Matthews and Cork still ascending a learning curve

ATHLETICS:After a season with the Cork hurlers, David Matthews still believes the ideal level of fitness for a Gaelic player is that of the 800-metre runner

THERE ARE only so many times you can write the word “intensity” in the one week before it becomes a little blurred. For some of us, it will always mean 20 times 400 metres, averaging 65 seconds, with 30 seconds recovery, on that old track in Belfield, but for most people this week it means the difference between the Kilkenny and Galway hurlers in Croke Park tomorrow.

David Matthews is a man who understands the meaning of the word on both counts. Matthews stuck his neck out, right here, this time last year, to claim the ideal level of fitness for the Gaelic player these days is that of the 800 metre runner – that perfectly intense combination of speed and endurance.

Even if Matthews is still Ireland’s fastest man at the distance, our only sub-1:45, with the 1:44.82 he ran in Reiti in Italy, 17 years ago, not everyone was convinced.

One man who was, as it turned out, was Jimmy Barry-Murphy, the former Cork footballer and hurler. The old dog was looking for some new tricks – or rather greyhounds instead of elephants – and in his second coming as Cork hurling manager, reckoned Matthews was on to a good thing.

“What I said, and still believe, is I would rather have a David Rudisha in my team than a Usain Bolt,” Matthews told me, “and after what I saw at the London Olympics, that would be even more concrete. I know a lot of people would still take Bolt, but after a year with the Cork hurlers I definitely still believe it’s the 800 metre runner you want. I would definitely take a Rudisha.”

Any man who completes two laps of the running track in 100 seconds would probably make an intercounty hurling team, but could a man like Rudisha also put the ball over the bar? Matthews never claimed he could turn greyhounds into assassins but, as Cork’s fitness trainer, he could help get them into the best position to shoot, their paws and nerve still steady.

“The one buzz word that cropped up from the start, was there all along, was ‘intensity’, but that was a little new to me, if only because I didn’t know exactly what it meant in hurling. What exactly is intensity? Or lack of intensity? You’d hear it all the time in hurling, but is it just speed endurance, running at a different pace, keeping it going.

“So my definition of hurling intensity, now, is your ability to keep going, before you start to fatigue. That’s everything – carrying, hooking, blocking, all the basic skills. Because when a player gets tired the first thing that goes is his head. And this idea that defending starts from the full forward line is certainly true. That’s why it’s so important for the forwards to have the same conditioning as the midfielders, and backs.”

Matthews talked the talk, but had to walk the walk in the hotbed of hurling, in front of men like Donal Óg Cusack, Seán Óg Ó hAilpín and John Gardiner. There was no room for bluffing. When he had them running repeat hills in November, questioning their ability to suffer, to break through the pain barrier, he could just as easily have been told where else to walk, in no uncertain terms.

It proved an interesting learning curve, for the players, as much as himself: “Well, I’d say some of the harder sessions I did were looked upon by the players as very hard. And some of the easier sessions would have been looked upon as very easy. I think that’s one of the big misconceptions in the GAA, that teams don’t train hard enough on the hard days, and train too hard on the easy days.

“What also surprised me was the mindset of players, and their ability to hurt. As an individual athlete you learn to hurt, go through that pain barrier, at a very young age, and how to deal with it, to push your body to great extremes. In the 800 metres the pain barrier always comes before the finish line, and you have to be able to run through it. I always made the analogy, that those last 80 metres, it’s like someone hands you a fridge freezer, and told you to carry that across the line too.

“That didn’t appear to be as prevalent in the GAA. That’s not condemning the players, but this ability to suffer, to push the body to extremes, and be comfortable with it, that was new ground to a few of them, anyway.”

Matthews had some specific training sessions to help them through that barrier, not long 20-mile runs – he actually started with the steepest hill he could find in Cork city.

“No, no long runs. What we did were some fairly intense hill runs, to develop aerobic and anaerobic power, and where some real soul-searching was done. Those hill sessions asked the big mental question of players, as well as the physical ones. It would ask the question, “do they really want to do this?”

“And these players bought into it, from day one, not because of me, but because of Jimmy. What was good enough for Jimmy was good enough for them. That’s how revered he still is. But Noel Carroll, my old coach, always said you can have all the theory, all the knowledge, but it doesn’t make you a good coach. Coaching is about the ability to communicate it. Because if the players don’t buy into what you’re selling then you’re going nowhere.

“We only got a pass grade this year, definitely not any honours. Would I have done anything different? No. Will I do anything different next year? Yes. Because it’s all about progressing. Cork did get “a bit of a run”, as Matthews aptly puts it himself, without setting the world alight, yet always seemed to finish strong, tagging on scores at the end – and all the while using a full spread of players.

“Jimmy and his management have made a conscious decision to nurture this team along. There’s no point burning them out in one year. You can do irreparable damage. A young GAA player can go from training twice a week to five times a week, plus a match, which is over a 100 per cent increase.

“Jimmy took his time, and I think the proof of that is the lack of injuries. . . we had very little soft tissue injuries, and that tells you something. It can’t be a game of attrition, where say young Conor Lehane gets injured, you just bring another lad in. There might be some short term gain, but Jimmy always looked at the bigger picture.

“It’s like a young athlete going on scholarship to America. Up to that point they might be running four, fives times a week, then at college in America it suddenly increases to running seven days a week. That’s why so many don’t last. So for Cork it will be all about looking to build again on whatever was done this year, developing those ideas further, and of course work that bit harder.”

And as for Croke Park tomorrow, Matthews suggests Kilkenny’s “intensity” might just prove a little too much for Galway.