Five key areas Dublin and Kerry will focus on this week

By Ciaran Deely

* An shortened version of this article first appeared in the Irish Examiner newspaper on Saturday 07.09.2019

Coach and Sport Scientist Ciaran Deely looks at the five areas Jim Gavin and Peter Keane will be focusing on in the interluding two-week period between last week’s ferocious All Ireland Football Final and next week’s replay. He analyses which of Kerry or Dublin hold the advantage.

Recovery

Recovery begins for both team straight after the game. As they walk back into the dressing rooms, the players will be given a bottled electrolyte drink which seeks to replace lost liquid and salts, and a carbohydrate/protein rich mixed drink to replenish muscle glycogen stores and raise blood glucose levels, along with beginning the process of repairing muscle damage sustained during the game. After a brief sit down and summary chat from the respective managers, the players will enter the small Astro-Turf room attached to each dressing room in Croke Park which serves as the initial warm up area before players enter out onto the pitch for their second match day warm up. A low-intensity, aerobic cool down and movement routine will be conducted with as a team or individually to aid the body’s process of ridding the muscles of lactic acid. Some light stretching, and foam rolling will aid the body’s recovery processes further with gentle relaxation of the muscles. Both teams, I’m sure will be well versed in these, with Dublin’s experience of the previous drawn-All Ireland Final in 2016 giving them extra experience in this.

Even though there is a whole range of new recovery modalities, good nutrition and sleep are the most important factors in recovering from a game. Upon departure from Croke Park and arrival at their local hotel, both sets of players’ nutritional intake will be closely monitored- with a hefty meal of protein, extra carbohydrates and good fat mixed into the meal. They may even be allowed a fructose-rich dessert to fully replenish those stores. One thing they won’t have, I suspect, is a feed of drink after the game. Though the replay was two weeks away, alcohol can stay in the system for up to ten days and I would be astounded if they were permitted to disrupt their recovery time so drastically. Players want nothing more than to have a drink after a big game like that as they are often still on a high, but the first twelve hours are so critical in aiding the recovery process.

The second critical factor in recovery is sleep. Sleep is when muscles are repaired, growth hormones are released (no wonder your teenagers need so much sleep!), and you lay down problem solving memories. Through the simple fact of geography and the match being held in the capital, Dublin would have had a distinct advantage over Kerry in terms of this. The train journey back down to the Kingdom will have meant that Dublin already had a huge head start on their opponents in their recovery as they will have already been tucked up in their own beds, with the match behind them and the recovery process well under way, while the Kerry players are still travelling down the country.

Ice baths, cryotherapy chambers, massage, light jogging and cold-water immersion in the Irish Sea or Atlantic Ocean would have been the order of the day on Monday along with gallons of water and plenty of food, after a long sleep.

A further important factor is the psychological and emotional recovery of the players. It will have taken these young inexperienced Kerry players time to come back down from the ‘high’ of last week’s unexpected performance. Whereas the more experience set of Dublin players have been there, done that and from my experience of dealing with athletes every day, will have ‘switched off’ much quicker than the younger Kerry players. More experienced players tend to be able to compartmentalise games easier- they will have gone home (something that the Kerry lads won’t have been able to do until very late), spend time with their partners and family and chat about other things in life going on. A distinct advantage to Dublin here.

Advantage: Dublin

Mindset

This is the critical one. This is the one that can lose you an All-Ireland! It goes without saying that Kerry will be bouncing around. They have gained huge confidence from this win. They will have gained the know-how to beat Dublin. Peter Keane’s first job- or I at least hope it was, because if he didn’t, he risks losing the replay before it starts- would have been to dampen that euphoria straight away in the dressing room. The Kerry dressing room would have been hopping at 5:30pm last Sunday, with the young Kerry players delighted to have fought back against the might Dublin machine. Wrong! They lost that game. They didn’t achieve what they set out to do. If I was in Peter Keane’s shoes, I would have stood up in the middle of the dressing room and ran the riot act. The quicker those players’ feet returned to the ground, the better for Kerry. I would have had a quiet word in the ears of my experienced warriors first- David Moran, Paul Murphy, Tommy Walsh- to set the narrative. I’d finish with a sharp Kerry quip about revenge for 1982 to lighten the mood, let the craic happen again and task young Clifford to get the Rap music back on the stereo again! The positivity can stream back in now for the week ahead. Peter Keane’s task now is to delicately toe that line between Kerry confidence and arrogance. I believe as a manager, he will be tough on the players. Especially the ones who played very well and thrown an arm around the shoulder of those like Clifford, Geaney and O Brien who didn’t fire on all cylinders. He needs to let them know the faith he has in them. I would set them loads of extra unopposed shooting practice also to build their confidence.

