IF YOU attend an inter-county training session in February, you will be normally greeted with the same sights no matter what county you are involved with.
Weary carcasses will drag themselves out of warm cars with every design of woolly hat imaginable as they trudge despondently towards the changing room where they will be in absolutely no hurry to get togged out. The physio room is bursting at the seams as slight strains have mysteriously increased to major injuries and simple colds have developed into full-bloodied pneumonia.
I know of certain players who spent more time on physio beds than they did on the training field for about three months of the year. I certainly wasn’t one of them as training was the heavenly pursuit of the week for a fitness guru like myself. With two weeks to go to the big day and the hurling final over, it is a very different story. Players arrive early for training and the physios are practically redundant, standing around talking to each other as all injuries have miraculously disappeared and five or six Lazarus-like players have declared full health and fitness.
Training for the next two weeks for the players fortunate enough to be playing in Croke Park is equivalent to Disney World for a child as you can’t wait to get there and it involves your every waking thought during the day at work because there is safety there among all the other people going through the exact same emotions as yourself.
You won’t win the match in these two weeks, but you can lose it by getting carried away with all the outside interference. For a few weeks you have graduated from being thon big-headed county bollox to near celebrity status which will rapidly dissipate a few weeks after the final again. It gives you a good grounding in life, I find.
New suits and gear will have been sorted and the media will be hovering around like buzzards looking their piece. But the biggest hassle of all will be selecting the 40 or so worthy recipients of those hallowed tickets that you have now been assigned. I can remember I was building a house at the time of our final and getting any work-men to appear was proving almost impossible – until about two weeks before the game when I turned up and it was like something out of BBC’S DIY SOS. About 40 tradesmen had descended on our house from everywhere in the somewhat deluded idea that there may be a spare ticket or two on the go. I certainly didn’t dispel the myth straight away.
Relatives that you haven’t seen in years, or more importantly haven’t seen at a game before, now make contact out of the blue and look at you with slight disgust as they have only secured a seat in the Canal End of all places. Even if their only other appearance at Croke Park was at a Garth Brooks concert in the era when he was allowed to play there. Managers will want their players cocooned away from the diversions and the spotlight. And while most players were happy to stay well away from all these outside interferences, I was different.
It would be fair to say that I wasn’t cut out of the same stone as ‘Geezer’ and McGrane who were totally averse to all the distractions surrounding the big game. I look back at it with an attitude that I would love to have been involved in all the giddy excitement that the parish and supporters were experiencing.
Every player will over-think and over-analyse their own performance to death in the next week or so and there will be the inevitable high as you imagine yourself in the stand at Croke Park triumphantly lifting aloft the most precious cup imaginable. Or the bouts of doubt where you think of standing in the middle of the field while the winning captain asks for three cheers for the losers.
As a goalkeeper, I had my moments of daring to dream of it being a two-point game in our favour. Then I would save a last minute penalty from Dara O Cinneide and be carried out of Croke Park like a Roman Gladiator. There were also the dark moments where I’d imagine a mistake by myself would gift Kerry their millionth All-Ireland title and, from that day on when I walked into a room, it would fall silent with people shuffling their feet and looking at the ground.
Both Dublin and Mayo will probably not be feeling the giddy anticipation of first-time finalists as they have travelled this journey so many times. Yet, mentally, they are on two different planes as Dublin will be just trying to recreate a formula that has reaped so much success, while Mayo are trying to produce a performance on the big day that has so far eluded them, leaving them open to all kinds of negative labelling.
Tickets, suits and media nights are an unwanted distraction as they try to make the much-needed breakthrough. Judging by both semi-final displays, it will be some accomplishment as they will enter this game as substantial underdogs. They might have gained some much-needed inspiration from a Tipperary team that turned the tables so emphatically on Kilkenny, the aristocrats of hurling.
IF ANYONE wants to watch some past players who made the trip to Croke Park on All-Ireland final day then Donaghmore might be the place to be on Saturday night as a very special Tyrone legends selection will pit their wits against Donaghmore select in aid of Cookstown and Dungannon Down’s Syndrome Support Group and Down’s and Proud Lurgan which is of course a charity which is very close to my heart.
The legendary duo of Cush and Canavan will once again be the star attractions in opposing camps. And even though they are both past their best, it might take minimal contact to knock them over at their age now, so it’s pretty much just like their playing days.
So make your way to Donaghmore and enjoy a night of huge entertainment and support the fundraising efforts of Gerard and Avril O’Neill and the undoubted star attraction of the whole night – their daughter Hollie – who continues to inspire all who know her.
