NO ONE SAW US – YOU CAN’T PROVE ANYTHING!

The Wexford players slipped away for a bit of sun while the Dubs went for a more educational visit to the Somme and no one trained, well, not really...

EVEN though unpredictability has always been Davy Fitzgerald’s charm, this was one we did not see coming. A couple of years back, when he put manners down in Clare on Davy O’Halloran and Nicky O’Connell for being seen in the vicinity of a licenced premise during the month of February, he was accused of overseeing a boot camp culture.

So when the Wexford players, this month, took it upon themselves to tell him a couple of weeks before the start of the most intense provincial Championship in the game’s history that they were heading to Portugal for a five–day trip and would he like to come along, you might have expected him to blow the head gasket.

And when they told him the one thing they would absolutely not be doing while they were away would be training, they must have been shivering in their boots.

Instead, he melted as he listened to their appeal. The only reason they were travelling as a group on this little holiday was, bless them, because they had missed each other due to that dastardly club month in April when they were cruelly separated, suggested Lee Chin this week.

‘We did not train once out there,’ insisted Chin.

‘We decided to go off together and have a bit of fun in each other’s company because we hadn’t been around each other the last couple of weeks.’

The thing is, they probably wouldn’t have gone to such expense in the first instance had Shane Ross got his rural party bus scheme up and running in time — Wexford were the big winners in that lucky draw this week — whereby the lads could have kept in contact throughout April.

Tell you one thing, we don’t care who wins the Liam MacCarthy this year but you will not come across a more tightly-knit group than Wexford, who might not be too bothered about training but who just cannot bare to be kept apart.

But if Wexford are that tight group who can be found singing barber shop harmonies at a sangria soaked Karaoke bar in the sun spot of your choice, you would learn a lot more by travelling with the Dublin footballers.

They swapped their training field for a more sobering visit to France where they visited the site of the Battle of the Somme. ‘There wasn’t any training at all really to the trip,’ Ciaran Kilkenny also explained this week.

It was a more sombre affair, and in all seriousness it is hard to doubt that, but one would have thought with the Leinster Championship starting today they would not have to travel that far to visit any number of sites where the innocent will be slaughtered while sent out on a mission reeking of futility.

And while the trip to the Somme provided a visceral echo of the Band of Brothers mind-set which every dressing room seeks to create, a visit to another bloody site closer to home might have served as a more potent warning to the champions, who have little to fear when it comes to hand to hand combat.

A quick road-trip to Béal na Bláth would have reminded that the biggest are usually taken down with a pot shot from the long grass.

It’s weeks like this that sets us thinking of ways to keep the beans on the toast if the sun finally sets on this industry.

There is an obvious craving out there among inter-county teams for organised team breaks, where training bibs, cones and balls are not part of the luggage, but which will instead allow the players to mediate and bond in an environment which embodies the essence of their being. We are up for it. Stonehenge would be perfect for Kerry; an indestructible structure which has been there forever, but no one knows why it is still standing other than that, Stonehenge is, well, Stonehenge.

And even though curious visitors are no longer allowed to walk within its sacred circle, just like Eamon Fitzmaurice padlocking the Fitzgerald Stadium gates for training, it still retains its footfall and intrigue.

Or maybe Tyrone to the Great Wall of China, if only to reassure that for all that fanciful talk of playing on the front foot, there is nothing quite like a fortified wall to stand the test of time.

It has to be the coliseum in Rome for Cork, to remind them that they were once the centre of GAA civilisation, but are now a just crumbling ruin of their glorious past. Mind you, we would just make that a day trip because if Frank hung around there any longer he might turn it into a 50,000 all-seater.

For Leitrim it would have to be a camping weekend in Bundoran as that is as far as their petrol money will take them.

You see, there is some place out there for everyone now that intercounty teams have come round to the idea that all training and no touring makes for very dull lives.

Then again they could just be codding us up to our eyeballs, given that any admission of training camps outside the 10-day window preceding their opening round Championship match would see them in breach of GAA rules and facing the forfeiture of a home match in next season’s Allianz League.

But we are sure that was not the reason the Wexford tenors were in full voice last week.

All together now, summer time and the livin’ is easy...

Leitrim would have to head for Bundoran – that’s as far as their petrol money could take them