Coach warns of doomsday scenario for over-trained GAA players
Alan O’Connor, currently working alongside Wexford senior football manager David Power, predicts a doomsday scenario unless the situation is addressed.
O’Connor was involved with Loughmore-Castleiney as the Tipperary dual stars won three county senior titles in just two seasons.
Loughmore won an historic dual double in 2013 and retained their football crown last year but a fixtures pile-up meant that the champions had to replay their county SFC final on St Stephen’s Day, 2014.
O’Connor also served as strength and conditioning coach with Tipperary’s All-Ireland minor football winning team of 2011, when Power was in charge.
A year later, Tipp retained their Munster crown as the minor hurlers captured provincial and All-Ireland minor glory. Twelve dual players were involved with both teams but massive success was still achieved, with O’Connor citing healthy communication at the time with hurling counterpart Keith Hennessy, who worked with the Waterford senior hurlers last year, as a major factor.
But O’Connor revealed how, while working with the Tipp U21 footballers last year, he told some players not to train when they detailed training patterns over the last week.
And he said: “The talent pool will be there but players are not going to achieve their full potential. And this is the time of year when the damage is done. A parent came to me in 2011 and said ‘you’re not training the team hard enough.’ “I was dealing with eight dual players at the time. I said ‘look, I have a plan in my head, don’t worry, things will work out.’ He came to me after we won the All-Ireland and said ‘now I see what you’re doing.’
“It’s not what I did with Tipp in 2011 — it’s what I didn’t do. I didn’t flog them and with the dual players, we did not physically run them. Everything was with a ball.”
O’Connor added: “Around July 2012, we conducted a counter-movement jump test with a player to measure the power in his legs.
“It showed that he was 20% lower than what he was eight weeks previously in a fitness test. We gave that player two weeks off. He came back to us then and was back to that previous level.
“At inter-county, it’s very easy to periodise your training. You know the dates your playing and you can macrocycle the whole year. The mesoscyle is 2-6 weeks and within that, you microcycle for one week. But when you’re involved with a club, and the way fixtures are gone, you can only microcycle. It’s very hard for the club player. There’s a rule where an U16 can’t play U21. Surely a minor shouldn’t be allowed to play senior with his club.”
O’Connor warned: “The situation is not sustainable. Even as a coach, you would be burned out. The county board doesn’t realise and people don’t realise that it’s not just about being on the pitch for an hour.
"It’s what you have to do away from the pitch. You have to talk to the other conditioning coaches, particularly at minor level, and talk to the manager and physios. The physio and conditioning coach must work hand in hand because the physio dictates when a guy comes back on the pitch and what he can do. If you leave a player come back on his own, he will bust himself.”
