STRANGE but familiar sight at a couple of Offaly's training sessions of late. With the Guinness Leinster hurling title uncomfortably on the line against neighbours Laois, who are under the tutelage of Babs Keating, Offaly have enlisted an old ally.
Kilkennyman Diarmuid Healy is inextricably linked with Offaly's rise from obscurity to two All Irelands in the 1980s. He still commands universal respect in the county, even among players from a generation he never coached.
As one of them. Daithi Regan, pointed out last September, it was Healy who alerted the county board to the urgency of grafting minor success onto the senior title so memorably won in 1981.
Three minor All Irelands in the space of four years was the result and those teams have equipped the current Offaly challenge for the last few years.
Manager Eamonn Cregan has said that four years is a long time to be preaching the same message to the same players and that some variation was necessary. Given that he is such a strong character, there might be surprise that Cregan himself initiated the idea.
"Yes, I was surprised," says Healy. "They had been on and Eamonn Cregan had been on earlier in the year but I decided I wouldn't get involved while Kilkenny were still in the championship. Once Kilkenny were beaten by Wexford, they (Offaly) got back on to me so I occasionally call up. They're responding pretty well."
In fact the move has strong logic. Both Healy and Cregan are ad idem on how the game should be played - ... emphasis on skill and spreading the ball ... I always emphasised ground hurling, Healy says - and at a stage when Offaly's players give the impression of stagnating after the disappointment of failing to register a second successive All Ireland last year, Healy's powers of encouragement should be invaluable.
His brief on visits to training has been "skills and motivation". The latter has always been a puzzle with the current Offaly side. Always happiest when confronting Kilkenny, who have traditionally been the benchmark of Offaly's progress, the team has struggled with apparently lesser tasks. Healy says this isn't a new phenomenon.
"Playing Kilkenny, Cork and Tipperary was always a huge motivation. Playing Antrim and Down took more motivating. It's up to the manager or coach to counteract that to prepare for that scenario."
His views on training are blunt and strongly held in these days when there has never been as much concentration on physical fitness in hurling.
"There is an over emphasis on physical training to the detriment of skill," he says. "A lot of teams spend most of their time at it. I believe that training should be 90 per cent skills and at this time of the year, even 95 per cent. Hurling is totally different to football and the more physical training, the more mental agility and reflexes are affected.
"There are ways of upping physical fitness all through hurling. Some teams set aside half a session for no hurling, purely physical training. You won't get a player fit for hurling that way. He has to play the hall as well. Physical and hurling training have to come together in playing the hall.
"My favourite example is if a player can only hit with his right hand side, he may have to run 30 or 40 yards to hit the ball. If he can play off left and right, all he has to do is turn. If the time spent doing laps was spent practising left and right, he wouldn't have to run as far to avoid being hooked."