Dublin have trickier waters to navigate. Jim Gavin has a whole range of issues to sort. Anyone who thinks Jim Gavin would have come in all guns blazing against the players afterwards in the dressing room just don’t know how Jim operates. Dublin’s dressing room would have been a very different place than Kerry’s at the end of Sunday’s play. I would suspect Jim’s approach- which I would 100% agree with- would have been to sit them all down and calmly gone through the issues. The first point of call would have been to accept that they didn’t perform, as a group. But on the other hand, to recognise that they also snatched a draw from defeat and showed huge courage and ferocious determination to turn Kerry over numerous times in the final twelve minutes. I’m sure all of this would have been transmitted in a calm but serious manner.

However, make no mistake about it, Jim would have been seething! And rightly so. When you prepare your team so well, covering all bases and all eventualities, you expect the team and especially your big players to perform. For so many of them and at the ultimate hurdle of the five in a row, Jim would have been absolutely seething. Inside! And that’s the critical point. a few issues would have needed to be solved right away. Johnny Cooper would not have received the hair-dryer treatment, he wouldn’t have gotten away that easily. With my manager’s hat on, when a player gets sent off, I give him the silent treatment. Cooper would have been hurting, embarrassed and annoyed with himself. He may even have apologised to the group for his mishap. The cold shoulder, a quiet word away from the group probably back at the hotel, and a calm but stern wrap on the knuckles for Johnny by Jim would have been the order of the day. He couldn’t do anymore, as Jim was partly to blame for it anyway. That would have been unspoken between the two. Jim will have been disappointed in himself, especially knowing his tactical authority of always getting the match ups right, will have been dented ever so slightly amongst his defensive players especially.

A few problem-solving chats one to one out on the pitch in training during the week would have smoothed Kilkenny, Mannion and Fenton’s worries. I always like to have these chats on the pitch, during the warm up say, where I would pull a player aside and have a chat with them. ask probing questions and find out from himself why he didn’t quite perform on the big day. Is there a tactical issue to be solved, a confidence and nerves thing, or simply things just didn’t fall right on the day? Players always love a simple one to one chat, that helps easy their worries somewhat.

A bigger issue, however, is what to do now with Bernard Brogan and O Gara. How can Jim square his philosophy of having all players on an equal footing, with introducing Diarmuid Connelly after just returning to the squad in July. While Brogan has worked away for this team for the last few seasons but not even be included in the match day squad for such a big game? Don’t be surprised to see at least Brogan to be brought back into the fore. Being ruthless with older players who have passed their prime is one thing, but squad harmony is far more important. The exclusion of Brogan especially would have been a disruptive factor in the lead in to the game. No doubt about it! My approach would be to swallow your pride and bring him back in. For all the importance of the process and creating a future pathway for the young players, the human touch of including Brogan will always trump that. A mistake was made last week, I would rectify it. Too much too lose otherwise.

With these issues in mind, and the confidence Kerry will have garnered from last Sunday’s performance, I believe Kerry have an advantage here.

Advantage: Kerry

Analysis

In the modern game this starts straight away after a game. Analysis of these games can be broken down into two distinct areas- analysis of the opposition and analysis of your own team’s performance. The top Performance Analysts ‘code’ the game live and create relevant short video clips so that they can be relayed to players and management mid game or at half time. Once the game has finished, the analysts will create moments of importance that will be loaded up onto Hudl- a remote cloud-based video sharing service that the coaches, players and analysts have access to closed website. This will be done by Sunday night at the latest.

The players and coaches will then have spent the last week looking at both positive play from their own performance and areas of development needed. The great thing about this online video sharing service is that the players can be at home on the Monday night, creating clips themselves through their tablet and sharing them with the coaching team in order to create a discussion about what they could have done differently in that specific situation. The manager or coach can obviously do the same with any player or positional group of players also. The reflection and feedback on their performance in the game would have gone on in the immediate days after the match. By last Wednesday night then they would be finished. Time to move on and prepare for the next match!

The focus in the coming week then switches to the second area of analysis. Which, of course, is analysis of the opposition. As London Senior football manager, I always approached this as a three-pronged attack. Firstly, in the immediate aftermath of the game, the analysts would create their clips and give their insights on the opposition team. This week the manager and coaches will forensically go through the game and form a plan to limit the opposition’s strengths and exploit their weaknesses- the savviest coaches will have learned to create their own clips themselves- and share these insights then with the players. This is going to be the game plan! The final prong is for the players themselves to create clips on the opposition players themselves- so Morley and O Sullivan to analyse how Mannion and Con play etc. This gives ownership of the process to the players and ensures they watch relevant moments and remain engaged.

I can’t get away from the feeling that Dublin will have the upper hand here. Jim, Declan Darcy and Jason Sherlock are modern, methodical coaches and with the incomparable access to finances Dublin have, there is an advantage here for Dublin to exploit.

