Players are driven for more - Power

By Shane Brophy

Tipperary senior football manager David Power believes the Covid-19 restrictions of the past fourteen months or so will have positive consequences for the inter-county game as his side prepares to kick off their 2021 season against Limerick in the National League.

By the time the ball is thrown-in this Saturday, all teams will have had just twenty-six days training along with one or two challenge matches to prepare. With such a short lead-in, players couldn’t return to collective training to get fit, they had to be fit already, with training beginning on ball work and skills to get back up to speed after over four months without kicking or handpassing a ball.

And the Tipperary manager has been hugely impressed by the physical condition his extended panel of forty-six returned in, having worked on their own since the turn of the year and Power feels this will be the new trend in how players and teams deal with pre-season going forward, benefitting both the players and management.

“It’s been a great thing,” Power said of the shortened pre-season.

“All these collective gym sessions two or three times a week, that won’t happen ever again. All the players have their own individual gyms and it’s going to get to a stage where every so often that Robbie Cannon (strength & conditioning coach) will look at them individually and make sure they are improving and their technique is right.

“Going forward, it will mean players won’t have to travel as much either.

He added: “We have a lot of lads based in Dublin and we don’t need to be dragging lads down from Dublin three, four, five nights a week for pre-season, that just won’t be happening again.

“The way players are now, they are self-motivated, they will put in the work so there has to be a bit of trust and to be fair to the lads they have come back in great shape. We have a strong leadership group and to be fair they call players out if they are not putting in the work.”

It is going to be a race to be ready for the new campaign with Power keen not to overload players too quickly for fear of picking up injuries, but it is a balancing act to ensure they hit the ground running as they hope for a repeat of how they came back after the first lockdown winning their final two league games in October which kickstarted their Munster title run.

“It’s a great fixture to start with because we know, even though we beat Limerick last year, we didn’t perform,” Power said.

“There is no doubt we will not be taking Limerick for granted, or Wicklow or Offaly for that matter. It is about getting that first result.

“Last year when we beat Offaly in Thurles in the first game after lockdown, that set us up for a great run and if we can start in Limerick with a win, I am hoping we can start on a great run again.”

He added: “I have been drilling into the lads that the first three matches we play we are going to be favourites and the favourites tag hasn’t sat well with Tipperary senior teams when the pressure is on, we seem to slip up. Now we have to embrace it and use the confidence of winning the Munster title last November and show it wasn’t a fluke, that we have a lot of good players and if we show that we have a great chance in topping our division and getting to a league semi-final. If we can win our first four matches that means we will be promoted to division 2 but our first focus is on Limerick.”

Initially, Tipperary had hoped for the 2021 campaign to begin in February as scheduled with the momentum, bar the Mayo game, carried over from last year, but the spike in Covid-19 cases post-Christmas put paid to that.

However, the extended break has proved beneficial in terms of the players becoming bigger and stronger, while also maintaining the positive atmosphere within the squad.

“Initially it would have been nice to get back into it straight away but from myself and the management it would have been tough going to start again in January so maybe it has worked in our favour,” Power said.

“On the flip side, the likes of Philip Austin might be still playing, but overall the couple of months off has given lads a chance to work on different things that they had to improve on, and I can see it in training there is great atmosphere there and it is being player led, Michael Quinlivan, Conor Sweeney, Brian Fox, they are all driving on the lads which is brilliant to see.

He added: “There are a lot of good young fellas there, but I am really conscious of the fact that if you are a young fella playing football for Tipperary from under 20 down, they haven’t had much success at minor and under 20 level, you can’t just expect just to throw them into the National League. We have to be wary but there is a couple of good young fellas there. It’s about getting the balance right.”