Early to bed early to rise, and all that

HAD the Dublin footballers won last year’s All-Ireland title then virtually every county squad in the country would have been training this morning at 6.30am.

It so happens that the Dubs didn’t win, which means, as far as we know, they are the only county that assembles twice a day, meeting while everyone else is asleep, then later again when the soaps are in full flow.

Last week a newspaper carried an account of one of the dawn gatherings at the all-weather pitch in Clontarf. Suffice to say, the report dispelled much of the mystique that has surrounded these early bird work-outs.