lads there is a lot of talk about Cork being 2 years behind in “conditioning”. We have a full time salaried High Performance Coach in Aidan O Connell who oversees all elite Cork S&C programmes supported by individual S&C coaches who are all well qualified. He is in place since Aug 2019 the year we won both minor and U20 titles. That is 3 years lads so if two successful teams at U17 and U20 were put through these “programmes” isn’t it ridiculous for us to be saying in 2022 that Cork are still 3 years behind ??
Is Aidan O Connell not having the influence that he should ? are players not listening to him and his coaches ? Are players not following their own gym programmes ? is the CCB not giving them access to paid gym facilities ? I know there is a modern gym in PUC which players have access to
I don’t know lads to be honest - I think with the footballers at least there has been an element of apathy or a lack of interest or desire to even be involved with the IC setup ( multiple consecutive poor setups perhaps ?? ) which seems at least to have been addressed this year where there seems to be a genuine spirit there. If we had all our players available ( and no disrespect to any player who played this year ) we could be looking at a starting team like this
White
K O Donovan. Shanley. Flahive
Powter Meehan R. Maguire
B. Hartnett M. Keane
N. Hartnett Cahalane. Hayes
Sherlock Corbett O Mahony
Subs : Martin, D. O Mahony, S. Ryan, Ring, Corkery, T Walsh, Cooper, Taylor, R. Maguire, I. Maguire, O Hanlon, C. Walsh, P. Walsh, O Callaghan, Gore, Murphy, Hurley, Cronin, Herlihy, Dineen, McSweeney, O Rourke & others
That’s 9 players in the 15 above who didn’t start against Dublin. We could argue all day about who should start of course but would we still be talking about Conditioning preventing us competing for the next 2-3 years if we had all these players available and they trained properly for next season ? Yes conditioning is a factor for sure but is it the main reason we went out to limit the damage against Dublin and Kerry instead of trying to win the games ? I’m not convinced. I also think management also knew they weren’t playing with a full deck.
I give Ricken, Cleary & Co credit this year for restoring some element of pride in the jersey - getting our best players on the field as a next step is surely just as important as the conditioning.