Looking for some inspiration

SEPTEMBER ROAD:SO THERE we were, waiting patiently on the playing field, with the backs practising kicking the ball over the bar – as is now traditional for senior intercounty sides and junior B club teams – when the dressingroom door opened and on to the field came a team and a theme.

Apparently, the dressingroom team-talk had been relegated in favour of AC/DC's Thunderstruckand the opposition – several of whom may have been AC/DC fans right from the beginning, the rest looking like extras from Adam Sandler's The Longest Yard, a recent prison film which also used the Thunderstrucksongtrack – arrived on to the pitch accompanied by Brian Johnson's words: "Broke all the rules, played all the fools."

It’s not the first time music has been used as a motivational device, of course, though it certainly isn’t widespread in GAA dressingrooms. It is, however, now common in team buses – with each county taking a different view as to the all-important question: Who gets to chose the music?

On their way to collecting the Sam Maguire for the first time back in 2003, Tyrone reportedly used a CD made up of one song from each panel member.

For other counties, one player or official is left to come up with the playlist – presumably with a directive to go for the uplifting titles, such as the Doors' Break on Throughor Abba's The Winner Takes It Allrather than something like Radiohead's How to Disappear Completely.

And showing films on team buses has long been viewed as a vital pre-match weapon for management. The Wexford hurlers must have known Braveheartby heart they are said to have watched it so many times during the summer of 1996. For some reason, it was not played on the way to the NHL defeat to Galway in April 1996 and so became an essential pre-match ritual thereafter.

But surely nothing would be rouse the spirit higher before a big (or small) match than Al Pacino's speech in Any Given Sunday. Bob Casey wrote in this paper earlier this year that London Irish use a version dubbed over with clips of the rugby team doing great things on the pitch.

It begins . . .

I don’t know what to say, really.

Three minutes, to the biggest battle of our professional lives, all comes down to today.

Either, we heal, as a team, or we are going to crumble.

Inch by inch, play by play, till were finished.

We are in hell right now, gentlemen, believe me, and, we can stay here, and get the shit kicked out of us, or, we can fight our way, back into the light.

We can climb out of hell.

One inch, at a time.

Apparently, AC Milan played the theme song from the Champions League in their dressingroom before Serie A matches last season, which may help explain why they finished 12 points behind Inter.

But there's no truth to the rumour the Down team bus and dressingroom had heavymetal band Burning Point's new album blaring on Saturday – particularly the track Fall of thy Kingdom.

'They're on a roll' and 'it's end to end'

HOW MANY times have you heard "they're on a roll", or "they have the momentum now", or words to that effect?

There were 32 scores in the last of the weekend's quarter-finals, but it is remarkable how many of the scores came clustered together in a sequence for either Kildare or Meath.

For example, the Leinster champions started with 1-3, with Kildare waiting patiently for their turn, which they accepted with four points on the trot. In fact, every time Kildare replied to a Meath score they managed more than just a single score.

In contrast, there were less scores in the titanic struggle between Tyrone and Dublin on Saturday, but it was by far the most fragmented when it came to a chain of scores from either side.

Apart from Dublin's strong start and finish to the game – and a string of five unanswered first-half points from Tyrone, it was, quite literally, end-to-end stuff.