New routine brings Cork up to speed

Cork's preparations for Sunday's National Hurling League final with Kilkenny have followed the new trend in intercounty training, cutting back on the physical workload and concentrating instead on more specific speed-based techniques.

Over the winter months manager Bertie Óg Murphy abandoned the regime of running slow laps of Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Instead the team were given a new programme of short and sharp drills, based on speed and repetition, which had been passed on from the Munster rugby set-up.

It was a gamble but after the victory over Limerick in their first league game, Murphy was confident it was the way to go.

"We are doing an awful of lot of hurling now," he says, "but we'd still be doing a bit of that specific training as well. We have to be very conscious also of keeping the players fresh because most of them would be training with their clubs now as well, and there's been very little training done over the last two or three weeks because of that.

"Over the winter though, all the physical work was left to Ted Owens, who is the physical trainer . . . I trust what he does and he's certainly very effective."

Murphy, though, is not totally dismissive of the more traditional workloads, which are still associated with the Clare success of the 1990s. "In Clare they probably had to do that to win an All-Ireland. Obviously it was effective too, and everyone would have to admit that Ger Loughnane did wonders for Clare.

"But when Clare were doing that type of training the players wouldn't have been working as hard with the clubs as well. There was no way we could go down that road at this stage, with players also training with the clubs."

There are clear similarities, however, with the scaled-back training that brought Tyrone success in the football league this season, and even more so with the Tipperary hurling system of last summer.

There is another break in the Cork tradition in that Murphy can now pick players on form and not just reputation: "Cork had the same panel for three or four years there, and players were beginning to take it for granted that they'd be on the team or among the substitutes. That shouldn't be the case, and now we have 33 training with us and no one knows who the 24 will be until the Tuesday night after training.

"The back line at this stage picks itself, and there's only the one change really since 1999; Brian Corcoran gone out and Derek Barrett coming in. The forward line is a little different. That's where all the newcomers are, and they've done exceptionally well.

"They've been a huge addition for us, not just because they're so good, but because they've taken the comfort zone out of the panel. They're keeping a lot of the more senior players off the team at the moment, so it's very healthy mix."

Murphy sees many qualities in his new young players, though the surprising thing is their huge physical presence. John Gardiner and Kieran Murphy are well over six feet tall, and both have strength beyond their years.

"Eamonn Collins is a different kind of player in the full forward line from what we've had up to now in that he's a true ball winner. He mightn't have their skill but he's very, very competitive. There's no easy ball coming out of the defence, and that's why he's in there.

"Niall McCarthy is a big lad too and has a big physical presence, but what's best about the four new forwards is that they're very good off both sides, and can lay off scores from both sides, which is crucial now at intercounty level. So with the exception of the injured Joe Deane, that would be our top 15 at the moment, and very close to our championship team too."