TOM DEMPSEY
Young guns shouldn’t take home support for granted!
I HAVE conducted a recent (if somewhat imaginary) survey, and the results which will be published over the next week are quite staggering.
Over 80% of single inter-county players are spoiled by their mother.
A further sub-analysis confirmed that the figures remain consistent for club players also.
I was a young 29-year-old inter-county player back in 1994 when marriage took me away from the homestead for the very first time.
As was the norm about that time, I kept myself fit during the winter playing with Kilmuckridge side St. Joseph’s in the local soccer league, and to this day I don’t think there was anything more enjoyable than lining out with ‘The Joeys’.
There were so many wonderful people involved in creating a lovely influence and culture in the club, none more so than the late Pat Farrell, John ‘Busby’ Hammel and Seán Bolger to name but a few.
Anyway, I had planned to meet my wife of a couple of months in my home place after our 11 a.m. kickoff, and arrived up covered head to toe in muck.
There were no showers in Grove Park that time (how times have changed). I was sitting in the parlour (that’s where we brought people if we still needed to impress them) when my mother arrived up to say the water was ready for a shower, and to leave my dirty gear in the wash basket and my boots outside to be cleaned.
I disappeared for an hour and on arriving back was treated to the welcome sight of my dinner on the table (just in case I hadn’t had a proper meal of late).
In the car on the way home, my bemused wife turned to me and said with a wry smile, ‘You’re in for some fright’.
So, for all players, particularly the young ones starting out, be appreciative and don’t take the home support for granted.
I notice that in our present state of inactivity, newspapers and social media have been a hive of activity in looking at past eras and games, and picking best teams with different parameters attributed.
I have always been a bit wary of picking my best Wexford or overall team as I find it very difficult to judge players against each other when they have played in different eras, although it is very enjoyable to read and discuss the differing opinions on players.
The two seismic changes in our game have, for me, come firstly in the mid-nineties where fitness levels and psychological preparation moved to new levels.
This is continuing to the present day and the question of how sustainable modern levels of preparation are.
When I started with Wexford, the first after-training stop on the way home was the Bus Stop shop to purchase our Mars bar, can of Coke, 99 and bag of Tayto cheese and onion for the long trip home.
From the Griffin era (which is now 25 years ago), this would not be tolerated. Fitness just started to explode and, in the season leading up to our 1996 success, we trained 167 times in 300 nights.
The early-morning sessions (6 a.m.) were given birth to around that time and, prior to this, you had a better chance of catching some of us going home rather than getting up that early in the morning.
Psychologists were introduced also, and we were very lucky that we had the best in Niamh Fitzpatrick, while intense statistical scrutiny on every player became a feature of team meetings throughout the country.
Prior to this, analysis of games was very much centred on gut feeling and the educated eye and, in many cases, there was nothing wrong with that either.
The next big change in my lifetime was partly brought about by Donal O’Grady’s Cork team of the early 2000s where a possession and running game seemed to be the way forward to achieve the preferred results.
This was interrupted somewhat by Brian Cody’s masterclass of 2006 which used intensity and directness to restore the old order, but we seem to have returned to this style of holding the ball and working through the lines in the past couple of years which really has changed the game as we know it.
Tipp have a nice mixture of the new and old, but I would challenge anyone to say that the game is not far removed from what I was brought up with in the ’70s. Allied to this, equipment, hurls and balls are of a completely different quality.
Given the multitude of changes, it would be very difficult for me then to judge the merits of, say, present star Conor McDonald as opposed to a player of an era maybe 40 years back, despite the enjoyment in trying.
This is not to discourage anyone from trying, though, as I for one really enjoy discussing the merits of the different nominations.
When thinking of great eras, I was always drawn to my formative years and the great Wexford versus Kilkenny battles of the ’70s, with Keher, ‘Chunky’, Pat Lawlor and Mick Crotty being amongst my favourites from the enemy.
All our own were incredible players during that period but, when looking at some of the selections of greatest-ever teams, it surprises me that Colm Doran, whom I studied closely over the years, isn’t more prominent in the selections as he had few peers in the art of defending. I could mention so many more, but then that’s the beauty of opinions.
Keep safe, keep well, and keep the arguments and discussions going. Up Wexford.