THE WEEK Even a pandemic can’t stop arms race
Damian Stack looks at some of the stories making backpage news over the past seven days
WE’VE been kind of left wondering a little bit this week if people actually have taken in the full scale of what’s going on at the moment. Not only is the present surge of the coronavirus in Ireland bad, it’s the worst in the world and, you know what, right now it’s not even close. We’re being looked at from abroad with a mix of astonishment and pity. All the major European newspapers have commented on the surge. The Washington Post carried a report on Monday practically agog at how wrong we’ve gotten it and how quickly it’s spiralled out of control.
Still though the message doesn’t seem to be getting through, particularly not to some managers of inter-county teams. Even with the GAA pushing back the date for collective training to return by a fortnight, both the Cork and Down footballers have had questions to answer about their activities in the last week. Apart from the fact these gatherings very clearly are against the spirit if not the letter of the rules – sorry but calling it a team building exercise doesn’t get you off the hook – it’s nothing sort of madness at a time like this. Yes, we all love the GAA, but it’s an amateur sport and we have – let’s remember – the worst outbreak of the virus anywhere on the planet right now. Maybe knock the aul team-building on the head for a few weeks, lads.
Beyond the dubious wisdom of gathering of people from different households together at this time of all times, we find ourselves again asking: is all this training really necessary? Do teams really need to be collectively training for games that won’t be played for another three months (at least)? The power of the GAA training arms race is such that not even a pandemic can stop it in its tracks. Teams seem driven by a fear of missing out – FOMO as the kids call it (or so we’re told) – a fear that the neighbours are up to all sorts and that they need to match them to stay competitive, with the demands on players escalating all the time in search of that all-important edge. Is it any wonder inter-county careers aren’t as long as they used to be as last week’s spate of retirements showed?
Against all this we have to lay our cards on the table – we’ve never coached a team, we don’t hold any qualifications in sports science or the like, but we did think it was interesting to read at the weekend that Limerick strength and conditioning coach Mikey Kiely said that “sometimes the key is to do less”. Tapering off during lockdown, as Limerick did, may well have been the foundation of their success. Surely there’s a lesson there for everyone else?