BEFORE I dive into the memory bank for stories of training camps from yesteryear, a quick look ahead to another crucial game for Cork this Saturday afternoon.
Cork travel to Navan with four points on the board, ahead of Fermanagh on three and Louth on two. Kildare on zero points are all-but-gone after the loss on Leeside last time out. Meath on six points are safe, but will view a home game against Cork as a big opportunity to confirm a top-half finish. As Tailteann Cup winners, Meath were the only team in the country guaranteed to play Sam Maguire football before a ball was ever kicked in the leagues this year. A thank you to my old schoolmaster, and underage football trainer James Hicks, for that little nugget!
Cork do not have that particular comfort blanket and need a win to confirm their Division Two status and increase their prospects of playing in the Sam Maguire competition this summer. Louth and Fermanagh face each other this weekend, so whatever happens Cork won’t be in the bottom two after the penultimate round. Nonetheless, no one wants to rely on having to beat Armagh at home in the last game to avoid a potential relegation. There is no love lost between the football people of Cork and Meath since the late 80s and early 90s, and Colm O’Rourke would love nothing more than to send Cork down the motorway a very unhappy bunch Saturday evening.
To prepare for this game, and for the season ahead, Cork headed for the Algarve last week for a four-day warm weather training camp. I had the pleasure of three such tours in my playing days. Maybe pleasure isn’t exactly the word I would use to describe them.
My first trip was to La Manga in January 2005. I had trained with the senior squad as part of the extended panel in 2004 as a 19-year-old, but 2005 would be my first year on the squad officially. As it happened, we had won the senior county championship with the Carbery divisional team the previous October, and the team holiday was slated for the start of January, the very same week we were due to fly to La Manga. In today’s hyper professional world, it likely wouldn’t even be a consideration, but four of the Carbery team faced a dilemma – fun in the sun in the Canaries with not a training cone in sight, or face into ‘sessions’ of an altogether less enjoyable variety in southern Spain?
From memory, the four of us in question were Eoin Sexton, Sean Levis, Kevin MacMahon and myself. Sexton and Levis had the benefit of a few years’ service in the bank at that point and were granted dispensation by Billy Morgan to enjoy the holiday. Kevin and I nervously contemplated making the same phone call, given that I was new to the squad and Kev was not there too long before me. Eventually we plucked up the courage to make the call. I don’t know how long Kev was on the phone with Billy, but my call was short and sweet – I would not be going to the Canaries! The polarity of the two experiences would soon be apparent when we hit Spanish soil.
After we landed, a bus was waiting to take us miles away from civilisation to a sleepy and almost deserted golf resort in la Manga. Any thoughts of golf and any other more enjoyable holiday activities were soon dispelled when we saw the itinerary. We would train immediately after landing and there was no soft introduction: we were going running. Billy had recruited a new S&C team to supplement our trainer Teddy Owens, and there was to be no messing. Lisa Regan from Canada and John Barry from Dublin were an elite level powerlifter and marathon runner respectively. They were bringing their experience of preparing professional athletes to our set up and the week was to be used to train and very little else. Three sessions per day every day, a conditioning session (running), a gym session and a football session. Morning, afternoon and evening.
In between we ate and we slept and occasionally dipped in the pool. Sunning yourself was verboten as well, too draining. Bearing in mind my gym experience to this point amounted to little more than the occasional bench press, I struggled initially with this part of the process in particular. In fact, it wasn’t long until my muscles seized up almost completely and I couldn’t train for two or three days. This was a break from the slog, but the boredom was intense. Luckily, I loosened out enough to rejoin the action for the last couple of days. Bodies were tired and sore, but we looked forward to one thing. Surely, we’ll get a night out on the Saturday before the early morning flight home that Sunday?
I believe it was a matter of some debate among the new management set up, however Billy would insist that we deserved it after the week, and that in early January it would do us no harm. For once I was more than happy to board the dreaded bus, and we headed to Alicante for a night on the Spanish tiles. Truth be told, I don’t remember there being too much happening in the town at that time of year, but we kept going until late at night when some of the more responsible heads rounded us up to get back to base in the early hours. An hour or two of sleep for most of us and we were up again, and airport bound. All accounted for and no dramas from the night before, a successful end to a tough week. However, there was to be one little twist in the tale.
While we had all successfully dragged ourselves up that morning for the early bus, there was to be a relatively long wait at the airport. Broken bodies found little nooks and corners for forty winks, waiting to be called to board. Eventually, we boarded and waited for take-off, but not before one final announcement from the crew. A passenger had checked in but never boarded the flight. In a sleepy daze, the name being called would barely register with me, but a certain well-known Cork footballer from the west of the county would have to sort his own flight home from Spain later that day.
Another memory I have from the first trip is that there were four professional football clubs there at the same time – Basel, Hamburg, Stuttgart and a local Spanish club played a four-team mini tournament during the winter break. Infuriatingly, while we ran ourselves into the ground and kicked lumps out of each other, we watched as they played nods and volleys, did keepy-ups and practiced set pieces. As a Spurs fan, I was tickled by the fact that Christian Gross was the Basle manager, fresh from his ill-fated tenure at White Hart Lane some years earlier.
One of the good things about the trip was the food – it was top quality and loads of it. They also laid out beautiful, calorie-laden deserts, albeit just not for the humble, amateur Cork footballers. We were forbidden from indulging in those. I won’t lie, sitting in the dining hall watching millionaire footballer Hakan Yakin stuff his face with chocolate cake while Teddy turned ours back to the kitchen was hard to stomach, and I mean that quite literally.
We went again the following year in April and I tore my hamstring for the very first time on the second last day, an injury that would plague me for the following two years or so. Suffice to say that particular part of Spain is not somewhere I have any desire to revisit any time soon.
Under Conor Counihan, we went to Villamoura in Portugal in 2008, which had the benefit of having an actual GAA pitch with actual GAA goals, instead of a rugby pitch as we had in Spain. In later years, more local destinations like Bere Island and UL would become the venues for weekend camps. Hopefully the footballers’ training camp last week will pay off this Saturday and in the weeks ahead.
