O’CONNOR: SCIENCE HAS TAKEN OVER

Jamesie O’Connor maps out a schedule that would make the sports scientists wince.

After losing their Munster and All-Ireland titles in their opening defence against Limerick in June 1996, the Clare players got together in September and were assigned gym programmes.

O’Connor calculated that he trained 22 times over a 21-day period that November.

“I was living at home,” he explains. “Gym Monday night. Crusheen Tuesday. Gym Wednesday. Crusheen Thursday. Didn’t have to go to the gym Friday but went — I was young, free and single.

“Trained Saturday morning and a match Sunday. And I might have got into the pool on a Saturday evening.

“Not that I was doing that in March, April or May but the modern player is no different.

“If the Kilkenny guys are doing X and the Limerick guys are doing Y, then that’s where the bar is.

Strength

“The strength and conditioning now is gone to another level. It’s a lifestyle now. There’s huge advancements in nutrition and hydration.

“We did gym and stuff up to March. Stopped it. Lost all our gains. Whereas you look at the Limerick lads and wonder if they’ve put on another half stone of muscle over the summer.

“That’s sports science.”

The 1996 Championship was the last that was purely knockout, with Clare’s gruesome training schedule not doing them any harm as they regained the title the following year, beating Tipperary in the All-Ireland final.

Tomorrow, Clare become the 11th and final team to enter the Championship with a trip to face Tipp in Thurles in what will be the first of a minimum of four games for them.

But defeat will make it an uphill struggle to emerge from the group with ties against last year’s All-Ireland finalists Limerick and Cork and with League champions Waterford to come.

“It’s a massive game,” O’Connor says. “Clare will feel if you can win, with two home games to come, we could be one of the three teams. We’re not without hope.

“There’s a quiet optimism but a realism too that we’ve work to do to be one of the teams to come out of Munster.”

Realistically, Clare’s progress, or otherwise, in this Championship will hinge on the form of Tony Kelly.

It’s a heavy load for the 2013 Hurler of the Year to carry but he’s shown no sign of straining under it over the past couple of years.

“Tony himself will feel that maybe he didn’t play to the level of expectation he or others set,” says O’Connor of his teaching colleague at St Flannan’s in the years after 2013.

“He was targeted every day he went out. There were days when you might get 10 minutes of brilliance, where he’d flash over three or four points, and then he’d maybe be on the margins again.

“But whatever buttons Brian Lohan has pushed, we’re seeing now.”

EFFORT: O’Connor says the modern player is training smarter