Coaches opt for innovation
Sport on lockdown, but the hard work hasn’t stopped
WITH SPORT on lockdown, the work doesn’t stop for those involved. Things are tougher, there’s no doubt about that, but around the county people are finding new and innovative ways to be prepared for any possible re-start of competition.
One of those is Wexford camogie manager Kevin Tattan, who from his Cork base is keeping a close eye on what his charges are doing to keep themselves in tip-top shape. He explained the current situation.
‘We’re trying to continue on with minimal disruption, which I suppose is impossible. We are trying to minimise the disruption to our training. All the girls have their own programmes that they are working on, they are filling in training diaries.
‘They’ve all been excellent to be fair, the players have been brilliant since I’ve come in in terms of their application, their attitude. Everyone’s working away on their own home S and C programme, their home running programmes, their technical skills.
‘We’ve got continued education sessions a couple of times a week, so they are developing, whether it be a nutritional workshop, a psychology workshop, tactical workshop, whatever the case is.
‘We’ve got regular education workshops where they can continue having a group session together which doesn’t disrupt their routine that much, but obviously it’s not ideal that we’re not training together.
‘But I think that, look, we can’t do anything about it, we just have to adjust and adapt as we go along.’
Over at Ferrycarrig Park, the Wexford F.C. Under-15s were in the final stages of preparation for the new Airtricity League season when the FAI announced the cancellation of all sporting activity.
Two weeks away from a season opener against Shamrock Rovers, Wexford had to drastically alter their meticulously planned pre-season schedule as a result of the coronavirus.
‘It was important for us to find a way to, if not to continue to develop, at the very least maintain the fitness levels and technical proficiency which had been built up over the first six weeks of pre-season,’ explained manager Jason Goodison.
‘On a physical fitness level it was a relatively easy fix. Each player has been working off an individualised programme since the beginning of pre-season. They did one session a week at home or in the gym in addition to our three team sessions.
‘These sessions can be speed sessions, agility sessions, upper body, repeated sprint, whatever we feel needs to most work based on their testing scores and their playing position. With team sessions out of the picture, we’ve now ramped up our physical training.
‘As much as possible, each player is now doing a minimum of two “fitness” sessions a week at home as well as two sessions based around a different physical attribute, like speed or agility.
‘In terms of our technical skills, we can be pretty proactive too. We’ve been sending the boys dozens of football drills to do at home, either by their self or with a parent or sibling, so hopefully these exercises will keep things like their first touch, passing and dribbling as sharp as possible.
‘Obviously, the one area that’s taking a big hit is our tactical preparation for the new season. With any newly-formed team it is important to quickly nail down the style of play but, without bringing the team together to work on these things on the pitch, the best we can do is to keep sharing clips from our pre-season friendlies with the lads and hopefully build up their understanding that way,’ he added.
‘I’ve mentioned just about everything we’ve been doing on the football front, but on a personal level it’s been really important to try keep everyone, staff and squad, in regular contact. Keeping morale up is vital, especially as training from home becomes a little repetitive.
‘We’ve been setting challenges for the lads to do, they video themselves doing it and send their attempts into our group chat. Naturally, that invites some friendly banter, which is really good.
‘We’ve also added a weekly video chat for everyone, which generally involves a light conditioning session before some fun games or quizzes.
‘Again, its just a ligh-thearted way to keep everyone close and keep spirits high.
‘Hopefully all the hard work the lads are putting in now will pay off when football finally returns.’
It’s a bit different when everything is more insular. There’s a team around Niall Kennedy, but at the end of the day his preparation depends on what he does to keep himself ticking over and be ready to head back into the ring.
‘I’ve tried to maintain...I had a personal trainer, Matthew Dunbar, who was doing my strength work, and Ivan Lynch was helping me out with stuff like that, but all gyms are closed now so you’re doing everything on your own.
‘I’ve been very lucky, I bought equipment off MC Sport there recently, weights, so I’ve a few weights at home trying to maintain my strength work.
‘I’ve actually been doing a lot more running than I had been, trying to make sure that when this does stop that I’m ready to go in a short space of time and that I’ll only have to work on the boxing aspect as opposed to the fitness.’
Anthony Masterson can see both edges of the coin. The Castletown clubman is trying to keep his own work going but also has an eye on keeping the team he is managing, Arklow Geraldines Ballymoney, on the front foot over the forced lay-off.
‘From any team’s point of view, we just can’t do anything, all we can do is individually. Basically what every team would be doing is this: the management team, under the strength and conditioning coaches, would be uploading our home programmes that the players can do, and a running programme that the players can do.
‘The hardest thing about it is, we don’t know when the next match is, so the way I’m treating it is we are more or less gone back into pre-season. So any of the pre-season work that you’ve done is not null and void but you’ll have to top up on that.
‘There’s no point going into a phase now where we are going to taper towards playing games, because we don’t know when the next game is. It’s very, very hard to keep the players going.
‘One thing I would focus on with the players, and I said it to them, regardless of your physical health, I would be focusing on the mental health of the players more than anything at the moment.
‘If I can make sure all the players are mentally right, even if they are physically not fit like some of the other teams, even if they are fresh and hungry when they come back to training, I’m very, very happy with that.’