Players who have spent years purging themselves with these painful ice baths may well feel aggrieved at the news they don't help injuries after all, writes Keith Duggan

RESEARCH INTO the effectiveness of ice-baths for injured Gaels has indicated that much of the chattering and splashing in the vats of slushy ice has all been in vain.

When Gaelic games began to adapt the technology and practices from professional sports around the world, it was quickly accepted a team was nothing without a few hearty ice baths. It was all very well running sprints in hailstones for 60 minutes, but if you weren't fit to recline in the Celsius equivalent of Antarctica for five minutes afterwards, then you were no use to anyone. It is possible lads were fired into the ice for no better reason than the county boards shelled out good lotto money for the equipment and it would be a shame to leave it sitting idle.

Although the baths were ostensibly designed to fight against lactic acid build-up and to minimise the effects on injuries, they served just as well to sharpen the attentions of a free-taker on a dozy night or just to shut the mouth of the team joker.

Modern GAA documentaries show obligatory footage of the Gaels manfully submerged in the freezing water and trying their best not to make sounds like Montserrat Caballe hitting the big notes. The perceived wisdom was the knock you picked up wouldn't feel half as bad after a good dunking in the ice-cold tub. That was true, mainly because the Gael would be too numb to feel anything once he emerged, raw-skinned and mute.

But the ice bath was yet another manifestation of the endless sacrifices the Gael was willing to put into the county cause. Players who have spent years purging themselves with these painful plunges may well feel aggrieved at the news ice baths don't help injuries after all. The rationale is basic and fairly sound: if you are injured, you are injured. QED. Water, no matter how cold, is not always going to alter that fact.

Of course, technology has moved on and no GAA summer is complete now without a few hair-raising reports of an elite footballer or hurler spending some healing time in Ireland's first cryotherapy chamber in Wexford. These visits are generally reserved for the star players: the more bread-and-butter type lads are simply horsed into the ice baths and told to make the best of it. But for the stars, several county board treasurers have signed cheques so the brightest and the best can be transported to the sunny southeast where they will spend three minutes in a chamber capable of dipping to temperatures of -110 Celsius. Anyone who has ever attended a February National League match in Clones will empathise with those sorts of conditions.

But it must be a lonely few seconds for the Gael when he trots, suited only in a pair of Speedos and a face mask, into the sinister- looking chamber. This must be particularly true if he is in the company of the county manager, whom he might have denounced as a "b*****s" in the heat of the championship a few days earlier. The manager might be tempted to play power games, telling the attendant to take a break and that he will release his player from the chamber when the allotted three minutes are up, and then tapping his Seiko watch with his forefinger and making exasperated ticking noises.

Many cryotherapy veterans have testified to the remarkable sense of zest and wellbeing experienced when the door reopens. This is undoubtedly due to medical science, but also, surely, caused by the explosion of happiness they experience when they realise they are not, after all, destined for the Croke Park museum as the GAA's first ice sculpture.

Many radio listeners were undoubtedly intrigued the other morning to hear Páidí Ó Sé, the celebrated Gael with a record eight All-Ireland football medals, talking about his own days of near-scientific preparation. The dedication of earlier generations has perhaps been too quickly forgotten in the rush to acknowledge fitness, and preparation is now operating at a premium in the GAA. Páidí, for instance, was a great believer in the vinegar bath. Or to be more precise, his mother was.

After a hellish couple of hours training under Mick O'Dwyer, or after embarking on one of the long, solitary runs around Ventry, Páidí would return home to find a steaming bath of vinegar awaiting him. Whether it was of actual benefit was immaterial: he believed it was.

And unlike so many men on those great Kingdom teams, Páidí escaped relatively lightly when it came paying the toll for all those punishing sessions in later years. Not only that, Páidí's mother was a stickler for nutritious food - she insisted on meat over fish for the Croke Park games - and arranged his sleep would not be disturbed on the mornings leading up to those All-Irelands. Páidí recounted all this in a light and affectionate way, but it still offered a valuable glimpse as to what separated Kerry from the rest in that period.

Although Páidí might have taken the odd dip in the wintry Atlantic waters around his home place, the chances are most of his generation would have taken a dim view of the ice-bath phenomenon. The closest they came was after a broiling Munster final in Killarney in the early 1980s. The showers were busted and the Cork and Kerry men came off the field to find buckets of iced water waiting for them to wash down.

For the next few weekends, every county team in Ireland is immersed in cutting-edge training techniques and recovery aids. Along with diet and psychology, the traditionally simple business of getting 15 lads out on to a field willing to burst through stonewalls for the old jersey is spinning into another universe. That was why, in a way, there was almost something nostalgic about the reports of last week's NFL final in Parnell Park, when the referee had to get changed in the kitchen and lads were hanging out of clothes pegs because of the crowds in the changing rooms.

Maybe the everyone-mucking-in-together mentality is in danger of disappearing in the eagerness to cater for scientific advances and absolute preparation.

At least traditionalists can take comfort in the fact when the games start, the old ways still reign supreme. When the tackles go in and players hit the ground, nothing works as well as the magic sponge. The fancy stuff will come and go, but the sponge and bucket will stand the test of time.