Sport

Danny Hughes: No pain, no gain in gaelic games

All-Ireland Football-winning captain Peter Canavan is carried across the Croke Park pitch by Tyrone supporters.
All-Ireland Football-winning captain Peter Canavan is carried across the Croke Park pitch by Tyrone supporters. All-Ireland Football-winning captain Peter Canavan is carried across the Croke Park pitch by Tyrone supporters.

Many supporters will question the merit of starting the All-Ireland Championship in either New York or London.

However, if you have found yourself living there temporarily or permanently, the fixture and occasion is the highlight of their year.

Regrettably, I never took up the invitation to play Stateside for the summer.

Retrospectively, I never played anywhere outside these isles (except for a Railway Cup game).

Even when exiting the All-Ireland, I had the club to consider and in my early 20’s Chartered Accounting exams to prepare for.

I was invited to play in a tournament in Australia in September 2011, and initially I accepted it and with my flights and accommodation paid for, and after a few games I was to be afforded an extra two weeks to travel and enjoy Oz life.

It was a ‘no brainer’.

I had no idea at the time of saying ‘yes’ to this but I was to be called into the trial squad for the Compromise Rules series and having not been invited the year before despite the fact that I had a better season, I then had a difficult enough decision to make.

Do I head to Australia to a tournament or throw my lot into the mix for Ireland and the Compromise Rules squad?

In the end, the opportunity to pull on an Irish Jersey was too attractive and I ended up not taking up the certainty of a trip ‘Down Under’.

In the end, I ended up injured early in the trial process, missed some training in the process and failed to make the initial 15 players primarily panel.

I nearly took this as a personal slight by their management and instead of knuckling down and continuing in the process (as another eight places remained), an approach I had taken my entire football career, I just quit the squad.

When I look back on it now, the frustration with my life and football in general at that time was beginning to rear its ugly head.

Anyway, do I regret not taking up the opportunity to go and experience the football in New York, Boston or San Francisco?

Do I regret not going to play in Australia at that time in 2011 – regardless of the status of the competition?

Yes.

It was a break that I probably needed at the time, physically and mentally speaking.

Fortunately, for many, the GAA is now a worldwide organisation with club teams in the Middle East, Far East and the East and West Coast of America.

You will find Irish diaspora in the highest and lowest points in the world.

Should you emigrate, it would be much harder to just merge into your local surroundings without the GAA.

The Irish have managed to export and carve out GAA clubs, creating communities and facilitating new and lifelong friendships to individuals and families who would otherwise struggle to adapt into their new surroundings.

These people take their football and hurling seriously.

My brother found himself working in London after the banking crisis of 2008 and initially he found the going very difficult.

After joining Tir Chonail Gaels, he managed to win a Senior Championship (something not achieved by our club Saval) and played with London in the All-Ireland Championship.

He was even privileged to mark yours truly in a qualifier game.

Yes, he received a lesson that day but everyone has those games sometimes!

My approach to football is a very serious one.

I always felt that I had to have my foot on the accelerator throughout my footballing career.

To stay in the first 15 of any team at inter-county level requires a relentless approach in my eyes.

When you realise the logistics involved in organising matches and training for the players of New York and London, you begin to appreciate that the commitment we experience on this island might not be just as painful.

The commitment of players abroad is just as relentless and in many cases much more painful.

The top players in any team understand that pain and suffering are a necessary part of getting fit and being the best possible version of themselves.

For players of Gaelic Football and Hurling, this involves different things.

For some, it is travelling two hours across London in rush hour to tog out for training or for others it may involve taking numerous trains and subways to Gaelic Park in the Bronx, New York.

Jürgen Klopp famously said of Daniel Sturridge when quizzed about his unavailability for another game, that he needed to decipher between ‘pain’ and ‘real pain’.

The message to Sturridge was clear.

Klopp was basically saying ‘harden up’.

He was of course referring to physical pain.

Listen, there are soft players in every squad.

The player guaranteed to be first on the physio table and forever carrying a ‘tweak’.

They can often be found to pull out in the warm-up to the game should they consider themselves not 100 per cent fit.

I do not think it is possible to go into a game without carrying some kind of knock or injury.

In my experience, there is a certain element of playing through it (within reason).

For a moment, think of the lengths Peter Canavan went to in order to get himself ready for the 2003 All-Ireland final having severely injured his ankle in a match prior to the game.

Injections and intensive physiotherapy were minor undertakings in the grand scheme of things.

Starting that match in 2003 was an important message to Armagh at the time, as was returning onto the field to finish the game in the latter stages.

Canavan set aside any potential personal impact of playing poorly in perhaps the biggest match of his life (because of the impact the injury would have on his own personal performance).

It was his leadership and the symbolism of having such an icon on the field that meant much more to the Tyrone management, players and their supporters.

The personal performance was secondary to a winning result.

In Canavan’s case, this is selflessness personified.

Canavan was one of the greatest players to have played the game.

Players such as Canavan and players of the ilk of Mickey Linden and Greg Blaney knew that real suffering and pain was a necessary consequence of playing at the top level.

It was necessary in order to achieve success.

With the Championship now on us, with the stakes high, you might not find the ‘harden up’ approach in the coaching manual.

But in the right context, it is worth using in many different contexts.

Then again, if you have to, it may already be too late.

I know one thing for sure; you never had to use it on Canavan.