PAUL GALVIN
june 24 2018, 12:01am, the sunday times
John Sugrueâs thinking may help Laois to rattle Dublin
paul galvin
My feeling is Laois will present more problems for Dublin today than any team all year. Why? Maybe because I have a keener sense than most of what their manager, John Sugrue, is made of.
I first met him back in 1996 when he was a standout Kerry minor. The following year we played together on an All-Ireland winning Kerry schools team and with the Kerry minors. Then, in late 2007, he was appointed fitness coach for the Kerry senior team. Coming off the back of three yearsâ work with Pat Flanagan, a qualified fitness coach, I was surprised. John is a physiotherapist. For three years working with Flanagan we had played football on a physical level above everyone else in the country, beating teams in 15 or 20-minute spells here and there. How was a physio going to help me build on Flanaganâs great work? Little did I know.
Throughout 2007 I had played with a tear in my hamstring tendon which had really reduced my power and pace. It worsened over a winter of club football. I returned to Kerry training in January 2008 as the newly-appointed captain, ignoring the burning pain when I drove or sat down and the inability to take off my shoes or socks without pain. I got to the last week of January, less than a week before our first league game against Donegal, and pulled out of a training session having been left behind in a sprint run and requested a hamstring scan.
The results threw my season and my career into jeopardy. The surgeon in CUH told me he had only ever seen such an injury in the AFL. My right hamstring tendon was barely hanging on to my sitting bone. Immediate surgery was advised with a nine-month recovery period and a reduction in power and pace a likely outcome. I refused, telling the surgeon I was captain of the Kerry team and needed to find a way forward. He was dubious, suggesting an intensive rehab and rebuilding program over four months might give me a chance. Enter John Sugrue.
To say the work he undertook with me was gruelling doesnât do justice to the time and energy he spent on me. Breaking down my back, pelvic and hip joints so they would move differently, alleviating pressure on the tendon itself so it could heal, getting the tendon moving again, loading it gently to stress and strengthen it through resistance work and light weights, a stretching program.
Then starting to jog again, to run again, to turn again, eventually to sprint again. Other challenges like bending down to pick up a ball and kicking were further signs of progress for the new stresses placed on my hamstring. A setback here and there put pressure on my timeline to make the first championship game that June against Clare. I reached the stage where I could compete fully with John in one-on-one situations and tackle boxes, but often left Fitzgerald stadium nauseous, sometimes bleeding. I was teaching at the time in The Sem Killarney, training between morning classes, returning to work dazed and confused.
I made that game against Clare with a different body, different running technique and different motivation. I only fully felt the benefits of Johnâs work in 2009 and 2010 but I never forgot his honesty and energy.
He also had different ideas about the human body, how athletesâ skin can actually impede hip movements and pelvic mechanics. I found this to be true. His team has to bring some equally inventive thinking to throw at Dublin today. Brian Fenton canât be allowed to kick points unopposed, on the run, left foot, right foot, all alone. They have to make Dublin defend one-on-one somehow. They also have to use their size. Easy to write. Harder to do.
More spotlight than ever will fall on the keepers. Even though heâs named to start, Stephen Cluxtonâs fitness will be a matter for debate right up to throw-in. On the other side Laoisâs Graham Brody will be key. For all Dublinâs obvious strengths, they make opposition goalkeepers work like no other team.
Witness the sweat Paddy Collum got into with Longford early in the semi-final trying to get his restarts off. It looks as if Dublinâs inside forwards have upped the pressure they put on opposition kick outs this year between the handling they give their opposite numbers and the positions they take up, hands aloft, bouncing up and down. Some teams havenât yet cracked the difference between short kickouts and fast kickouts. A short kickout wonât hurt you so much if itâs delayed, a fast kickout will nearly always hurt you. Dublinâs forwards might allow short ones they rarely allow fast ones.
Itâs a huge task, but at least in Sugrue Laois have a manager who refuses to accept anything as impossible, no challenge or team as unbeatable. I wonât be shouting aloud for Laois but I will look for a team full of honesty, energy and different ideas, silently rooting for the man who saved my playing career.
