OF THE FOUR managers remaining in the All-Ireland club football championship, only one has any experience of navigating a team through the Christmas break period.

And even at that, the two times Pat O’Shea did so with his Dr Crokes team in 2016-17 and 2018-19, the big man in the red suit was irrelevant back then with a fixtures schedule that wasn’t so much allowed to breathe, but gently unfurl two games across three months.

The squeezing of the club season, has drained the bonhomie of Christmas from the lives of the club players left in the hunt for All-Ireland titles.

Bah Humbug? Hardly. Young men being motivated and ambitious and all that, they will hardly mind if there was a scent of Croke Park in their nostril hairs.

But how managers manage that situation is the fascination.

Given they broke new ground entirely for themselves, it wouldn’t be a surprise to hear if Coolera/Strandhill were running on the beach on Christmas Day, making all sorts of promises to themselves.

Did Cuala supremo Austin O’Malley take a sneaky peek into Con O’Callaghan’s kitbag to see if the remainders of a selection box was poking out? And a word on Con, who has already gone through this process twice as a Cuala hurler. 

Can you picture Pat O’Shea getting close to a player to deduct if that really is a smell of a brandy-soaked Christmas pudding on their breath?

Would it be a stretch to imagine Enda McGinley touring the houses of the Errigal Ciaran parish on 25 December to dip a pinky finger into the family gravy and testing it for richness, maybe grabbing a quick pig in blanket on the way out?

When you consider it, among the four teams left, the brains trust around the Tyrone and Ulster champions gifts them the most accurate and up to date successful methods of dealing with this scenario.

Ryan Porter has been by Malachy O’Rourke’s side since he went in with Monaghan in the winter of 2012, and O’Rourke has continually referred to Porter’s athletic development expertise in getting a team ready and prepared for a challenge.

Porter is originally an Omagh man, but lives locally to Ballygawley now, while O’Rourke has been with Errigal for almost 30 years now.

Last winter, he and Porter had to decide what was best for a Glen side that had a heavy workload.

They had reached the All Ireland final only to lose to Kilmacud Crokes in those controversial circumstances. The vaguest hint that the game might have been replayed after Crokes had too many players on the pitch for the final play also added a mental strain that was difficult to shake off.

Their county players were pretty much straight back on Derry duty, while club training was already underway for every other club in Ireland.

Still, Porter advised that they hold off for a full month at that point. Not only did the players need a physical break, but the mental toll was huge. In fact, they only returned for a brisk pre-season more as an injury-prevention measure ahead of domestic club leagues.

The laid-back O’Rourke might have even taken longer, but Porter’s concern was players going straight into games without a truncated pre-season to get their bodies ready and therefore guard against injury.

It served Glen well. They retained their domestic titles and after winning their second Ulster title against Scotstown at the start of December, their freshness carried over the Christmas period.

They then beat Kilmacud Crokes in something of a revenge mission, played in a surreal blanket of fog in the All-Ireland semi-final in Newry on 7 January, before landing the Andy Merrigan with victory over St Brigid’s of Roscommon.

Speaking recently, Enda McGinley told The Irish News, “I think all teams at this stage would be happy enough, even though it curtails plans over Christmas, I think you want to maintain your momentum.

“A long break is tougher to settle as then you are trying to give a period of down-time and then building back up again.”

If he were so inclined, McGinley could have played the genius and claimed the wins over St Eunan’s, Cargin, Clann Eireann and Kilcoo for himself. Instead, he noted that within Errigal, they had leaned on figures with experience throughout the Ulster scene.

It’s not a huge job to join the dots. We’re thinking of Peter Canavan, and his time spent coaching Portglenone as one example.

But in particular, O’Rourke and how he would have gifted the cheat codes to beat Kilcoo, having done it in the 2022 Ulster final.

So as all four teams faced Christmas, they were guided in some way by the calendar. Christmas Day falling on a Wednesday suited the training regime that the vast majority of clubs up and down the country adhere to; Tuesdays and Fridays.

Coolera-Strandhill celebrate their Connacht title. John McVitty / INPHO John McVitty / INPHO / INPHO

So the example of Coolera Strandhill was probably the template used by all.

They had a small gather up on the morning of Christmas Eve, then players were left to their own devices for the 25^th and 26^th, before they went underground again on the 27^th.

Undoubtedly, Cuala, Errigal and Dr Crokes would have done the same.

The best sports science advice is to keep things as routine as possible, and the ability to keep training on the set days was obvious. Any number of factors could affect a team this weekend. But over-indulgence would not enter the equation.

However, this is all best laid plans of mice and men stuff. A heavy snowfall and the fixtures could be called off. Perhaps a meteorologist is the next addition to the cutting edge backroom teams.