected by acceleration/shock forces.
@strantor - Again, a valid comment regarding the specific characteristics. From my research on accelerometers, I have found that the accelerometer should weigh at least 1 magnitude
less than the object it is measuring. In this case, the complete measurement system would need to meet these requirements.
@kubeek, @Sceadwian & @Menticol - All your comments about using a camera system are very interesting. Using a single camera, is it possible to obtain the 3 translational velocities along with the spin rate and angle? I am fortunate enough to have a video camera already which as a 60fps recording mode. Would this be suitable with the correct motion tracking software?
With regard to the predicting in real-time, I envisage the the data being sent from the ball back to a PC and then processed (I already have a 4th order Runge-Kutta Spreadsheet set up to perform all the necessary calculations which is almost instantaneous) to produce a graphical representation of the ball flight.
Again many thanks for all your feedback. Keep the suggestions coming.