I know there are plenty of GAA teams putting in the hard yards on the training field at the moment, looking for any snippet of motivation they can find. Obviously, they’ve come to the wrong place.
Recently, I’ve been recalling my defining memory of playing Gaelic football in secondary school. Soon after lunch, word would go around that the training session after school was going to be a “physical”. This was St Jarlath’s College in Tuam, where football was taken very seriously indeed. The news would inevitably come from one of the boarders, who lived upstairs.
A “physical” meant running and lots of it. Gym sessions were not a thing at that time, so the sessions were either one thing or the other. Football or running.
I didn’t board in Jarlath’s as I grew up only 10km away, but I might as well have done for my Leaving Cert year. I was in school for morning study at 8am, I went to class, I went football training from 4.30 to 5.45pm and then I went to evening study until 9pm. I only went home to sleep, so football training was my only release from the books. It should have been the only thing getting me out of bed.
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But this “physical” rumour would knock me for six. The rest of the school day would be a write-off. A queasiness would glue up my inner workings. I would pray for more maths to go with double-maths. I still remember the sinking feeling I’d get walking down past the noticeboard, past the bathrooms, past the entrance to the new corridor and on into the dressingrooms.
Even on the days when the rumours were misleading and the balls were rolled out for an hour of football, I found it difficult to regather my composure. There was a surge of relief, but the anxiety remained.
I think back now about that 17-year-old, the ability that lazy, gangly kid had to run and stretch his legs and just . . . move. I may have hated the idea of physical training, but I also remember togging out six times a week and never getting tired. I hated any physical exertion that didn’t directly involve a football at all times, but it didn’t stop me from volunteering for it time and time again.
I think back to that kid because I’m trying to get back training for my club’s third team in Dublin and I feel the same way before training now that I did then. Whenever I hear a rumour that our coach is planning a few sprints, the feeling is exactly the same.
The difference is I just cannot do it any more. I went back training last Thursday night on astroturf, for one hour of pretty much pure football. Nevertheless, I woke up the following day as if my hips had spent eight hours in a vice. Then the poll went up in the WhatsApp group about training on Tuesday, but even in my absence for the first couple of weeks of the year, I’d noticed a pattern. Tuesday would be on grass and there would be running.
These thoughts dominated my mind since last Thursday, a dark spectre looming over my weekend. Every biscuit I reached for, every idle hour I spent on the couch, was seen through the prism of Tuesday evening – and whether or not I could go through with it.
My answer? Unfortunately, Tuesdays don’t really suit me with work at the moment, if I’m being 100 per cent honest (and I’m not).
My deadline for this column is 3pm every Wednesday and I’ve a podcast to try and put together every morning, lest we forget. I should really have my writing done by the time I walk into the office on Wednesday morning. And there’s Champions League on – I have to keep an eye on that. Thomas Frank could have gotten the sack this Tuesday, for instance – I couldn’t miss that.
On balance, taking everything into account (including the fact that I despise running), Tuesdays are just really tough for me right now.
This week, knowing that for genuine reasons I would struggle to make the festival of football that is our astroturf session, I had to admit defeat. I anxiously waited for some deus ex machina to present itself – some podcast interview that would magically appear in my diary to save me. But by 4pm on Tuesday, I knew I would have to throw my name down for training and take the beating that was coming my way.
My mood was so dark that the driving wind and rain that greeted Dublin’s inhabitants was, to my mind, simply pathetic fallacy. But it would turn out to be my salvation. The pitch was unplayable, training was off. I was 17 again, saved at the final moment from the unthinkable.
There are many, many things which separate me from Paul Geaney, and I could add another one to the list after reading his brilliant interview with Malachy Clerkin in last Saturday’s paper. “Once you leave the old man in, you’re f***ed. If your mind says in the morning, ‘I’ll not do it today’ . . . then your body will go along with it.”
All I can say in reply to that is I left the old man in about a quarter of a century ago and he hasn’t gotten any younger since then.
See you next Tuesday, boys.
