In Wednesday’s Hospital Pass, we ask whether all that training in the depths of winter is really worth it, and consider the weak knee gene in the Bradley family.
Tales of training in the depths of winter are commonplace in the GAA. Running around in the muck and shite, it’s called. It doesn’t matter if you’re Championship favourites or a bunch of no-hoper muck-savages from the arse end of Ballygohome, long before you even think of rubbing in the wintergreen on Championship Sunday, you have to run around in the muck and shite on dark winter’s nights.
And anyone who’s ever played the game, from the elite inter-county stars to the Junior D trier, will know that it doesn’t matter how early you start training, someone will always outdo you. You might have 30 lads out on the field doing a dozen laps three weeks before Christmas, but somebody, somewhere, will tell you a story about the club up the road, who had 40 fellas doing bleep-tests in October.
But wait a minute. All this slogging might not be worth a damn. That’s according to Mayo’s Trevor Mortimer, or The Elder Mort as we shall call him. Turns out The Elder Mort missed all the hard stuff in the muck and shite, and he’s all the better for it.
“Last year,” he said, “I played every league match and by the time I got to the championship the legs were gone. I was stuck in the ground.
“I didn’t realise it at the time, but looking back, there was nothing left. I was just one gear all the time – I’d no explosive power.
“I think missing the league this year was good. I met up with a guy in Ballinrobe and did a lot of training with him – Padraig Marrey. The training I did with him was probably the hardest training I have ever done, but it was done in such a way that I wasn’t going to injure myself.
“When I came back in with the boys, I’d say within two weeks I was in Top Five fitness of any of them, so I feel good.”
Oak leaf knee knocks
While Mayo are favourites to regain the Connacht crown on Sunday, up north Derry will go into the Ulster final as underdogs after losing not one but two of the Bradley brothers.
Paddy had already been ruled out of the 2011 Championship campaign with a cruciate ligament rip picked up earlier in the year, and Eoin has joined his brother on the sidelines with an identical injury this week.
The Glenullin siblings are two of the best forwards in the country on their day, but their day won’t come round again for a good while after timing their double-injury so perfectly that both will miss the county’s first Ulster final in 11 years.
And in traditional Derry brothers style, the pair are feeling each other’s pain: Eoin knew the extent of his injury as soon as it happened by dint of his brother’s travails, and Paddy reckons sitting in the stands on Sunday will be easier for him than it will be for his younger bro.
One thing that is for certain, for Derry to lose both star forwards and still come out on top would be some achievement. But they’re playing Donegal, one of the real Jekyll and Hide teams of the GAA, so you wouldn’t be ruling them out just yet.
