A night on the town can sometimes be the right call for players
One of the interesting contrasts to emerge from the recent The Toughest Trade programmes was Brendan Maher’s discovery that anyone who has asked them will know: most pros drink in-season — in moderation.
Speaking of his experience with the Adelaide Strikers, Maher observed, “One thing came up, that they would have a few beers after each game… I said ‘There’s no way we’d do this in the GAA. If you even have a beer two or three months before a game, you’d nearly be lambasted for it.”
Reading his quotes, it recalled a conversation this column had with the former Clare footballer Martin Daly back in early 2003. He’d been reading Roy Keane’s (first) autobiography and was amazed that Keane and his Manchester United colleagues had been out drinking the night they’d won the first leg of the Treble — an escapade that would land Keane in jail for the night. “There they were, with two cup finals ahead over the next 10 days,” noted Daly. “And there I’d be nervous about having a drink a couple of months before a McGrath Cup game.”
It was those few years either side of the millennium that conscientiousness seemed to become pervasive. Previously drinking in the lead-up to games was a badge of honour, not a stain on it.
Even in the first couple of years of the so-called professional era, any assembly of the national rugby team the Sunday before a Five Nations game would involve the mother and father of sessions around the Leeson St area. All-Irelands were won and shaped by men who took a couple of pints or stiff ones the night before to settle them.
A sport I covered extensively on the eve of the millennium was basketball. Back then, it ran its cup semi-finals and finals over the one weekend. After his team had won a dramatic cup semi-final on the Saturday night, the American coach Pat Price in his rookie season naively if sensibly suggested to his team that any drinking should be restricted to just a couple of beers. To which he was refuted by one of the team’s veterans, “Jesus, Pat, if a fella can’t handle six or seven pints the night before a cup final, what kind of man is he?”
Now there are teams in Irish sport and especially Gaelic Games that are not just abstaining from drinking a certain amount of weeks before a championship game, but even throughout a full national league campaign.
It’s a tough one for players like Maher. Abstain and people, especially certain commentators will tell them that it’s all gone too serious. But then step into a public house with some friends even for just a soft drink and you’ll have so-called supporters telling him he shouldn’t be out.
Frankly, everyone has to grow up and be reasonable about this — players, supporters. Players are not public property. They are not professionals. If they were, they’d be having a couple of beers after more games.
But part of the problem as players and management know only too well, is that some teams and players don’t know how to drink. They can’t do it in moderation.
Back in 2007, the Donegal team beat Kerry in Ballybofey to extend their unbeaten run in the league. No harm that night if they went out together. Only they drank into the Monday, and some into the Tuesday… That summer they would implode. The two events were not unconnected.
Again, it goes back to that word ‘balance’.
A few years ago I was a backroom member of the Mayo senior football team. In 2013, they were in the same predicament as Stephen Rochford finds them now — after five league games, they’d lost four. The fourth had come the night before St Patrick’s Day, a one-point home loss to Kildare. But the players had decided they were going out as a unit that night. They hadn’t had a drink since returning from a team holiday 10 weeks earlier.
I remember Andy Moran in the dressing room that night, calling the group to huddle up and to stick to their plan and especially to stick together, even though they’d get some brickbats thrown at them. The following Sunday they beat the reigning All-Ireland champions Donegal, and would go on to make the league semi-finals.
fter the league, we had camp three and a half weeks out from the first round of the championship, billed at the time as a Galway ambush in waiting. One of James Horan’s strengths was gauging what the group needed at a particular time.
The previous year’s pre-championship camp was in Portugal; in 2013, camp was in Belmullet to ground them.
On the Friday night, he had the team bus land in a pub in the middle of nowhere, frequented with unsuspecting salt-of- the-earth Mayo folk. Some teams would say that was too close to championship but between the songs sang and the jokes shared and the pints downed, that night cemented a spirit that would mean Galway were the ones subsequently ambushed in Salthill.
Another thing that helped make that Mayo team a particularly tight bunch was that championship wins were also celebrated — for a night. (Not if there was a championship game within a fortnight though ). It never went into a second day. You’re in tricky territory if it does; subliminally you’re almost sating yourself. The Tyrone players of 2003 say a seminal point in their season was when Chris Lawn confronted a couple of younger teammates who had carried on partying for a second and third day after beating neighbours Derry in a first-round replay. Here we are, surrounded by counties who have all won All-Irelands, and this is how you’re celebrating a first-round win when we’ve another game in a couple of weeks?
When Wexford’s Paul Codd retired, he spoke of how he regretted not going out the night the team won a second consecutive Leinster title in 1997. You’ve got to cherish such moments. To what extent can depend on the life cycle of a team.
Last summer, we interviewed Ciarán Whelan. Looking back on his career, one of his fondest memories was the Monday after beating Wexford in the 2005 Leinster semi-final. A group of players had gone out golfing when they decided to hire out a bus, crack out a few beers and call around to every player on the panel. Coman Goggins was pulled out of his bed and ended up dancing in his pyjamas in Coppers that night. By 2007, they’d moved on from celebrating Leinster semi-finals on Mondays, but at the time, it was probably just what that the team needed.
In 2013, Monaghan’s celebrations for winning a first Ulster title in 25 years spilled into the following Tuesday. Fair enough, even if they had an All-Ireland quarter-final within a fortnight.
In 2015, they again had a second night of it. You would think a measure of their progress would be that any Ulster title win in 2016 would be confined to just the one night.
Recovery is vital these days. That’s why a second night out compromises that first training session back. But every now and then a different kind of session is just what another kind of doctor orders.
So next time you see some of your county players walk in to your haunt without a game for another few weeks, leave them off with their few pints.
As Maher and the Strikers will tell you, they’re just doing what the professionals would.
