Training cancelled as McGeady gets a break

Perhaps it was coincidence, perhaps not, but Giovanni Trapattoni last night responded to Aiden McGeady’s suggestion Ireland’s players are jaded by giving his men a day off.

McGeady, we can safely say, is sick of training camps. He has had it with airports and flights and is downright browned off with night after night of DVDs, poker games and aimless strolls around various team hotels.

Lest we forget, it is only three months since he was being dragged around Europe by a Spartak Moscow side escaping the Russian winter and preparing for the second half of the divided club season around the Mediterranean. His seems to be a life of almost perpetual motion.

Being a professional in Russia’s Premier League involves gargantuan journeys to away games and Spartak have been known to call five-days camps before and after fixtures, which can only adds to the strain on a player more accustomed to short hops around Scotland.

Now here he is again on yet another continental tour with his country.

Dublin, Montecatini, Budapest and now the Tri-city area of Gdansk, Gydnia and Sopot. It is against that itinerary that his seemingly critical comments, made after Monday’s arduous 0-0 draw with Hungary, should be judged.

“Training has been of such a high intensity that I think a lot of the players felt a bit jaded,” he said.

“A lot of the players were saying that at half-time, that they felt pretty sluggish in their feet… I think we need to take it easy on training.”

This wasn’t a new refrain.

After the defeat of Bosnia in Lansdowne Road last month, McGeady suggested that the team could have done without the first week’s training camp in Malahide and talked about players “moping around the hotel” after a handful of days.

That was over a fortnight ago. Such words will send a shiver down the spines of anyone familiar with the Irish rugby team’s disastrous World Cup campaign in France five years ago when an overegged build-up led to an implosion on a spectacular scale.

The question yesterday was whether McGeady’s views were shared by his team-mates or if the midfielder was simply suffering from an acute bout of cabin fever prior to the looming release in Poznan’s Municipal Stadium. Certainly, no other Irish player has felt the urge to hit out at the schedule. Jonathan Walters dismissed outright the suggestion of burnout.

So, too, at least initially did Trapattoni. “It was a holiday in Montecatini,” he joked. “My first concern is never to push the players too hard. I am always flexible. They played against Bosnia and only rested in Montecatini or maybe they went out on the town.”

That last bit was, he stressed, a joke.

And yet, perhaps McGeady was on to something after all. Late last night in Gydnia came the surprise announcement that today’s training session for the Irish squad has been cancelled and the players given a day off.

Trapattoni, it seems, has thought it wise to strike a balance between carrot and stick.