The Tom Ryan Appreciation Thread

Kilkenny have a dietician, the same one for years, I believe her name is Noreen Roche. Their strength and conditioning coach and fitness trainer is Michael Dempsey, the selector. A few years ago he did bring in Noel Richardson, the former long distance runner, to help with the fitness training but he is not involved any longer. They have physios, a doctor and a masseur but no sports psychologist.

Well then KK need to get a good beating for him to change his mind. Like with the man marking of the Tipp forwards after being beaten in the 2010 All Ireland final.

No, never heard any mention of a psychologist. I’d say Cody does that himself.

The latest instalment from Tom

http://soundcloud.com/rule-of-five/tom-ryan

I’ve heard the selectors look after that end of things. Heard of one player low on confidence or whatever and it was the selector that would help him and it was kept from Cody as his solution would have been to drop the player.

Never heard them before. Hilarious. Tom was well and truly clamped by Len Dineen, which is no proud moment for anyone!

Ah Tom, what a coach. Middling coach by mid-90’s standards but, looking back on his stint with Westmeath hurlers in 04 and early 05 it was a shambles for the most part, partly Tom’s useless training techniques, partly the fact Westmeath were useless and the main players were apathetic about the whole job but, all in all led to legendary turnouts of about 6 and 7 for two consecutive weeks before Tom decided to quickly abandon ship just before the inaugural Christy Ring Chmapionship and then Seamus Qualter turned the whole thing around before Westmeath won out that yoke. Still though some man for the half-time speeches was Tom.

Ah yes…

[font=Tahoma][size=3]
Tuesday, October 30, 2012[/size][/font]
[font=Tahoma][size=3]
Former Limerick manager Tom Ryan has levelled a broadside against the standard of inter-county coaching in hurling.[/size][/font]
[font=Tahoma][size=3]
Ryan, who led Limerick to two Munster titles and All-Ireland finals in the 1990s, said there is too much “gimmickry” associated with the area now and the core values of the game are being ignored.

He claims Brian Cody’s success is down to him being the only current inter-county manager who has stayed true to the traditions of the sport.

The Ballybrown man argues hurling has been over-complicated by “celebrity” managers and county boards have had to pay the price.

“I am very concerned about the standard of coaching,” said Ryan. "It’s the most abused word in hurling language. You only have to look at the quality of games to judge what is happening.

"All this coaching, this talk and psychologists, it’s become a trend. If you haven’t all these things like dieticians and psychologists you’re seen as not being up with the game. Your day is over in other words.

"Compare what we see now on a field to what we saw in the past. There are so many talented hurlers but you see them picking and poking for the ball and bunching. It can be exciting at times but it has the potential to be so much more exciting.

“Hitting the ball on the ground seems to be gone. Gone are the days when Mike Houlihan or Gerald McCarthy would open the shoulders and whip for the ball. Do that now and you could be sent off.”

Ryan continues: "Putting a ball straight between the posts from 30 or 40 yards isn’t a difficult task but you look at the game now and it seems there has to be three or four contacts made, bringing others into play or playing the ball into the corners before a shot is taken. This all comes under the guise of coaching and it’s not right.

"We’ve had some tremendous hurlers down through the years. Con Roche of Cork was unbelievable. He could hit the ball in the blink of an eye and there were dozens like him.

“I don’t remember any sports psychologist back in that time. It’s just bullshit that came in from rugby and soccer, which are totally different games.”

Ryan feels there are current inter-county managers who are not qualified to be in the positions they hold.

“In the FA, you have to get a cert to become a manager. Here you can hang up your inter-county boots and become a coach or manager the following week and continue hurling with your club. It’s become more personality-driven, a form of Celebrity Bainisteoir.”

Ryan says Cody is the best in his field because he hasn’t digressed from the principles of what makes a good hurler.

"Why all managers and coaches can’t just look at his blueprint is beyond me. It’s the one that has worked just fine, hands-on coaching and hard, physical games in training.

"I’ve never heard of a psychologist being involved with Kilkenny. Cody’s the psychologist and his psychology is the day you play poorly is the day you’re dropped and that’s the end of it.

"Clare under [Ger] Loughnane had a successful period because he was an individual in the same mould as Cody.

"Limerick is unique because it’s had a list of f***ed-up management systems and yet the US Olympic team wouldn’t have the facilities they have in UL.

“We’ve had 14 managers or coaches since I left in ’97 and Limerick have lost some great players in that time. Some of them still interact with me and what they would be divulging about how they were coached would shock people.”

He continued: "I don’t think there is a need for all this gimmickry nowadays. It’s coming at massive expense to county boards but no chairman has said stop yet. Getting up to do morning sessions or to be in the gym at 5am — I’d never get a fella out of bed to train. He’d a job to go to, students were encouraged to study.

"We didn’t have a terrible record in those four years I was manager either.

“We had 3,000 or 4,000 people at our training sessions because for 30 or 40 minutes we had full-blown hurling games with a referee and his umpires. Kilkenny have been doing the same all this time, they were the champions this year and who’ll be next year? The same crowd.”

Ryan also despairs at some of the behaviour of inter-county managers on the sidelines in this year’s championship.

"All this play-acting on the sideline and managers running up and down — I got terrible criticism because I wasn’t acting the clown on the sideline.

“Now we have managers fighting with one another and the GAA are doing nothing about it.”[/size][/font]

FFS Cowpat!! :shakefist: :shakefist:

That was discussed last week- Please keep up.

:clap:

Give Tom the Limerick job.

Jesus would you don’t encourage the mob… :o

Tom knows how Limerick lads operate. It’s instinctive.He’s the only man for the job. I pray to God he’ll be re-instated after Allen wins us Munster next year.

sorry lads, only came to it the last few days. His brother was down in the folks house last week, so I was reminded of Tom Ryan’s great one liners…

" I was in Kildimo last Sunday outside the church and they have this big Munster banner accross the street and i thought to myslef that’s great marketing as most people in Kildimo wouldnt know if a rugby ball was pumped or stuffed

“i dunno where this crowd came out of like, the was 26,000 of them watching connacht last week , when under normal circumstances you wouldnt see 100”

“the rugby crowd have another shaggin song made up for the national anthem” :lol:

Going on about dieticians on WLR - “I hurled with fellas who didn’t know what they had for dinner”

Actually, allowing for the political correctness and all that, I would have to agree 100%.

On reflection it is probably one of the greatest sports quotes of all time.

Ryan must have been half decent back in the day. Got Limerick to 2 All Ireland finals. Fair enough back then it was all about roaring at lads and running them into the ground. Would the general consensus be that Ryan did a good job or that he had the players to win All Ireland’s but failed?

Actually, I don’t think anyone has really touched on the idea that Wexford cheated us out of the AI in '96. That’s something maybe to be discussed and looked at here on TFK sometime.

“lets get the codology out of it” gas gas man
But what he is saying can be referenced by the fact that in a county intermediate football final this year .A player chose to play rugby with his club than a county final as both fixtures clashed.