Master coach O’Neill peaking charges when it matters most

A delighted Shane McGrath took to Twitter following Mayo’s win over Dublin last month.

His old physical coach Cian O’Neill had brought yet another county team to an All-Ireland final — a fourth consecutive senior decider after three with Tipp’s hurlers — and he wanted to congratulate the Kildare man publicly.

The Tipp midfielder tweeted: “Super win by Mayo, a lot of people praising manager and rightly so but a lot of credit has to go to Cian O’ Neill. Had them in super shape.”

McGrath was immediately confronted by a “follower” who contradicted him. “One lad replied that Dublin blew them off the field but you can’t lose four of your first team without feeling some of an impact.

“There was a lot of s*** going around that Mayo died in the last 20 minutes against Dublin. Okay, Dublin are a physical team and are very fit but you have to remember almost one third of the Mayo team were inside in the dressing room injured at that stage.

“With all due respect, subs come on but when you’re missing four lads that’s going to affect any team.”

McGrath wasn’t the only one Tipperary player to acknowledge O’Neill’s achievement on the social networking platform. Lar Corbett also praised the UL lecturer — “Everywhere Cian O’Neill seems to go they become winners. Respect.”

To say that O’Neill left Tipp on good terms would be putting it mildly. If Eamon O’Shea had them looking forward to the hurling drills every training night, O’Neill made the graft digestible.

McGrath, before he set off on a few months’ globe-trotting this past week, lived in the Castletroy area close to O’Neill. “Because of him, I think I became a better player.”

He regards O’Neill as a coach who knew exactly how to get the best out of players. He remembers one night in early 2010 when O’Neill saw an opportunity.

“It was in Dr Morris Park and it was pissing down rain and the field was in s*** and I just remember all the management being there. Cian was roaring lads on but he actually made a video of it on his phone and he showed it to us just before the All-Ireland final.

“That’s the kind of guy he is; he’s always thinking outside the box. There we were in the worst weather giving it everything, lads were depressed but he was making a record of it to use at a later time. When he showed us that, we realised what an effort we had put in.”

McGrath wonders what O’Neill must have thought of the Tipperary players when he first encountered them.

“You’d think you’d be doing weights right but you wouldn’t have a clue until you get talking to someone like Cian. It’s his job in college as well and he showed us exactly how to do them properly. The fact that he was in Limerick and we were using the gym in Limerick helped because he could do a lot of one-on-one sessions with us.

“You have hurling and you’re doing that the whole time but the way the game has gone you have to be doing the physical stuff.”

In these pages last year, Declan Fanning spoke of how O’Neill was able to offer the players something different at training every night and 90% of drills involving the hurley in hand.

His authority was never questioned but the players were given plenty of material from him for some ball hopping.

“We used to give Cian a fair bit of a slagging about some of the phrases he would come up with. They wouldn’t be heard around Tipperary that much! We’d have fierce respect for him because he had everyone — not just the lads in the team — right for when it mattered.”

After feeling Waterford had “physically bullied” Tipperary in the 2008 All-Ireland semi-final, O’Neill upped the team’s contact work in training.

“It wasn’t that they were bigger or stronger; they were just far more aggressive,” he recalled. “So what we said was that the following year we’d make sure that my parts of the session were more ferocious than any opponent could impose on us.”

McGrath excuses O’Neill on that one, pointing out that Tipperary had to invest a lot in the Munster championship considering they hadn’t won it for seven years.

Watching Mayo now where O’Neill has more of a training brief, McGrath sees the aggression that he preached with Tipperary.

In his last three years with the county, two under Liam Sheedy and one under Declan Ryan, he timed the panel’s physical preparations to a tee.

Speaking before Mayo’s All-Ireland quarter-final with Down, O’Neill admitted it was with that game in mind he had prepared the team.

McGrath recognises the similarities. “He knew exactly when to tailor the training for different lads.

“Ciano got you right when it counted the most. “Lads were always right, you wouldn’t realise it yourself because you’d just be doing the training that Cian would be setting out for you to do.

“But from the outside looking in, your family and friends were seeing you getting fitter and stronger. Ciano had a massive plan for us.”

It’s one department where Mayo shouldn’t be found wanting tomorrow.