In reality, this is a Celtic Tiger indulgence of limited benefit

Do warm weather training camps work? …THE CASE AGAINST

YOU can blame Joe Kernan.

When he brought Armagh away for a warm-weather training camp in 2002, the year they won the All-Ireland, it became a latter-day Nutron diet. A must-have method of preparation for any self-respecting team with ambitions to win titles.

No: in reality this is a Celtic Tiger indulgence of limited benefit, and needs to be dumped as soon as possible.

The supporting theory is that a panel of amateurs gets a chance to prepare as professional athletes do, in an environment conducive to full-time training.

The trouble with that theory is that it doesn’t stand up to a dousing with reality.

Clearly these training camps could be held as easily in Ireland. The fig leaf afforded by the warmth of the weather — i.e. that you don’t have to worry about training being rained off — doesn’t take long to remove.

Remember that every player interview, by law, makes reference to training in sodden fields and horizontal rain during January and February, yet intercounty squads get through those supposedly horrific conditions well enough.

Why wouldn’t they? An inter-county player, no matter what fragrant corner of the country he comes from, grows up with Irish weather; just because he sees Croke Park in August doesn’t mean that the very double helix of his DNA rebels at the sight of a raindrop.

If you want another head-scratcher, consider the timing of the warm-weather camp.

It’s April or May, the weather picks up and the evenings being lengthen, with players bursting to get kicking/pucking after a spring of being kept ‘ball-hungry’ — and just then the manager decides to fly everybody off to the sun.

Where’s the sense in that? You wait for the weather to warm up, then you head off to... slightly warmer weather.

As for the argument that players respond to the camp context and the freedom to train twice a day, well, that’s something that could happen in Ireland as readily as the Mediterranean, surely?

The traditional argument against warm-weather camps is financial, though we don’t see that as a conclusive winner either, oddly.

The Tipperary hurlers didn’t work on their tans last year, but they had more than one training weekend in Carton House during 2010, which presumably cost a pretty penny; a jaunt to Spain or Portugal will put a fair dent in a county board’s finances, but a few weekends in an upmarket hotel are almost equally punishing on the pocket.

Something that rarely gets aired, of course, is that sometimes a training camp doesn’t quite achieve it says on the tin.

Managers and coaches invariably hymn the progress made but the Waterford hurlers’ training trip to the sun in2008 threw a dysfunctional relationship between players and management into sharp relief, and Justin McCarthy was gone as manager not long afterwards.

By the way, almost ten years after Joe Kernan and co. flew to the sun, Cork won last season’s All-Ireland after a damp weekend of bonding exercises on Bere Island.

How long before that catches on?