“YOU DON’T RISE to the level of your expectations, you fall to the level of your training.”
That’s one of the many quotes you’ll see if you walk through the corridor of the Louth GAA training centre in Darver. Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola is credited with the words but while someone may have heard him say it in passing, he’s not the one who came up with it. The surge of brilliance belongs to Greek poet Archilochus who was born around 680 BC.
One can understand the logic of Louth GAA attributing the quote to Pep, who could probably think up something similar. If he wanted to. But a dusty old intellectual from Greece probably wouldn’t have the sense to play Messi as a false nine.
In any case, the mistake worked. That quote was James Califf’s favourite of all the posters in Darver. The recently retired Louth goalkeeper also had a soft spot for another one which was captioned: “You can’t out-train a bad diet.” A classic of the genre!
Among the other displays on the walls in Darver are pictures of former Louth players including 2010 All-Star Paddy Keenan, the 1957 All-Ireland-winning captain Dermot O’Brien, and Stephen Melia who made 179 appearances for the county in a career that ran from 1984 to 2001. He passed away in 2015.
These are the men who cut the path that the current Louth team is walking through.
“An environment of striving to be successful,” Califf says as he describes the impact of the Darver facility on him while he was playing. “We wouldn’t have seen that before.”
Bigger dressing-rooms, a canteen, a room for physio treatment and a warm-up area are among the other the additions to the training centre. Califf says it all came from the vision of Mickey Harte who managed Louth for three years, who delivered back-to-back league promotion from Division 4 to Division 2 during his time in charge. He also guided the county to a first Leinster final appearance in 2010.
Harte is the Derry manager now after stepping away from the Louth post abruptly last September. Doubts were cast over whether they could continue to grow in his absence, but Louth are still sustaining after two rounds in Division 2. There’s a lot more road to travel yet in the competition, but a narrow loss to Armagh, and a win over Cork puts them on good ground under the new management of Ger Brennan.
Califf puts the results down to a few things. The pair played Sigerson Cup football together in Maynooth, so Califf knows his county is in safe hands and that continuity is assured.
The imprint that Harte has left behind is evident in Louth’s current style of play too.
“It was better for Louth to have had Mickey and Gavin (Devlin) for three years than not at all. Even the seriousness of the set-up, they created an environment where it was player-led.
“The players seem to be over the whole Mickey leaving at this stage. From listening to the lads over the last few years, it’s a very player-driven set-up anyway. With Ger, there does seem to be a bit continuity there in terms of the playing style.”
The Harte era in Louth was defined by three things in Califf’s mind: workrate, organisation and clarity. Every player’s role is clearly defined as are the instructions for how to carry it out to Harte’s level of satisfaction.
Innovation was a hallmark of their management style too, and Califf is proof of that. The Dreadnots player wasn’t a thoroughbred goalkeeper. He had a short stint at the Manchester United academy in Belfast while he was a teenager having played in the Dundalk Schoolboys League. But his football career never really blossomed, and he finished up with the sport at around 16.
But Harte’s coaching partner Devlin identified a role for him between the sticks Louth ahead of the 2022 season. Califf had just retired from inter-county football as a midfielder due to a persistent hamstring injury, but Harte and Devlin were too charismatic to refuse when they called to his house with their proposal.
“My wife was working at the time,” he recalls, “and Mickey and Gavin were sitting at the kitchen table when she came home. From then on, I said I’d go in on a trial basis to see how I’d get on. Things went alright and they were looking for a goalkeeper who was more an outfield player for the likes of kickouts.”
Louth finished the Division 3 campaign that year as champions, conceding eight goals as they stamped their ticket to promotion. They got that stat down to four goals in last year’s league competition as they preserved their Division 2 status. Just three goals got by Califf’s paws in the Leinster championship that followed, before that heavy defeat to Dublin in the final.
Califf retired from Louth for a second time this year. He got married in November, and only returned from his honeymoon in January. It was time to hand in his gloves and badge after 62 appearances across a 14-year period. The time he could give to inter-county football was becoming an issue too, particularly the amount needed for video analysis.
He remembers one Friday evening last year when he went to the cinema ahead of a team meeting the following morning to prepare for a game on the Sunday. He returned home from the cinema at around 11pm, but didn’t get to sleep until around 1am as he needed to pore over some clips that would feature during the meeting.
The prospect of reuniting with Brennan tempted him to give it one more year, but practicalities forced him to decline. Family life was getting hectic too.
“The amount of work that goes into video analysis, I needed to be present and we have a baby [now],” he says, expanding on his reason for retiring.
The Brennan project continues on Sunday with a derby tie against neighbours Meath, who are winless after the first two rounds. Louth players may have moved on from the controversial parting with Harte, but they are certainly aware of the outside noise placing doubt over whether they can carry on without him.
Califf is confident that his former teammates will convert that into motivational material. The quotes on the walls in Darver will surely help with that too.
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