Wish you were here...

Collective training existed before in the GAA, but it was never like this. The Cork and Tipperary hurlers went to warm-weather camps in Spain and Portugal, Kerry the same. Michael Moynihan put on the sunscreen and investigated

ALAN BROWN’S 20 years in Italy didn’t prepare him for the Irish invasion. When the affable Englishman set up Browns Club in Villamoura, Portugal, he envisaged rugby clubs and soccer teams availing of the lavish pitches and gymnasium. He’s used to the O’Neill’s balls and flying sliotars now.

“Sometimes it’s as if we should put the Irish flag out,” says Brown. “Kerry have come for three years, Waterford, Tipperary, Roscommon, Meath, Mayo... a couple of years ago both All-Ireland finalists, Kerry and Mayo, had been to Browns. That showed how helpful it was.”

The Portuguese venue has some obvious selling points, which Brown points out. It’s easy to get there from Shannon, Cork and Dublin; sheer accessibility means it’s probably only four hours door-to-door.

The array of facilities on-site are also pretty attractive. “On-site, the condition of the pitches available to the players is a key issue — I’ve had a few GAA managers praising it, with hurling coaches telling me it’s one of the best they’ve come across, that the bounce is so true on it that they can get an awful lot of quality work done.

“Then you have other facilities — there’s a 1km jogging track which is more like a cross-country course, and the teams use that. When the players come out of their villas in the morning it’s less than a minute to the pitch, and there are outdoor changing rooms there that they tend to use as massage and kit areas, while there are private dining rooms available.

“The basic concept is that everything is on site. In other places you have to get a bus to the training centre, but that’s not a factor here. When a team comes to us they’re into quality training time from the moment they arrive.

“In January we have rugby league clubs, in February we have mid-season rugby union clubs, and then the GAA teams start coming from March on.”

Browns isn’t the only option for a county side looking to train in the sun. The famous La Manga club in Spain began its sports association with the Norwegian FA, then extended southwards from Scandinavia, with teams from Belgium and the Netherlands arriving.

“What put us on the map was the England team coming before the 1998 World Cup,” says Ennis native Brendan Dwyer, head of sales for La Manga. “Glenn Hoddle came over, Paul Gascoigne was dropped, and the English press was camped outside the front gate for a month.”

After that Premiership and Bundesliga sides started booking the venue, which features a five-star hotel as well as self-catering apartments and over 20 bars and restaurants on site, as well as banqueting facilities.

From 2002 on, the FIFA-approved pitches began to sprout GAA posts as the Roscommon footballers visited La Manga. They were followed by Galway, Limerick, and Joe Kernan’s Armagh, and the mythology about Armagh’s 2002 All-Ireland win found room for the confidence derived from their sunshine training.

Ger O’Keeffe was a Kerry football selector when the Kingdom headed south to train. He outlines the advantages.

“There are a few different elements to it. First, you have players living together in a professional set-up, and they recognise themselves that any team that’s successful goes into a training camp to prepare for the season ahead. Rugby and soccer teams do it and GAA teams are no different, even if they’re not paid, but the players know that it has to be done and they nearly expect it.

“The other key thing is that it allows you to get a lot done with the players, and you’d be amazed what you’d get done in a seven-day period. Lads are rushing to training normally on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and they need to see their families after training sessions, and so on, so you don’t get time together to discuss things.

“Of course, it helps in other ways as well — you can see how lads gel together as a group, for instance, and if someone’s food habits need to be improved, if they’re not eating properly, you can work on that too.

“Lastly, the players are living like professional athletes, and that’s good for their self-belief and their own self-image.”

BOTH Browns and La Manga stress the professionalism of their GAA visitors. The bonding is lubricated by sweat, not beer.

“It’s great for pre-championship training because you can try and fine-tune things,” says Dwyer. “Coaches like it because they’re out of the media eye and they can train the teams behind closed doors.

“It’s very disciplined. You’re talking about 20 or 30 young lads coming out for a week, but the county board concerned puts in a lot of money to send them out, it’s not a holiday in the sun. I’ve seen the teams and they train twice a day. Even the leisure periods are within the resort.

“We’ve had issues in the past with Premiership sides, but we’ve never had an issue with a GAA team. They’re very focused because they have the championship.”

Alan Brown makes a similar case. “Don’t come to Browns if it’s a partying centre you want. This is not it. All the teams work very hard. They often have one afternoon and night off, and they tend to go out in a group for a meal, and then come back to us.

“This is a serious sports venue. When the teams come they’re here to work, and that’s what teams do when they get here. Obviously there are down-times, and then the teams can use the indoor and outdoor pools, but one coach said to me, ‘Alan, I can get three weeks’ work done here in one week’. That’s the attraction — getting the lads out, they’ve the sun on their backs, they’re together and it’s a bonding experience . . .

“But we’re a health club for the locality as well, and sometimes our visitors join in with locals who are enjoying scheduled fitness classes. When the Irish rugby team stayed out here over 12 months ago Peter Stringer and a few others joined a spinning class, and I think the team as a whole then had a spinning class as well.”

Brown also points out that his establishment isn’t just for top-end teams.

“We go all the way through from rugby super league, to rugby union, soccer, GAA . . . we’re a fairly small establishment because that’s the style of the club. We keep trying to find agencies and representatives to find us groups, because we’re not just an elite training centre — if we’re dealing with a small GAA club of limited resources then we’ll try to work something out with them.”

The GAA teams they’ve worked with already have nothing but praise for them. Ger O’Keeffe paints an idyllic picture of training in an environment where the small things are taken care of.

“One great thing about Browns and La Manga is the quality of the sod on the pitches,” says the Kerryman. “It’s outstanding, and they maintain it very well.

“You come out in the morning and all the divots from the night before have been replaced, it’s been watered — it’s just a lovely pitch to train on.”

Donal Óg Cusack of the Cork senior hurlers agrees with O’Keeffe.

“It’s a great advantage to go away — we were in La Manga — but it’s only a success if the trip is organised properly, and I give serious credit to (manager) Gerald McCarthy and (trainer) Jerry Wallace. It was good for us because we have a good few younger fellas in with us this season, and because we were away like that we all got to know each other that bit better.

“Another big plus is the fact that you’re guaranteed the sun, though that might sound odd. I think we see so little sun here in Ireland that it brings the mood up among fellas, they feel better and the morale improves when you’re having such good weather.

“But that’s also a physical challenge, to do that kind of work in that kind of heat tests lads; it makes sure they’re up to the mark physically for the championship.”