Advantage: Dublin

Training Load

Getting the training load balance right is a tricky job. Teams will rely heavily on their respective Heads of Performance for this- Dublin’s Bryan Cullen and Kerry’s Jason McGahan. Jason Sherlock and Donnie Buckley will obviously have big inputs into planned training also. The planned for the two weeks ahead would have started on the bus out of Croke Park. The staff usually sit at the front of the bus and my experience of game weekends is that the work never stops. While the players can now relax and chat about God knows what, the respective backroom teams will be busy analysing the game, planning the week ahead and already starting to speak about positional changes for two weeks-time. Players don’t realise that teams can often be picked very early in the week- bar a few last positions.

The simple periodised plan needs to look like this- recovery, increase in load, tapering, peaking. A more detailed training plan for the past week that makes sense to me would have been to meet for a jog and dip in the sea on the Monday; a light recovery pitch session on Wednesday, with extras for those who didn’t play last Sunday; their individual gym session on Thursday; then look to train hard on Friday night; followed by an A versus B game Sunday where all players have a chance again to stake their claim for a starting pIace. For the upcoming week- the training nights would be switched to Tues/Thurs, with Tuesday’s session moderately short but very intense; and Thursday’s session extremely short, pockets of intensity, but more focus on tactical set up and shooting.

The sport scientists, S&C coaches, physiotherapists and rehab specialists would be busy dealing with any injury worries, and this is where Dublin may have a disadvantage. Brian Howard sustained either in the worst-case scenario, a grade 1 hamstring tear; most likely a low-level tightening of the fatiguing hamstring muscle; or in a best-case scenario, a mild cramp. Any one of these options is not ideal. To be forced to take off one of your top performers in the dying moments of such an important game is going to be a cause of concern. The specialists will be working around the clock, sending him for cryotherapy to get him right. In my experience, however, the player, though fit to play the next day, may not be 100% right. Kerry will take heart form that!

Cullen and McGahan will also lean heavily on the technology at their disposal. Aside from daily Wellness Questionnaires completed through the players’ mobile devices to see how the players are responding to training, they will also use the excellent StatSports GPS system. It remotely analyses training load, making sure every player is completing the required distances, high speed running, accelerations, decelerations and sprint distance in training. It will also track their max speeds, and can potentially identify any specific player who is physically slightly ‘off’ in this coming week, and so that player may go up or down in the pecking order of how many minutes he will play on Saturday. It will also show anyone who may need additional rest- perhaps a few of the older players like David Moran, MDMc and James McCarthy- and the players who would benefit from some extra training in the form of speed work, anaerobic fitness runs or technical practice. I would suspect players who didn’t see as much game time the last day- such as Killian Spillane, Tommy Walsh, Kevin McMeniman, Diarmuid Connelly- and obviously the players who didn’t see any game time at all such as Bernard Brogan, O Gara and critically, James O Donoghue.

Advantage: Kerry

New Strategies

Kerry will look to double down on what went well for them last Sunday. They will feel now that they have found a way to crack the Dublin machine. I would suspect they will spend the two weeks in training practicing all the things that went well for them, making those patterns of play even better and exploiting Dublin’s weaknesses. They will obviously focus also on the specific issues they had problems with- Dublin’s kick outs etc. But in the spirit of positivity and confidence that the Kerry players and management gained from the first titanic battle, you would suspect they will focus on the positives by reinforcing the game plan in training each night. I believe this would be a mistake by Peter Keane. If you stand still, you’re going backwards!

I predict Dublin will take the alternative approach to their training across the two weeks. There will be no major positive approach to their performance last Sunday, and training will be focused on the areas they performed poorly in; rectifying all the issues that went wrong; and finding a new way around the Kerry challenge.

I expect to see Dublin coming out with a whole new game plan with new tactics specifically aimed at throwing Kerry off their now tried and trusted set up. This is what Dublin do best. If I was Jim, I would aim each session at a separate theme each night- their own kick outs; dealing with Moran and Barry at midfield; how do they get Con and Mannion on the ball more and earlier; and what specific tactic are they going to use to limit or negate the critical threat inside of Clifford, Geaney and potentially Tommy Walsh. I just can’t see Dublin management dropping the ball so spectacularly for the second game in a row. Added to that, have no doubt about it- Mannion, Con, Kilkenny and Fenton are currently feeling the pressure to perform the next day. Instead of mitigated that pressure, Jim needs to quietly apply it. That’s what I would do. Practically force huge performances from those lads! Tell them McCaffrey got them out of jail the last day, they owe him and the squad a better performance, and they are in danger of becoming famous for losing the five in a row. A little gentle pressure on top players can stir their determination and basic hunger and rage. Let them be mad at you as their manager. You’re there to make them better players, not to be their best friend. They’ll thank you for it after! I imagine Dublin to develop more new strategies and to hold the advantage in this area.

Advantage: Dublin

Dublin 3-2 Kerry with the critical points of Dublin having more adequate recovery time and potentially running with new game plan strategies gives Dublin the greater advantage in this two-week period. The ace in the pack for Kerry is the mindset- if they can tap into that and exploit Dublin’s issues, then they’ve got a real chance of a second upset.