GAELS outside Dublin (and in the county too) will watch Saturday’s All-Ireland final hoping for a decent game. Maybe not a Mayo win but at least a contest.
That is the point Gaelic football has reached now and if Dublin – winners by 11, 21, 22 and 15 points in their four Championship games thus far – win by another cricket score then the game is obviously in serious trouble because, if the winner of the Championship is a foregone conclusion before it starts, then what is the point of the competition?
But whether Mayo run them close on Saturday or not, the fact is that Dublin are already way out ahead and the gap is widening and not only because of what the players do on the field.
On-field superiority is underpinned by resources off it and the question is: If Dublin has a full-time employee spending 40 hours-a-week on a specific role, can a county match it with a volunteer who runs him or herself ragged to give up 10?
No, is the simple answer.
If the Dublin squad has a county board employee supervising athletic performance and strength and conditioning, rivals cannot compete with a part-timer juggling two other jobs.
That’s the dilemma the GAA faces now.
Dublin have invested in their coaching structure, so too have Kerry and Tyrone, and Mayo are now recruiting a full-time head of performance. It’s no coincidence that they are four of the five counties that have contested the last 10 All-Ireland finals between them.
Donegal – champions in 2012 and finalists in 2014 – are the only other county that has squeezed into that mix.
Rated by many as the second-best team in the country, the Donegal system has produced a conveyor belt of strong, athletic, quick, footballers over the last decade.
That’s not a coincidence either.
It is the result of the expert planning and supervision of an athletic programme that has given talented footballers all the physical tools required to compete on the inter-county stage.
But Paul Fisher, the man who has overseen that programme for the last six years has reluctantly decided that it is time to move on. With a gym to run, a family to support and a Masters to complete, the Letterkenny native has stepped down after playing a vital role in the successes of managers Jim McGuinness, Rory Gallagher and Declan Bonner.
We spoke last week, but if the Donegal County Board had the finances to appoint him as their full-time head of performance, we wouldn’t be having a conversation at all.
“It would change the dynamic for me in terms of having to go out and make a salary for myself,” says Ulster University Sports Science graduate Fisher.
“Donegal are one of the teams that could be doing with it in terms of trying to close the gaps.
“Look at the other top teams now, they have made that investment, they have invested in a high-performance coach or an athletic-development coach and it’s not just for the senior football, it’s from the top right down.
“They’ll be putting structures in place in terms of academy, the hurlers… not just the senior football.”
He agrees that dropping full-time coaches into an amateur environment is something of a grey area. But the reality is that the tops teams are doing just that and, if the goal is to match them, then the chasing pack – which obviously includes Donegal – has to respond.
“Everybody is asking: How are we going to close the gap with Dublin?” says Fisher.
“As long as they have somebody spending 40 hours a week doing a job, versus somebody in Donegal who can only do six or seven… It’s a big difference. There’s a massive amount of work you can do if you have 40 hours a week to commit to it.
“Maybe if a full-time role was in place I mightn’t have been the man for the job but it would be an important role. It didn’t come up and I don’t see it changing any time soon unfortunately. We’ve just got the training centre off the ground and that was a big focus in the county for a while. They (the Donegal county board) have other things to look after first and foremost and that’s the way it’s going to be.
“But going forward, most inter-county teams are going to have to look to do bring in full-time staff because if you’re looking for a professional service for players your coach has to be looked after in the sense that they don’t have to work three other jobs to make ends meet and look after a county team as well.”
There is an information grapevine on the inter-county circuit. From what Fisher has heard from his counterparts about the resources available to many of them, he has no doubt that Donegal have “punched way above our weight” over the past half-dozen seasons which have yielded two Ulster titles, three final appearances and Super 8 places in 2018 and last year.
Donegal are always included in discussions over All-Ireland candidates but the sought-after breakthrough hasn’t come. Fisher feels Donegal have been “punching a good bit above our weight” to compete with the top counties and he hopes that continues. But the truth is that, in the modern GAA world, talent only gets you so far.
Allied to that is that facilities will only get you so far. Yes, develop a centre of excellence, yes install a gym, but you need qualified expertise to get the best out of both and that costs money. It’s money most counties do not have but there is mounting evidence that the focus needs to change.
“I hope we keep punching above our weight because that shows the level of footballer we have,” says Fisher.
“But if teams really are interested in closing the gap they are going to have to figure out how they can have full-time staff looking after an amateur team.
“It’s a huge advantage to be able to do that. Every county will have things to get sorted financially and I know that won’t be easy, like in Donegal we had a house-draw to cover the last bit of our training centre.
“Now we have the highest quality gym in it and it’s important to have that in place but you still need the professional services to run that gym successfully.
