REBEL RISING
Best practice makes perfect for Cork teams under high performance manager Aidan O’Connell
‘WE CAN’T LOSE ANY
MORE GROUND TO OUR RIVALS’
AIDAN O’CONNELL spoke with the certainty of a man who could have spent his life immersed in the old glories of Cork GAA. ‘Winning is what counts here if you want to leave a legacy, given our history in Cork,’ he said.
And historically, that is true. Winning was for decades assumed by Cork fans, especially on hurling final day.
With 30 Liam MacCarthy Cup triumphs, the county is second behind Kilkenny’s 36 on the list of Championship winners. Their comparatively modest football haul of seven wins still places them fourth in the rank of overall winners.
Success was as central to the story of Cork GAA as the blood and bandages. Supporters have to delve deeper into the past for that winning feeling now, though.
It is 14 years since they last won a senior hurling title, and six since they last made a final. Nine summers have come and gone since they were the best football team in Ireland.
It was only this year, though, that decisive moves were made to address their slip towards irrelevance. And that is what Cork were in danger of becoming, as Kilkenny, Galway, Limerick and Tipperary all reshaped hurling to varying degrees.
In football, meanwhile, Cork went from being the most impressive physical side in the game, a force that would not be denied, to drifting way off the level set by the side that succeeded them as champions in 2011, Dublin. And that is where O’Connell rejoins this tale. He was chosen in August to be Cork’s first high performance manager.
It’s a title that is simultaneously impressive and indistinct, which is unsurprising given the newness of the concept in Gaelic games.
‘It’s (my job) to bring best practices around strength and conditioning, which is my forte, but also medical, video analysis, and then also health, in terms of physical health and keeping players on the pitch, but also mental health as well.
‘You can easily have a platinum version of the professional game. People do it all the time in amateur sports at Olympic level. If people are pulling together, this can happen.’
O’Connell is a Cork native who filled the job with a significant pedigree with the county. He was strength and conditioning coach with the senior footballers under Conor Counihan between 2008 and 2012, a span that encompasses their last football title, of course.
His more substantial experience was gained over 17 years with Munster rugby.
That immersion in a professional environment with a history of achievement, as well as the past association with Cork GAA, made his candidature irresistible.
The interview board that recommended the appointment of O’Connell was high pedigree. It consisted of the county CEO Kevin O’Donovan, Cian O’Neill, Brian Cuthbert, Kieran Kingston, and Doug Howlett, the former New Zealand and Munster rugby star who worked with the county hurlers in 2019.
In a sign of the desire for connectedness that underlines much of the change in Cork GAA in the second part of this year, O’Neill has, since the appointment of O’Connell, joined the footballers as coach for next year, while Kingston has returned as the manager of the senior hurlers.
These were part of a raft of managerial changes in hurling unprecedented in the county, and indeed rare in any leading football or hurling unit in living memory.
On the one day at the start of October, Kingston’s decision to come back was made official at a press conference in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, as well as the installation of Pat Ryan with the Under 20s, Noel Furlong at U16 level and, the most eye-catching news, the arrival of Dónal Óg Cusack as manager of the county’s U20 hurlers.
This was a vivid symbol of Cork’s new age, since the appointment of O’Donovan as successor to Frank Murphy a year ago.
Cusack, the man most identified with the players during their bitter series of disputes with the longstanding establishment through the 2000s, was now being reabsorbed into the official story of Cork GAA.
That two other personifications of Cork’s relevance and defiance in that era, Seán Óg Ó hAilpín and Tom Kenny, were joining him as selectors heightened the feeling of change.
The news of O’Neill joining Ronan McCarthy’s management set-up was not as dramatic, but it is significant, too. Despite his patchy record with Kildare, O’Neill brings enormous experience, especially from All-Ireland-winning campaigns with the Tipperary hurlers and the Kerry footballers, as well as a spell with the Mayo footballers.
Another notable feature of the new structures built around the games in Cork is the funding of O’Connell’s salary; half of the cost will be borne by the supporters’ body, Cáirde Chorcaí.
At a time when the subject of fundraising is causing tremors in Mayo, this is an example of the power of a recognised fundraising body operating in concert with a county board. On the cold, clear morning that the hurling overhaul was unveiled in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, O’Connell was not high on a billing headed by Cusack and Kingston.
He, though, is the man who will be central to the designs of managers in both codes. If Cork are to rise again, then Aidan O’Connell will be integral to the recovery.
‘I’ll be an overseer,’ he said. ‘I’ll work with the different management teams, support them, get best practice and build the team behind the team, for all these different teams.
‘And then I’ll challenge them and hold them accountable so that our practices are at the level needed from that development, all the way up to senior age grade.
‘It will be different, but I’m excited and there will be a lot of contrasts.
‘Something exciting for me is that in professional sport you can be cocooned. You are getting ideas from other professional sports and from industry, but I’m working with elite coaches now who are teachers, who are in the corporate world, and so who can bring other experiences into their coaching as well.
‘It’s a good opportunity for me to learn from these elite coaches as well, but primarily I’ll be working alongside them and building their support team.’
December was traditionally the month of pain in GAA. It was on dark evenings and even darker mornings that squads assembled for the running designed to sustain them on playing fields in August and September.
This is just one more area of preparation challenged by new ideas.
‘You’re going to have to build a fitness base,’ acknowledges O’Connell, before applying a qualifier. ‘It doesn’t have to be a running base. You can get your running through game-based training, game-based training that’s tied in to the way your coach wants to play the game.
‘There has to be a context and a lot of decision-making. My job is to intensify training and help the coaches intensify training so that they’re putting the players under pressure.
‘We can do that more with GPS as well. We know what the hot moments are in Championship, in All-Ireland finals, even, so can we replicate that and go over that in training?’
This talk simply did not feature in the lingua franca of Cork GAA before – and just as importantly, some other counties were fluent in it.
The obvious leaders in preparation have been Dublin, with the decision of Bryan Cullen almost four years ago to trade a job with Leinster rugby for that of high performance manager with the county’s GAA teams a route now being followed by O’Connell.
Tyrone lost their fitness head to Ulster rugby only to replace him with another rugby S&C expert.
Cork are now on that level, and aren’t inclined to waste time. ‘Definitely we can add value, huge value,’ says O’Connell. ‘I’ll have to assess where we’re at. It hasn’t been systematic from age-grade all the way up to senior, so that needs to start ASAP.
‘How far we’re behind, I don’t know yet. But to be honest I would think we need to start moving forward immediately, immediately. We can’t lose any more ground to counties that have structures in place, like Limerick hurling or Dublin footballers.
‘I’ll be talking to these counties as well, and you can learn from them and accelerate at a rate of knots as well. This is warranted. It’s why I’m in my position. This has been recognised from a strategic point of view that there is a gap here, and my role is to fill that gap and raise it up.’
Cork are stirring. It was one of the stories of the second part of the year.
What happens next will be one of the stories of 2020.