Road to Redemption

With the European Institutions on an extended Easter break, the temptation would have been to call a halt to last Thursday night’s training plans and resume this week. However, with a packed schedule coming up, everyone was eager to train.
I mentioned that we had returned to the Parc but we had kept the BSB booking in case the light wasn’t yet good enough to train. So with two venues at our disposal, we exploited the opportunity.

Our hurlers trained in town whilst the footballers headed for a session in the BSB. I’m very much anti asking lads to train for two teams on one night. It makes no sense to me for fellas to get up to a peak activity level in one session and then finish that and move into a warm-up for the next session, before moving towards peak again. I’m no sports scientist but I’m pretty sure that’s not advisable. It used to piss me off when I had to do it so I will do it as little as possible this year.

That’s why we split the group between two venues. It was a designated hurling priority night so any dual player was obliged to hurl, which included me. Obviously that meant we needed a trainer for the football so I called on Rochey, who is already deputising on the lad’s ‘coaching team’.

You may remember I slated the same individual on occassion last year for many reasons. The first was his inability to manage his personal life which meant on one occassion we were playing a tournament in Den Haag and he was half an hour down the road with his girlfriend. On the same day Micheal’s Italian girlfriend was visiting and she spent the entire day watching him play football.

The second irritant was his dip in interest. He danced around different excuses the entire year and was very poor on communicating to me directly. It was the girls who used to relay his moods back to me and my frustartion came to a head when Colin Byrne spotted him in the window of some of our friends' appartment eating Tiramasu when he should have been on his way to training with Colin.

Still, he remained a committed player once he crossed the line but his season would end unfortunately when he tore his cruciate in the final tournament of the year. Based on last year’s committment, there was a danger he may drift off the scene as he recovers from injury this year, but I had other plans.

Rochey has good pedigree and when he trains, he trains hard be it in football, hurling or his preferred sport of cycling. The lads respect him and he has a serious enough head on him, when the hair is cut at least. In that sense it was a no brainer to get him involved with training. I was surprised at his willingness initially. There was no need for a declaration of committment just an indication that he was willing to help out.

There is no big hint of a revolt in our camp at the moment but the benefit of having a new voice on the scene was instantly evident. The year started well with lads rekindling the enthusiasim they had before and more lads arriving and buying into it. Last Saturday in Amsterdam it was especially useful as he rotated the squad and offered a different point of view on team selection. On Thursday night at training he took my plan and improvised on it, bringing different skills into it. We all learn from eachother so I find it great he does that.

His girlfriend Ciara arrived in for the weekend the same night and was understanding enough to get the ‘ 21’ in from the airport so Phil could fulfill his training duties. If only he had realised how understanding she was last year!! His reformation is well and truly underway and his impact will hopefully soon be reflected with some silverware.

Who would have thought this time last year that Rochey would be assisting training and Eoin Sheanon would be captain. God bless the open mind!!