“Everything that goes through that gym should be done to a professional level as well if possible – an expert in the practice should be involved in it.”
Up to the end of this season, Fisher threw himself into the Donegal cause. At elite level that means hour after hour in the gym, followed by hour after hour on the training pitch during the week and then the game at weekends.
‘Sure if you don’t want to do it, don’t bother,’ some traditionalists might argue. But it’s not as simple as that. Fisher wanted to continue in his role but life, earning money to keep his family, means he couldn’t. That’s just the way it is.
“I still had to get up three mornings a week and open my gym at half-four after having had a late night with the Donegal boys on the pitch,” he explained.
“The late nights, early mornings and long days mount up and I suppose if you were in a full-time position it would change the whole dynamic of that.
“I have a three-month old baby and a four year boy at home and when you weigh-up the amount of time that you’re away to make a living you have to look at the bigger picture and that’s what I’m doing now.
“I was able to sacrifice a lot of other things for six years and put Donegal first but next year I’m hoping to get the Masters finished and there has been an increase in demand for gym use as well now that everybody is out of the lockdown.
“I had to weigh it all up. I would hope to go down the lecturing route once I get my Masters complete and run my gym – they are viable long-term options for me going forward as a career.
“It was a very hard thing to walk away from Donegal. I have a lot of good friends in the squad but the demands are massive, the players expect a certain standard and if you aren’t meeting those standards you aren’t giving the boys what they need. I would rather go on my terms in the sense that I’ve not been pushed out and I know I’ve done my best up to now.”
Watching Donegal play, you marvel at the players’ athleticism and conditioning and the speed and strength that complements their footballing ability and winning attitude. Their programme has produced a steady stream of fresh-faced, hungry youngsters equipped for football at the highest level. So what’s the secret?
“There’s no magic bullet in the world of strength and conditioning,” Fisher explains.
“We do the basics savagely well. The gym environment is where we get them strong at the right time of the year and the athletic ability is developed out on the field – our speed work, change of direction work and agility work.
“In previous years I’ve seen guys get bigger but whether that transferred to the field or not is questionable. It’s not strength and conditioning now, it’s athletic development and creating those abilities of being strong, fast and agile but all that has to work around them being very good footballers.
“So you have to work very closely with your technical and tactical coaches. I worked closely with Karl Lacey in how our defenders move, I would have worked closely with Stephen Rochford and Gary Boyle in how our offensive players move and then the big thing over the last couple of years has been how fast can we go?
“When you’re looking at the teams around us they are all big, fast teams. Tyrone, the Dubs… The all have those qualities and we were trying to close the gap between ourselves and what other teams were good at and if our footballing ability was a bit better then we’d be hoping to be competitive then.”
Fisher picks out Caolan McGonagle as a prime example of a player who harnessed raw talent in the system. The Buncrana clubman joined the squad as a goalkeeper and has been converted into a superb midfielder.
“He had a skill base of fielding the ball and having good hands,” Fisher explains.
“Caolan’s power and strength are a by-product of his work ethic. He lives his life very well, he is a teacher so he has good hours but he trains damn hard and very consistently and then when he is in the gym he has a focus where he tries to get everything out of every session. He is still doing the basics but he is doing them very well and, when he goes out onto the pitch, he can transfer that strength and power work.
“The likes of the Eoghan Ban Gallagher and Jamie Brennan came through a full programme where I worked side-by-side with Declan Bonner.
“Year after year these players just kept on developing. We weren’t doing anything magic, we were just being consistent with them, giving them good coaching and spending a bit of time with them.”
After the disappointment of the surprise Ulster final loss to Cavan last month, what will next season bring? Fisher predicts that Donegal will bounce back after missing out on a first ever provincial three in-a-row.
“If we had have got over the line against Cavan the last day a lot of the wee niggles we had would have been cleared up and we might have had a run at it (the Sam Maguire),” he says.
“I feel they aren’t going to be far away next year and that made it very hard to walk away. I think you’ll see a very hungry squad. They’ll be bottling up whatever annoyed them this year and they’ll be using that. Oisin ‘Farrah’ (Oisin Gallen) will hopefully get a bit more game-time, he wasn’t around for the Ulster final because he had a shoulder injury.
“Paddy McBrearty will be fully fit and that changes the whole dynamic of the front line and then we have Ciaran Gillespie coming back from a second cruciate. He’ll not be far away and he’ll be a big asset to the defensive structure. He’s a very athletic, dynamic player.”
He’ll be cheering Donegal on with the rest of the fans next season and he hopes Bonner and his boys make the breakthrough they have threatened.
But he knows better than most that, in the modern era every moment you stand still, the competition moves further ahead...
