Sport

John McEntee: Dublin's gym fiasco won’t alter thoroughbred focus

WHAT is it about the third week of January that makes it so miserable?

Well, it started off with Blue Monday – the most depressing day of the year.

We have psychologist Cliff Arnold to thank for coining this term. Come to think of it, we blame psychologists for a lot of things in the GAA.

Do you remember those New Year resolutions you faithfully promised to sustain – well, they have all been broken by now.

Already the gym membership seems a little too expensive.

Agreement to partake in a couch-to-5k challenge hosted by the local council on your doorstep is a jaunt too far. Commitments to trade chocolate bars for smoothies have been trashed.

It takes two minutes to blend fruit and veg and a similar time to clean up afterwards, but it only takes 10 seconds to fetch a bar from the larder.

For some reason we think our time is more precious at this time of year so the preference is to opt for the quick fix.

A recent TV programme went as far as saying fruit smoothies provide a sugar hit similar to a bottle of coke – evidence for the jar half-empty folk that smoothies may not be all that good for you after all.

Dublin GAA, with all its millions of euro investments from Croke Park and corporate Dublin, seem stingy this week.

Perhaps the players’ holiday has left a huge black hole in the county finances and someone came up with the brainwave to remove the gym equipment from the National Centre of Excellence at Abbotstown to be relocated in their Dublin-only gym.

I’m waiting on someone to come out and suggest savings had to be made to offset the cost of bringing partners and wives on the team holiday.

As a PR machine, Dublin is certainly scoring a few own goals.

It beggars belief that Dublin GAA would sanction such a move – sure their senior players have rarely used the facility since it was opened in April 2016.

This fact was widely quoted in the media last January and again this week.

Only they know why they’ve decided to relocate and remove all the gym equipment.

Many of you would follow GAA players on social media.

Their abject misery from training and playing in January is there to be seen.

The chore of training five nights per week or squeezing in irrelevant matches, one on top of the other, is bereft of inspiration.

For the top eight, the Championship proper is seven months away.

For the remaining teams it commences in four months.

Which begs the question, how long does it actually take for these elite athletes to get fit?

True inter-county footballers are never really out of shape. Weight gain tends to be muscle gain.

Their Body Mass Index (BMI) might flit between 8per cent and 14 per cent.

These guys live in gyms.

Membership is free.

Good habits are ingrained.

New Year resolutions are unnecessary as they live the good life anyway.

Their pre-season programme has a scientific basis. If boxers like Ricky Hatton could shed stones and get ready for a fight in six or eight weeks then so too can Gaelic footballers.

One thing that does require concentration and time is reacquainting oneself with the ball skills.

Even the naturally gifted lose that bit of sharpness during the off-season.

The less gifted take much longer to regain the skills.

This is where the focus of training ought to be.

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Peter Canavan deed gives hope to Aidan McAnespie family

SO what is there in this week’s news for the jar half-full people?

Well, the thing which stands out most for me is the increased publicity surrounding the 30th anniversary of the late Aidan McAnespie from Aughnacloy.

Aidan’s story is well known in GAA circles, particularly in the North.

In this paper, Peter Canavan (inset) urged the GAA to put pressure on the Irish government to release a report into the British Army killing of Aidan McAnespie.

Why is this a good news story?

Well it is proof that when all else fails, there is still support within the Ulster GAA family.

Former GAA president Peter Quinn has also thrown his considerable clout behind this request, which is a bold step and will be noticed at GAA HQ.

Some might say that both these men have gone out on a limb and are conflating sport and politics.

The killing in February 1988 represented a chilling attack by a British soldier on grassroots GAA, but aside from Aidan’s name being adopted by some Gaelic clubs, the GAA as an organisation has appeared to be absent in supporting the McAnespie family’s quest for justice.

Representation to the office of Uachtarán Na hÉireann and the taoiseach is an imperative first step, either formally or informally to get the wheels of change in motion.

In a year when the grassroots credentials of the GAA hierarchy are being questioned, this small step would speak volumes to thousands of people across this island, that the small person is not forgotten.

With my glass half-full, I’d drink to that.