Dublin footballer Bryan Cullen tells Ian O'Riordan why he can't wait for tomorrow's game
Anyone looking to write the ultimate guide to becoming a county footballer would want to include the story of Bryan Cullen. How at 21 he has already become the ideal model of progression, his early career a sort of simple account of how to make the big breakthrough. Better by design, as they say in the car business.
Tomorrow in Croke Park marks the latest step in Cullen's remarkable rise in Dublin football. He'll play at wing forward rather than his more familiar position of centre back. It's the start of his first fully-fledged season as a senior footballer. And he's probably carrying the greatest weight of expectation so far.
There's no reason to suggest Cullen can't handle any of that. Nothing in his football career has happened by accident. Every step has been planned or logical. There's probably a lesson in there for almost all aspiring footballers, and it goes something like this:
Step one: Get noticed. Play two years for the county minors, and be named captain for the second. Play for Ireland on the under-17 international rules team against Australia.
Step two: Use that football ability to help get you into a good college. Best option is the elite athlete scheme offered by Dublin City University, and the course in Sports Science and Health. Start to excel academically.
Step three: Don't expect to rely on talent. There is nothing more common than wasted talent. Break the taboo and start lifting weights at 17 to supplement talent with the physical strength necessary to make it on the main stage.
Step four: Get a taste for success. Say three Leinster under-21 titles in four years with Dublin. But don't get too cocky either. One All-Ireland under-21 from that run should suffice.
Step five: Stay totally committed. When some of your Sigerson comrades start celebrating in more traditional style, sit at the front of the bus and read about Lance Armstrong. If you have more than two beers in college don't finish one of them.
Step six: Find a sporting guru such as Niall Moyna, the head of your department. Let him take you under his wing, and help tailor an individual training programme.
Step seven: Be versatile. Learn to kick off both feet, and pass off both fists. Be happy to play in any position. Be labelled an unselfconscious stylist.
Step eight: Don't just eat, drink and sleep football. When it comes to deciding on a final dissertation, study football too. Research scoring and possession and draw your own conclusions.
JUST BEFORE handing in that dissertation this week Cullen found time to look back over those carefully planned steps of his career. He admits he's been "eyeballs out" the past few weeks trying to get it in on time, and not because he'd necessarily fallen behind.
"It's been a very intense few weeks," he says. "I've had 10 straight games in the last 10 weeks. Five national league games back-to-back, and then five under-21 games, all on consecutive weekends. That's been quite testing, but still, any footballer will tell you that is what they want. I'd much rather have the games than all the intense training the boys have been doing.
"And coming into the championship I feel like I've a lot of match practice, probably more than most other senior players. That can only be for the better. All I've done is play the games. I've had to drop the intensity of the gym sessions, and when the under-21 championship started you couldn't do much from one weekend to the next. But look, I'm already itching to get back into Croke Park."
Cullen has been back training with the Dublin seniors since the under-21 run was cut just short by Down in the All-Ireland semi-final. Now that his dissertation is done he can fully concentrate on a summer of football, but all the work he has done in DCU over the four years is something he would like to come back to.
"I've really enjoyed it. I've always been interested in the area of sports science, but the jobs in that area are still relatively underdeveloped in this country. So I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do yet. But I'm not thinking that far ahead."
His dissertation would probably interest most county managers. He looked at playing patterns in football, comparing teams from the 1970s, '80s, '90s, and present decade, in relation to possession, duration of possession, turnovers, and scores. He found that teams from the modern era are holding on to the ball a lot longer when they get it, which could summarise Cullen's train of thought going into the championship.
"Yeah, I do feel a bit older and a bit wiser now and I will be looking to influence the senior games a little more than I have been before. I enjoyed the success with the under-21s, and it was a huge honour to lift that title in Croke Park. But it's been my ambition from a young age to win All-Irelands with Dublin.
"I do believe that success does breed success. And what I want at the end of the day is an All-Ireland senior title, and until I pick one of those up I don't think my ambitions will ever be fulfilled."
He wasn't there in the summer of 2002 when Dublin last came closest. The following January he went along to the annual Blue Stars challenge as a relative unknown from Skerries Harps. He scored 0-4 and then manager Tommy Lyons was raving about him afterwards. Come the summer, he was in Dublin's starting line-up, aged 19.
Lyons started to fancy him as a centre back, but Cullen actually started out as a left wing forward, so tomorrow's is really an old position revisited. Lyons probably did give him his first big break with Dublin, but it was Moyna who always kept his career on track: "I was actually starting in college in my last year as a minor, and one of the things Niall Moyna encouraged me to do was get into the gym, even though I was only 17 going on 18. He was thinking a little bit about getting me stronger for the Sigerson Cup, but to be honest I think that did me the world of good. If you can hold your own physically in senior football then that's a major advantage.
"Niall had a lot of experience in America, and even coaching American football and things like that. I was caught up in the some of the myths about weight training, that it would slow you down and things like that, which is absolute nonsense. Niall just convinced me of the benefits, which I learnt about during the course anyway. So he definitely gave me a head start in it."
Moyna repays the compliment without any prompting. He says Cullen wasn't just one the best under-age players he'd ever seen, he was one of the best all-round players he's seen in any grade. "He can honestly play in any position," says Moyna, "and I think he's best played as a sweeper, because he's a tremendous user of the ball. But I'd say his main strength is his mental fortitude. And I just know if I was in a sinking ship he is one of the guys I would want to have with me."
MOYNA FEELS particularly strongly about players being rushed into weight training, not too soon - but too fast: "You have the situation now where some people are trying to put 24-year-old bodies into 18-year-olds in the space of six months. Brian did that over five years, and I'd say he was in the gym five days a week. He's really been working off an individual tailored training programme, but that is the way forward."
It helps that the gym in DCU was just down the stairs from his apartment on campus. He's practically been living the life of a professional athlete in between his studies, and got a further taste of that lifestyle playing for Ireland in the International Rules tests last October. If he had his way he'd like to keep that lifestyle going for another few years.
But Cullen is also mature enough to know that success is something you can never take for granted. Nor is Dublin beating Longford tomorrow: "We are expected to win, but that's normally the case with Dublin's first match. But we were expected to beat Westmeath last year, and beat Laois the year before, so we know better than anyone that we have to take it one game at a time. It's got to the stage now where you just can't underestimate any opposition.
"But we don't feel like we have to prove anything. We just want to perform to the best of our ability. That's really our only goal for the summer, to get the best out of ourselves, and to maintain that."
Exactly what Cullen has been doing for the last five years.
