The Championship getting underway on Easter weekend after a snap of particularly cold weather will take some getting used to and, for some, they may never quite get there.
It’s been a disruptive few years for the GAA’s flagship competitions with this weekend marking the first time since Dublin beat Kerry in the replayed All-Ireland football final in September 2019 that the only crowd restriction for Championship games will be a ground’s capacity.
In the interim, the Championship has started in October and June and now switches to April with an All-Ireland final in July for the first time since 1908, when the delayed 1907 football Championship was finally completed.
But while all of that may discommode followers of the game and their routines to varying degrees, will it have any meaningful impact on the players?
It certainly shouldn’t, says Shane O’Sullivan, former Waterford hurler and psychologist who specialises in high performance coaching for business and sport through his company ‘Inspiring Excellence’.
“It’s the story the player tells themselves, ultimately,” he says. “I don’t think any player at the highest level will be telling themselves a negative story about this weekend.
“I think they’ll be focusing in on it’s great to be playing matches, it’s great to have a Championship to play. If you think of the last two years in the context of Covid, there wasn’t even a crowd in at the games.
“I don’t think it’s any negative connotation for a player and if it is they’d want to reframe their mindset fairly quickly because ultimately if you’re going in with a negative, pessimistic viewpoint into this weekend, I don’t think it’s going to serve them.”
The round robin format returns in hurling this year and while Munster has eliminated counties having to play on three successive weekends, Leinster has assured that those in that scenario will only be doing so against a team in the same predicament, thereby eliminating any perceived disadvantage which the 2018 and ‘19 Championship schedules threw up.
But O’Sullivan insists that, from a psychological viewpoint, playing a high volume of games in a relatively short period is doable.
“From my experience dealing with athletes in different sports, many of them professional athletes, they go three days so I don’t think it’s a psychological challenge.
“As long as they get the time to recover the day after a game and they recover well. If you’re dealing with players who are under pressure in their own lives from an employment perspective and a family perspective, that’s a different challenge and that needs to be addressed.
“If you look at the demographic of a county player now, they’re young, they’re either teachers or they’re in college, they have space.
“Relatively, not many of them are married, not many of them have children so they have the space to be able to come down on the Monday or the Sunday after a game and get themselves back up for Tuesday. I don’t think it’s as strong an issue as people make out to be honest.”
The structure of the League and its proximity to the Championship, with both competitions containing a round robin element, led to some tepid encounters this spring though Waterford rose above that and stormed to the League title earlier this month. Does that present a conundrum for O’Sullivan’s former teammates as Tipperary come to Walsh Park tomorrow?
“I see a challenge from a Waterford perspective because they’re dealing with something different than they have been dealing with in the past in relation to going in as really red hot favourites into a match against Tipperary, who are a powerhouse of hurling.
“Tipperary have had a number of weeks to prepare for one game and focus in on this one game and do heavy training when Waterford are playing matches.
“The challenge that faces Waterford this weekend is are they fresh and how do they manage that mental framing of being favourites, hot favourites, in their own backyard in a Munster Championship campaign.”
And while Limerick stuttering through the League has raised questions about their staying power after dominating the field in recent years, O’Sullivan says it’s manna from heaven for John Kiely.
“I think Limerick are in a perfect scenario. They have motivation now that they never had. After last year’s All-Ireland Limerick were talked about as one of the best teams of all time and then fast-forward a few months later and they’re not being talked about at all.
“They will have been really able to hyper-tune themselves into a Munster Championship so I think it’s been a perfect scenario for Limerick.
“I think they’ll manage it. They’ll have the energy, they’ll have the motivation and I think whoever beats Limerick probably will win the All-Ireland. They’re still the hot favourites.”
