BRENDAN CUMMINS ONCE gave an eye-opening description of the toll big championship days had on him.
During his 19-year career with the Tipperary hurlers, Cummins regularly suffered from headaches after games and would often wake up the following morning feeling like he’d been in a car crash.
“I suffer from wicked headaches after games,” Cummins told GAA.ie back in 2014. “I’ve never had a migraine in my life but after championship games my head thumps. I wouldn’t go out that often after games, I’d just go home and go to bed because I am absolutely empty.
“The following day when I get up it’s like I’ve been in a car crash. You are just so tense from the build-up and you don’t even realise it. The release of all your focus and energy going in the one direction for 70 minutes, and the concentration that’s needed from where I’m standing, the result is these wicked headaches after games.”
And while his body needed a couple of days to recover from the physical exertions of the game, the goalkeeper found it would take even longer for his mind to reset.
“It’s normally alright to get over the physical side of things, but mentally it would take a few days,” he continued. “I could still go out and do a full training session the following day, but your mind just wouldn’t be up for it.
“It takes a few days to get your mind back to normality because you go into a bubble the week of a game. Once you get out of that bubble and get back to the real world it takes a bit of coming down from.”
One of the most intriguing aspects of hurling’s new round-robin structure is how the teams cope with the short turnaround in between games. By 9 June, Tipperary, Waterford, Wexford and Offaly will have played four games in the space of 21 days, while the rest will complete their programme in 28 days.
It’s a hectic schedule and one that places huge importance on the strength and conditioning teams in each county.
During his appearance on Second Captains last month, Derek McGrath revealed that one of Waterford’s Munster rivals “sent their strength and conditioning staff over to a Premiership soccer club to see how they deal with a three-week spell of three or four games.”
But what about mental recovery? During Cummins’s time with Tipperary, they often had two or three weeks in between championship games. The new system will require players to refocus far quicker than before.
This week, Henry Shefflin voiced his surprise that more attention hadn’t been paid to the psychological challenge of the new format.
“People have spoken about the physical toll that this is going to take on players and the injuries that squads are going to suffer but the biggest thing is how mentally draining it will be,” the Kilkenny legend wrote in his Sunday Times column last weekend.
“It always took me two or three days to get over a big championship match. I rarely slept well after a game because your mind is still racing. You’re shattered going into work the following day and you’re still tired going to bed that night.
“In the middle of all that you’re trying to get your mind and body re-set for the next challenge which is coming fast at the end of the week.”
Former Waterford hurler Shane O’Sullivan agrees with Shefflin’s assessment and says it’s important players take their mental recuperation as seriously as their physical recovery.
O’Sullivan retired from inter-county duty in 2016 and has since set-up his own company ‘Inspiring Excellence’, where he works as a performance psychology consultant with athletes and businesses.
“They’ve never experienced this before and that’s why they need to adapt accordingly in relation to their mental skills training in preparation for each match,” O’Sullivan tells The42.
“The physical nature of performance, concentration and mental energy are limited in capacity.
“It’s like a bucket of water. If you keep using your concentration or mental energy at a high level throughout the week, you will have nothing left in store for the game on a Sunday.
“What’s really important for teams and managers is to be aware that after the match, that there is a down phase in the first two or three days of the week where they would be relaxed.
“So they can recover very well physically but also mentally. They can ramp up again the Wednesday or Thursday in preparation for the new game that’s coming the following week.
“That’s really important, how teams can react after a win, loss or a draw. To refocus completely on the next performance and not drag whatever happened in the past with them.”
When Chris Crummey was interviewed on The Sunday Game after Dublin’s opening round defeat to Kilkenny, he spoke about the “absolute devastation” in the dressing room.
Going on a winning run may be the best form of recovery, but the losing teams need short memories.
“Momentum is serious,” agrees O’Sullivan. “Looking at it from a Waterford perspective, if we win the first game I think we’re really set-up for a good year. The league becomes irrelevant if you win the first game and get a good start.
“If you don’t get a good start, from Waterford’s perspective, and we lose the first game against Clare – then in the back of all the players’ minds…maybe those results we had earlier in the league actually have an impact on them.
“Psychologically, getting a good start is really, really important for all teams. To bounce back from having a negative start on the back of a poor league campaign is really, really challenging.
“Whereas if you win that first game, all those negative aspects that happened in the league can be completely forgotten about and you can remember last year’s championship campaign where Waterford nearly won the All-Ireland. It’s really, really important for every team they get that momentum going from the first game.”
Irish soccer international David Meyler had some sound advice recently for his father, Cork manager John, on dealing with week-on-week games.
“Forget about it the minute it is over,” was David’s tip.
“You play the match against Clare, the match could be over at 4pm or whatever — then you forget about it, you focus on your next match,” the Cork boss explained. “Thirty seconds later you move on.”
Given the professional nature of most inter-county set-ups, it’s an issue all sides will be plugged into.
Wexford begin their Leinster campaign today, and key man Lee Chin gave some insight this week into his mental approach for the heavy programme of games.
“I’ll try to take a little bit of time to myself to zone out and try to reset the mind,” Chin said. “I think sometimes taking one or two evenings off isn’t the worst thing in the world to refresh the mind.
“It’s going to be a very big mental game for a couple of weeks that we’re on the go. Whatever about being physically fatigued, the last thing you want also is being mentally fatigued.’
“If you’re mentally fatigued you’re going to feel physically fatigued. (Mental freshness) is definitely something I’ll try to achieve throughout the heat of championship.”
O’Sullivan recommends inter-county players follow Chin’s approach.
“Obviously, every individual is different, but I think space is key,” he says. “On a Monday, when you’re physically recovering you’re also mentally recovering.
“A key aspect to that is what I like to call positive distraction. The nature of this championship is it’s going to be five or six weeks of absolute intensity from a media focus perspective, physical perspective in a high-pressure environment.
“What’s key for players is to have a positive distraction to take themselves out of that environment and focus on a bigger picture mentality in relation to life in general or family. Maybe they need to watch a film to get their minds completely off it.
“You can do a number of activities. It could be hiking, walking, going for a swim with your friends who know nothing about hurling, but just taking themselves out of that high-stress environment they’re going to be in for that six weeks.
“You need to go down to come back up. You need to really go into relax mode to have an ability or motivation to peak or have full intensity when it really matters.
“I think that’s really vital, that people can actually step away from it and have a bigger picture mentality of, ‘Where does this fit in my overall life? Can I just relax and have moments with my family or partner, where I don’t even think about hurling?’
“The ability of the best players is to just come down quicker (after games) and as a result they can bounce back further.”
Media scrutiny will be more intense than ever over the next few weeks and that’s another area O’Sullivan feels players must be wary of.
“It’s like, ‘Don’t think of a tiger.’ It’s called ironic rebound theory. If you try and stay away from something and not think of it, you’ll end up thinking about it even more pronounced.
“You have to be aware that the media is a factor that’s there and it’s not going to go away. You need to nearly become comfortable in that environment whereby you’re very aware what the media is.
“They try to blow up your weaknesses if you’ve a bad performance and your positives if you’ve a great performance. You just have to keep an even keel in relation to the media and understand what matters is what you think, what your team thinks and what your focus is on as a group.
“So your own opinion can’t fluctuate with the media’s. The media will always look for a good story and that’s not what you want as a player. You just want to focus on what you need to do right in preparation for your next big game.”
The physical demands will be high over the next month, but it’s equally important teams take care of the mind games too.
