Vienna

Vienna. A city with many a good memory for me. My parents lived there in the mid-noughties for the bones of four years and I got down there regularily enough. It ranks highly on my list of favourite cities. With that in mind, it was great to see it confirmed as one of the hosts of a Pan-Euro round this year.

All things considered, we head there in good shape. We had one drop out on Sunday but it still leaves us with 32 guys travelling and not a weekend transfer/ringer in sight. In five years I've never seen numbers like it for a tournament involving a flight and a day off work. Even for local tournaments, I could count on one hand the number of times we've had these kind of numbers.

In that group, we also have Mull and Ross who are injured but will manage the line on the day.

We learned a fair bit in Copenhagen and I referenced it in the post-tournament blog. We definitly made mistakes in the build up and on the day in terms of setting our game plan and adjusting where necessary. This is a fact of life and happens at every level.

In the Sunday Independent last weekend Kieran McGeeney put his hands up when talking about things he got wrong over the last couple of years. There is a time and a place to acknowledge things like that. In the high profile world of intercounty football, it can also help deflect the heat off the players.

Even in our context it is important. In Copenhagen, I was ok to take a chunk of the blame on my shoulders. The mood in the camp was good, the fitness was good. Those boxes were ticked but the most important one wasn't - lads clearly understanding their role.

That is a more complex thing to solve then it may seem. A player has many many roles in both attacking and defending situations, with and without the ball. Through exchanges with the lads I could identify over ten areas where we need to improve but you can't tackle everything at once.

With that in mind, we narrowed it down to a couple of key points in the last month. There is a temptation to move on and work on other things after a couple of sessions to 'freshen things up' but we stuck to our guns. Thursday will be our seventh session since Copenhagen with an in-house game bringing the number of gatherings to eight.

There is no need to bore you or benefit you with the details but we recognise a need to change our style of play and focus more on our strengths rather than protecting our weaknesses. We need to be more responsible individually and front up to the challenges we face, not relying on others to bail us out.

The plan is painfully simple but for the first time all year, it is has been beaten into lads over a consistent period.

We have ticked an important box that was left blank the last day, thus shifting the onus onto the players. Of course there will be calls to be made on the day but the better the plan is implemented by the players, the less challenging calls will have to be made.

It's win or bust at the weekend - real Championship.