Irish Daily Star - Inside Sport
A local Guard used to say to me ‘come the winter you are an awful bollocks’
I NEVER JUDGED MY YEAR ON JANUARY
‘Of course Rory wants to beat Donegal but he knows this isn’t the right time to take their scalp’
JUST three words but I got some serious mileage out of them. It’s only January.
My Championship weight at my very prime was around 87kg.
It was purely a psychological thing but once I saw that figure pop up in the scale I knew I was right for Championship.
You can argue about the pros and cons of body image another day. Even now, well into my retirement, I find myself getting guilty for eating two “cheat meals” in a week in what I consider the football months.
I suppose you’d say it’s the residual effect of years of brainwashing, lots of stuff in the brain is still wired a certain way.
In the pre-season, it was an all out assault on the body, I took it to the extreme when people would say you can let yourself go in the off-season.
As one of the local Guards used to say in my young days “you’re a great man during the summer but, come the winter, you’re an awful bollocks’’. Crazy stuff.
One year, I landed back in January ready for McKenna Cup at a good 99kg — not a bit of it was muscle bulk.
I raised an eyebrow but felt comfortable enough, no panic.
Torture yourself and grind it out until March/April time and I’ll be grand.
Maybe it was my form of purgatory to purge the sins of the off-season.
Game
I’ve been thinking about those days because I landed up at the McKenna Cup game on Tuesday between Derry and Donegal.
As much as I give out about McKenna Cup and pre-season competitions, I always land up as a spectator at the bloody things.
What struck me watching the game was the fact that I saw nothing resembling the physical wreckages we’d landed back with in January in my time.
We’ve moved completely away from that mentality. If I was around now, and I had repeated my weight gain from years ago and let myself go to that degree I think I’d be told to jog on.
The January training window, from what I’m familiar with and what it is now, are two totally different things.
I was used to what we dubbed the “fat camps” where a few individuals were tagged for special attention.
When I think of the torture I put myself through getting to the level required, I actually think it played a part in me retiring.
Seasons
So many seasons I’d be doubting myself in the months of January and February — “is this the one I don’t get back to the level I should be at?’’
Looking at the players nowadays, it was a crazy way to go at it. I regret not looking after the body better.
I regret those psychological battles in a lot of my pre-seasons. It wears you down. Better to just keep in shape and ease your way up through the gears.
It was going that way as I was leaving the scene — the mentality of not letting yourself go as much.
The fact that the season is so much more condensed now means nobody has any time to waste on “fat camps”.
Everything is accelerated forward this season too, all the rules and ways I looked at the season are packed together more tightly.
April was my month where any doubts were wiped away, where I could finally get the hand in on Michael Murphy, Colm McFadden or Paddy McBrearty.
If I wasn’t right by April then I was in bother. Another psychological thing but it was the way I saw the season.
Every time of the year had its place and meaning in my head.
January was filed in there as a month to survive.
April was seen as a month to hit the stride.
January is a much different proposition now from a physical perspective but, from a law of the jungle perspective, there are a few similarities.
There will
be similar patterns going on in every county dressingroom around this time of year.
There are still opportunities there for new panel members. Certain players will get game time in pre-season competitions and some even into the League in January and February.
Some will definitely impress but, c ome late s pring a nd t he summer months, they’re forgotten about.
Janua r y shows so much promise to them as they start to believe that maybe they could get a shot at the team. The spring shatters that dream.
I’ve lost count of the number of players who start off like a train only to disappear when the ground starts to get hard.
Footballer
Chests would be out and some of them would get a few headlines in the media. There’s a lesson I learned about players — you never ever judge a footballer until the summer.
Doesn’t matter if they’re scoring 10 points a game early on in the year. Until they do in
the summer months, nothing else counts.
The players that are going to make it learn to adapt and learn about the social order in the dressingroom. Same with new managers, they learn the lie of the land as they look to impose themselves on the group.
It doesn’t matter if there is a shorter season, there’s still less of a bite in the air in games in January.
I even got that in the game during the week. Watch the McKenna Cup final between Donegal and Monaghan today and you’ll see what I mean. Watching Donegal and Derry, I saw from the demeanour of the players and management on both teams that it didn’t really matter.
It’s not that they didn’t care or didn’t want to win but they just know that more important days are ahead and it’s a matter of getting these games out of the way.
Complete
Rory Gallagher is normally very active on the line but he hardly reacted when Donegal’s first goal went in.
Of course Rory wants to beat Donegal but he knows this isn’t the right time to take their scalp. Bigger days, bigger crowds are needed for that.
He has no need to worry — not yet, anyway.
Years ago, time would have been your side. This year, that pressure and edginess will come a bit earlier.
Players that have been on the road a while probably need to adapt to the new time frame.
From the back of the stand, I could nearly hear Rory whispering “it’s only January’’.
He’s right, of course.