Bryan Cullen says that the Dublin footballers endured an unsustainable training schedule during their All Ireland-winning season in 2011.
The then Dubs boss, Pat Gilroy, famously introduced a gruelling fitness programme in order to toughen the metropolitans up for a tilt at Sam. Having two sessions in the same day became the norm a couple of times a week, in addition to the fabled dawn workouts at the all-weather in Clontarf.
But recently retired Cullen, who went on to lift the Sam Maguire Cup as Dublin captain that September, reckons now that the workload he experienced at the time was "not sustainable".
He also says that it’s “nonsensical” for clubs to adopt similar schedules, and that he feels sorry for club players who are put through the same routines nowadays.
Player welfare has become a hot topic in recent months within Gaelic games, and Cullen is well placed to comment on the subject given his success with Dublin and that his day-job is strength-and-conditioning coach with the Leinster Rugby Academy.
“Looking back we were a very, very focused group in 2011,” Cullen told Off The Ball’s Ger Gilroy in a one-on-one interview over the weekend. “We would have gone to the ends of the earth to win an All-Ireland. And we did in many ways. A lot of us came through tough pre-seasons, which has been well-documented."
When Ger asked if the new regime was the toughest Cullen had encountered, he responded: “Oh yeah. Pat was the first manager who introduced double sessions in the same day to us. That was completely unheard of at the time. We would have been training in January - Tuesday morning, Tuesday evening, same on Thursday, and then we could be together on Saturday and Sunday as well.”
And what was the end result of stepping up their training? “We certainly hit the ground running in early February,” said Cullen. “Like I know, from my background, that that kind of training is not sustainable. It’s something that frustrates me. Pat did it obviously to a certain extent to get us fitter. But to a certain extent as well to kind of weed out who really wants this and who really wants to do this. His thought process was probably two-fold.
The Skerries Harps man continued: “I see that kind of thing creeping into the club game now, like the club players doing nonsensical training. I feel sorry for them at times. For me it’s unsustainable really. It takes the enjoyment out of club football.”
He added: “You can do all the training you want in the world but you still need the best players to win it.”
You can listen to the full interview here:
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