Moyna believes Monaghan will be ready for Dublin test

Refill the water bottles and empty the ice baths. Monaghan should be “perfectly well recovered” in time to face Dublin in Saturday’s All-Ireland football quarter-final, according to Prof Niall Moyna of DCU’s School of Health and Human Performance.

Their seven-day turnaround since Saturday’s qualifier win over Kildare – leaving just six days of actual recovery – is made more demanding given that game went to extra-time, although Moyna believes all intercounty teams should have the training in the bank to cope.

“For a normal 70-minute game, then six days to recover should be more than adequate,” says Moyna. “We did some analysis for the Football Review Committee, and for the average intercounty game, we found the ball was only in play for 32 minutes in total. So if you look at it that way, 32 minutes is not a whole lot to recover from.

“Okay, there is the physical contact and nature of the game. Also our pitches are 140 metres by 90, which much bigger than either soccer or rugby. But the six days recovery should be absolutely no problem. And consider the amount of training these teams are doing do, Again, on average, we found teams do between 11 to 13 training sessions for each game they play. We must be the only sport with a ratio like that, and there’s no reason why that sort of training shouldn’t stand them.”

For Moyna – a Monaghan native, who worked with Dublin’s backroom team during their 2011 All-Ireland success – there is still the fear that the 20 minutes of extra-time against Kildare (described variously as “punishing” and “simply exhausting”) might yet come back to haunt them against Dublin.

Throw everything

“The only caveat here is the fact it did go to extra-time. Players tend to gauge their effort for 70 minutes, tend to throw everything into that period. The final whistle goes, everyone is exhausted, and all of a sudden you go to the well again for another 20 minutes.

“It’s like a distance runner doing a session of say 16 times 400 metres, in 63 seconds. Then the coach suddenly tells him to run a flat out 3km. Something like that would a take a little longer to recover from, create a few more micro-tears in the muscles, and that’s the same with Monaghan.

“So the only worry I would have is how much more those extra 20 minutes took out of them. But again, within four days, most players should be fully recovered, and most research shows that. . ”

Monaghan manager Malachy O’Rourke said there was “no point in crying” about their sudden turnaround, nor the fact Dublin will have had 20 days recovery since their 16-pt Leinster final win over Meath.

“Truth is, Monaghan knew if they beat Kildare they’d be playing Dublin, so they’d have given Dublin some thought already,” said Moyna.

“But 98 per cent of their game plan would be the same anyway. I think Monaghan have an outstanding set-up themselves, tactically they know how they want to play, and they’d be mad in the head to change their game too much now, just to accommodate Dublin.

“There should be no psychological issues, either. First of all they’re coming off a great win over Kildare. Secondly they’re coming back to play Dublin, the All-Ireland champions, and with absolutely nothing to lose, really. If anything playing Dublin is exactly what they need.

“And ask any player. They want to play. The last thing they’d want to do is go back into another three weeks of training. Because I believe teams are doing too much training, anyway. And think of the buzz in the Monaghan camp this week. They’ll need no motivation.”

Monaghan know exactly what to expect against Dublin with Moyna not just highlighting their range of scorers (now standing 19, and counting) but their depth of substitutions.

“For every one player Monaghan has to pick from, Dublin might have 300,” says Moyna. “They also play a very expansive brand of football, and the opposition has to work very, very hard to close that down

“Then there’s their bench, and that last 20 minutes, when teams are trying to stay with Dublin, they bring in six more hugely athletic players, super fit, wonderful players, and the opposition just don’t have that. It’s looks as though Dublin are going up a gear, when actually the opposition just can’t match it. And it’s that last 15 minutes when games open up and matches are won.”