How the teams prepared this week will be key

Gerry Fitzpatrick is well versed in managing the six-day turnaround, the Wexford hurling trainer charged with conditioning the Model troops through a most hectic schedule this summer — four games in 24 days they played.

Kerry and Mayo lock horns in tomorrow’s semi-final replay, six days on from the first instalment, and Fitzpatrick is adamant the preparation of both sides this week will be as crucial to the outcome as to what transpires inside the four whites lines in Limerick.

“Both teams at this stage of the season will have structured their training in preparation for a game every three weeks such is the gap from the Munster final to the quarter-final and the quarter-final to the semi,” he said. “Here they are being asked to play two games in the space of a week and that throws everything off-kilter.

“Most important for management is they get their players together as many times as they can this week. The reality is, however, they will only be able to come together for around four hours in total. If this was a professional game they would have met for four hours on Monday morning alone.”

He felt the recovery process from last Sunday finished after a water session for both sides on Monday and talk of the drawn encounter over by Tuesday evening.

“An All-Ireland semi-final is traditionally played on a Sunday allowing the players to keep to themselves on the Saturday. That key part of mental preparation is now gone. Friday is now the crucial day of preparation.

“People will be asking you for tickets, how you expect the game to go, second chances and all that. You have to have a strategy to keep mentally relaxed.

“You would always encourage active rest the day before a game, especially so when it is on Saturday. You don’t want a player sitting at a desk for five or six hours on a Friday. You would encourage them to go for a walk or see a movie, while also maintaining a level of privacy. If they have to communicate with people make sure they are part of the squad set-up. Consequently, they have to be excellent at managing their work environment, having a pleasant chat, but not getting caught up in the hype.”

Fitzpatrick added: “Tuesday’s training, which would have been the first session outside of group recovery since the drawn game, is very important. One of the principles of training is the individualisation of training. Kieran Donaghy played 10 minutes on Sunday so his is a different scenario to the man who played 70 minutes. Kieran will have required a heavy and demanding session to keep his sharpness up. The same applies for Mayo and Andy Moran. Tactics will have been discussed on Tuesday, but I imagine respective managers will have been keen to keep reference to the drawn game at a minimum. Why? Because at that stage every player should have processed the drawn result and refocused to Saturday. The message should have been ‘this is what they did on Sunday so if they do it again on Saturday this is how we will counter it’.

“At Thursday’s session everyone should have been working together, a small bit of reactive work to keep the body on high alert.”