The man behind Lar’s resurgence

Eight years ago, Lar Corbett was wondering whether his best days were past him. His hamstrings were dodgy, his appearances in the blue and gold fleeting.

Then he came across former Irish 100m record holder and Tipperary native Gary Ryan.

“I’m going to stick with Gary and do everything he says,” Corbett said at the time. “I have missed two years of hurling and could miss the best years of my career, but I want to get confidence back. Maybe then I can get back to where I was a couple of years ago. There could be nothing better.”

Tipperary’s fitness coach Ryan recalls: “He was cut off the Tipp panel at the time. He was left to my devices but Larry solved those problems himself over time.”

Hamstrings are a problem for Corbett no more. Neither is his pace, the 33-year-old’s flight of foot just as impressive as it was five years ago.

“A lot of the reason he’s got pace now is what he’s been doing for 12/15 years,” said Ryan. “It’s contributing from everybody he’s ever worked with. He’s just a good athlete, simple as that.

“At 33, I don’t pay a lot of attention to the age bit and I said that to a lot of the older guys on the panel. I ran my PB for 100m (10.35 seconds) when I was 33. It’s not about that, it’s about whether you’re willing and able to put the work in.”

A cousin of Declan and Tommy Carr, Ryan concedes he’s no hurling expert. However, he doesn’t need to fully understand the game providing he knows what’s required of players in his field of expertise.

“If you understand the demands of the game and how you can put that into the conditioning programme... different demands, stopping, starting, turning, the kind of space they have to operate, when they need to reach maximum speed. How often they need to do it in a game. How they get fatigued. If you understand all of that you can put it into the training programme and the mix.

“I learn from the players. If I do something and it doesn’t work, they’ll tell me. But they’ll also help fix it. You have to have your ears open and learn from people as you’re going along.”