Fail to prepare...

At the University of Texas, Cork fitness coach Jerry Wallace found that pain-staking match preparation and detailed analysis were the norm. Nowadays inter-county attention to detail is equally meticulous. Michael Moynihan reports.

JERRY Wallace wasn't a stranger to hurling three years ago. Though he'd won an athletics scholarship to the University ofTexas in the early eighties on the back of his victories in the All-Ireland Schools cross-country championships, growing up in Midleton meant togging out with the likes of Cork star Ger Fitzgerald as a young lad. When Wallace returned to the family business in the east Cork town, he fell in with John Fenton to train the Midleton senior hurlers.

When the call came from Donal O'Grady he knew it was an offer he couldn't refuse. "I spoke to Mary, my wife, about it, considered the commitment involved in joining the Cork seniors, and then I told Donal I was on board."