Why was this year different?

1 - Different voices

I knew early in the year that I was likely to be away for 2013. I wanted to enjoy the year and I needed to start planning for when I was gone. That meant getting more guys on board and comfortable with different jobs.

Early in the year, Diarmuid Laffan planned and took a lot of the preseason running.

From May onwards, when Ross got injured, he came on board to help run the sessions. This was probably the single biggest help to me.

Cormac Kirwan, an Irish Army man with a serious pedigree came in to help with the training during the summer. He had a big influence, especially in terms of showing lads what the expectation at training should be in terms of intensity.

Timmy, Mull and Johnny P started to do a lot of Collie B’s (who was also planning to step down) donkey work.

The lads didn’t know we were going to be leaving/stepping down until September but everything we were doing before that had an eye on next year.

It was also about getting them to take ownership of the whole thing. With ownership comes responsibility and with that comes greater care for something. It was bound to be worth something.

On tournament days, mainly towards the end of the year, myself, Ross and Timmy would agree who would talk when, so we could keep things fresh. We also used Laffan a lot.

Different voices, different impacts.

Maybe in summary, it was simpler than that. Maybe it was just that I chilled out a bit, listened more, delegated more and trusted more.

2 - Change of tact

We went from defend, survive, consolidate to a more risky plan of taking on lads man to man and trusting each other to do our jobs.

We went from a plan that gave lads plenty of places to hide. We used get numbers behind the ball and you were rarely in danger of getting skinned as someone was always close by to support. We were going to win shag all like that. There was a limited attacking element to that plan. It wasn't easy for lads to give it up though. They felt comfortable in that system and getting them out of their comfort zone was tough.

We had to make the change though and it was most apparent in Copenhagen. The players couldn't play to the system. It just didn't suit.

There was no great revolution. We simply told guys they needed to man up and be prepared to win the one on one duels on their own. The best example was against Guernsey in the Vienna final. Keary and Crusher were isolated in the full back line, with huge spaces in front of them. They weren't going to get any help and just had to get on with it.

For two months, we geared every single exercise at training towards man-to-man marking. It wasn't easy or comfortable but it was physical and intense. It was repetitive but we intentionally didn’t bring much variation to things.

In the end, if you don't rehearse, you won't perform. We rehearsed to death.

3 - Detailed preparation

For the last two tournaments we distributed a two page document to the players the week of the tournament.

The first laid out our tactics. This was plain and simple. There was one plan with a few minor tweaks to cater for certain situations. There was no plan B and we were up front about that. We had rehearsed one way how to play and to flip it on the day wasn't going to be possible. The lads knew how effective it was and knew if they stuck to it, we had our best chance of getting a reward.

The tweaks were a safety net and available to us if necessary but the principles would not change. Man to man, 1 v 1, win the battle.

There can be a tendency for guys to throw ideas out there when it’s not going your way in tournaments. It’s just noise though and if you think you can just turn one thing off and another thing on at the drop of a hat, you are kidding yourself. We killed those notions.

The second document detailed our opponents’ strengths and weaknesses. It also included how or who we would use to counter/expose them.

Why was this different? Because it spelled out what was expected of everyone.

4 – Buy in

We talked about this a lot.

The lads were very involved in deciding the tactics this year. I took the heat after Copenhagen for getting them wrong but that was just because I thought it would be easier to shake it off and move on. In reality we had decided together but I thought that was the fastest way to kill it.

Everyone got on the same page afterwards. Everyone realised that we had to choose a different, more ambitious direction and back it to its death. It didn’t always come easy. Some guys missed chunks of training and weren’t able to get up to speed as quickly as we would have liked but in the end, we got there.

The final round proved we had that buy in. We trailed in a number of games but not once did someone come into a team talk and try to reinvent the wheel or even slightly panic.

We just stuck to the plan.

5 – Bond

To be fair, it has never been a problem in the club. Leveraging it to its maximum is always the challenge though. I often felt we didn’t get enough value for it on the pitch.

This group (the entire panel, Championship and Shield) is particularly close. A lot of the lads live together or close by. Some work together. Nearly all socialise exclusively together. Lynchy is about the only one with a foot in the ‘alternative Irish’ camp.

That has its downside too. The lads did a fair lash of drinking this year and it contributed to a few fairly lacklustre Monday night training sessions. I bit my tongue more often than not but I had my concerns about the impact on their fitness.

There was something just a little bit tighter this year though. I think the sessions in Copenhagen, Vienna and Bratislava contributed massively to that too.

Did we leverage it in a different way? I guess it’s hard to say. If you saw Laffan’s ankle on Saturday, you would have told him head off to hospital. It was a wreck. He hobbled around most of the day as we battled through. He got strapped and togged again for the final and came on to play a very influential role, maybe not necessarily on the ball but his presence on the pitch was huge.

From my side, I can say for certain that when I was cramped up on the ground in the second half, all that was going through my head was I had to get up and just run, run and run some more and just get through it and make a contribution to the team.

Timmy, as only he could get away with, probably summed up the togetherness in this group best, ending his acceptance speech with a dollop of man love; “I love ye all” he roared! There is serious friendship in this bunch.

In the end, were all of the above so much different to last year? No, probably not. But we did move on and claw a few more inches in all the areas mentioned. In the end, those inches made all the difference.