Eight the lucky number on stairway to heaven

The Super 8s. Twelve games across four weekends that determines who emerges as the All-Ireland football semi-finalists and a scenario most uncommon in any sporting environment when knockout becomes a round-robin.

An intense period of football, we speak to some who took part in it last year to get their views on what is required; former Roscommon manager Kevin McStay, recently-departed Monaghan manager Malachy O’Rourke and Kildare’s Strength and Conditioning coach, Neil Welch.

Here, they outline the difficulties and stresses that relate to each team as they go through the various phases of the sequence and outline what the teams require in terms of recovery, training, tactical adjustments and other matters.

TRAINING

Kevin McStay: There is no heavy training done. None at all. It’s just skills training, 7 on 7, 4 versus 4, small sided games. Just working on your skills.

We had an A v B game (on the weekend off) because we wanted to give the people outside the 15 a chance to show. We had lost to Tyrone and Donegal and we had a game coming up in Croke Park against Dublin.

We wanted to give people who were going to develop and play for us next year a chance to get used to it.

A reward, if you like. We were out of it at that stage so it was slightly different for us. So we wanted to give them a chance to play against Dublin but they had to prove themselves in an A versus B and then we picked the team around that.

Malachy O’Rourke: On the Thursday night, there would be a full session, but it wouldn’t be physical. We were working on areas that didn’t go well the last day, things that need attention.

LOGISTICS

MO’R: The one for me last year was we finished up school on the last day in June and we went out for a bite to eat. I went home then and headed to a bus that night and stayed overnight in Leitrim as we were playing them the next day in the qualifiers.

Immediately, we were into that. We won that game and the following weekend we played Laois.

A week later we were in the Super 8s against Kildare… The whole thing just went week to week to week. Because it was such a quick turnaround, you were into the analysis of the opposition and your own game instantly. It was a really hectic period.

KMcS: You have to deal with logistics on a week to week basis, and of course you have to deal with your panel. You don’t know who you are playing! You might book buses to Killarney but you could be playing in Omagh!

I think of Sean Finnegan who looked after the logistics for me, I told him to get it all sorted and he said, ‘that’s grand Kevin, but would you tell me who we are playing?’ You can’t book hotels in three different locations to hold 40 odd rooms and then cancel them on a Monday.

There are those logistics, they are not insurmountable obviously but some days you don’t get exactly what you want either and the timeline is so short.

INTENSITY

Neil Welch: (On getting the right amount of sleep); There are different ways of doing it. The most accurate way is to record it. We would use a system where lads can report their wellness every day. What sort of sleep they had and we also track their training loads. We use a system called Metrifit. It’s expected of players to put in their information every morning and we are able to respond to it then.

So if you see a guy who is not going well, you can have a chat with him; is there something going on at home, is he unable to sleep for another reason, you give him a bit of time out of training to help with recovery or help him outside of training to help him with stress. It’s a conversation starter.

KMcS: It never ends. You can go to bed thinking, ‘right, this guy is not getting on the 26. I didn’t like what I saw tonight. He let me down’. And then you wake up, and he is starting in midfield. You are always trying to see the best in someone and thinking they can turn it around and get a bit more out of them.

RECOVERY

MO’R: The recovery process starts straight away. The medical team, the physios and everything else comes into play so the recovery process starts in the changing room after the game. Compression trousers, boots, different things like that, whatever is required to speed up that process is used.

The Tuesday session would be a recovery/regeneration session. The focus is getting boys back up to speed and loosen them out.

Ryan Porter (his Monaghan trainer) would be an absolute expert in that area and would have things off to a tee. The only lads doing work would be the ones who didn’t get gametime. The fellas who have played, their fitness has gone up another notch, the fellas who didn’t play at all, you want to get them up. So they would be doing work that ensures that if you need them the next day, they are right up there at that level.

NW: The main thing is forming good habits for the lads. The most important thing is recovery, sleep, and nutrition. The evidence around the rest of the stuff is quite personal. If lads like being in the pool, then they tend to respond better to it. If they don’t like it, they don’t respond well to it.

But the two things that are consistent across the board are sleep and nutrition.

They are the main things to get right and then you manage your training off the back of that. Essentially what you are doing is just to manage some freshness come the games. The difficulty with the Super 8s is when you haven’t made it through the provincials.

If you are in the qualifiers, it is a case of three or four back-to- back games. We had seven games in a row because we had a replay in there as well. The advantages are so much more well stacked for the provincial winners in terms of freshness than for teams that come through the backdoor.

Compression garments and other things like recovery trousers, a pump that fills the legs full of air, would be used. They put a squeeze on the legs.

GAMEPLANS

MO’R: A lot of the analysis can be done with the players on the pitch as well, rather than sitting down. The analysis has to be quality but you are not sitting for two hours doing it. You keep it as sharp as you can. Keep the boys focused that they will retain any information.

And then you are looking at the management end of it, looking at the game you are after playing and then zoning in on the opposition.

KMCS: The teams come out very late. Some counties don’t let them off until match day.

So, match-ups can come to you very late in the day and that hinders your ability to get work done. Very often, for one or two teams you don’t know their selection until you are in the ground, but you can have a good guess at it.

SUSPENSIONS AND FORM

KMCS: Suspensions are a big one. If you have to go to Dublin on a Tuesday, as we had to defend a player, that is really eating into your week for him and for you.

One of the other big things you have to deal with is disappointment.

You are dealing with a squad of 36 so there are 10 lads immediately cut when you name the match day panel.

Then of course you have the subs that are named on the day who are not used. And you have very little time to recover as there is not going to be A v B matches in the middle of the week to allow those lads a chance to make the matchday 26.

MO’R: We would have had them in (the players on the weekend off). We possibly would have played a game to see who was pushing for a place.