FOUR DAYS IN Portugal as a professional hurler isn’t quite as a good as it sounds.
As the Dublin senior hurlers prepare to jet off for their now annual training camp, Ryan O’Dwyer says they’re not as “lucky” as people might think.
“We’re just finishing school and people are saying ‘what are you doing?’, ‘Oh I’m going to Portugal for four days on a training camp’ and they say ‘Oh aren’t you lucky’ but I say ‘no I’m not’.”
O’Dwyer who is a teacher in St MacDara’s Community School in Templeogue, says that the weekend away will be a tough one for the panel.
“The fact that it’s out warm, it is tough going, ” he says. “But I suppose we’re together we’re eating right, we’re living for those four or five days a professional lifestyle and we’re living like professional athletes.
“I suppose it makes you think when you go away from this, I have to stay being responsible for my own body my own diet, my own physicality and you need to look after yourself just as well as when you were on the camp.
“I think you’re just living in each others pockets, at this stage we’re fairly well used to each other but things like that just bring the team together.
Shortly after the ‘Dubs’ first camp at the Algarve’s Amendoeira Sports Club in April 2011, the team went on to win in the Division One National League for the first time since 1939.
“I think being so close to championship, yeah we will train hard throughout it but we’ll also get time to recover and we’ll get treated right. We’ll have the masseuse there and we’ll have the physio there and its getting us in the right mind frame.
“The thing about it is, the difference between amateurism and professionalism is we all do the hard training but professionals get time to recover.”
After ending their 42 year drought, Dublin beat Galway last year to win their first provincial title since 1961. They now find themselves in the unusual position of going in to this year’s Leinster campaign as reigning champions.
“I think people outside the panel are looking at us differently,” expains O’Dwyer. “We still feel we have a point to prove. We still feel that have to prove it to ourselves more than anything.
“You keep the outside out and you control the controllables. We can’t control peoples’ expectations of us. We can only control that ourselves.
“We’re looking forward to the year ahead. We had a couple of weeks off and went back to the clubs. Dalo even said a couple of years ago that if there was no collective training and he let us back to the clubs that the standard would have dropped when lads came back.
“But he said he can do that now because we’re more mature. We’re just rearing to go and can see the bigger picture.”
Ryan came in to the panel in 2011, three years after manager Anthony Daly was first appointed.
“It’s a process. Everyone, management, selectors, players, physical trainers. When they come in they’ve something in their mind that they want to do it and they evolve over time. ‘Dalo’ has certainly evolved over time and so have the players and so have the selectors.
“We were fairly immature as a bunch and we’ve matured a lot and the managementt with that and that’s always going to happen.”
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Ryan O’Dwyer was speaking at the launch of ‘Fields of Fire – The Inside Story of Hurling’s Great Renaissance’ by Damian Lawlor in Croke Park on Tuesday.
