Fighting fatigue crucial to Ireland's World Cup dreams
Andy Reid and Robbie Keane pictured during yesterday's squad training in Malahide.
Wednesday June 1st 2005
TEN years have passed since Gary Kelly famously passed 'Harry's Challenge' and Ireland last tasted defeat in a competitive end-of-season game.
It was June 1995 and after the embarrassment of a scoreless draw away to Liechtenstein Ireland initially set up camp in Limerick to prepare for the June 11 European Championship qualifier with Austria.
Their preparations consisted of endless drinking sessions and finished with a visit to Harry Ramsden's fish 'n' chip shop while they were on the way to Lansdowne Road for their eve-of-match training sessions.
As players tucked into their fish suppers, Kelly was prevailed upon to take 'Harry's Challenge', which involved eating massive pieces of fish and buckets of chips.
Kelly duly passed the test but the training session that followed at Lansdowne Road saw the squad waddling around the pitch accompanied by all sorts of wind-breaking noises and pungent smells.
The next day Ireland's week of debauchery took its toll. Although Ray Houghton fired them into a 67th minute lead, they couldn't hold it and two goals from Toni Polster and another from Andreas Ogris gave the Austrians a deserved 3-1 win.
Since then both Mick McCarthy and Brian Kerr have successfully managed to avoid the pitfalls that arise with playing competitive matches at the end of the season and have got through qualifying and World Cup finals without tasting defeat.
Brian Kerr said after the fixtures meeting for Group Four in Dublin in February 2004 that he had got 95 per cent of what he wanted. The five per cent Kerr didn't get from the marathon meeting was having to play two World Cup qualifiers in June.
Kerr had wanted to play only one competitive game at the end of this season but having got everything else he wanted the Irish manager eventually relented and agreed to travel to the Faroe Islands four days after the home game with Israel.
End-of-season fatigue is a major worry for international managers whose players' seasons have ended in May as it can produce mental and physical shutdown. Israel manager Avraham Grant said on Sunday that a tame end to their domestic campaign had robbed his players of their competitiveness.
Kerr's major worry was loss of fitness caused by the break between the end of the club season and the commencement of international preparations and he has gone to great lengths to ensure that it won't be a factor over the next two matches. One of the world's top fitness experts is Istvan Bali, who was introduced to Kerr several years ago by Pat Duffy of the National Coaching and Training Centre in Limerick, and it was the Hungarian to whom Kerr turned for advice.
"He said that every day without training the players would lose 15 per cent of their fitness so we worked out programmes for them while they were on holiday," explained Kerr. "Some days it was gym work and other days it was bike work or running."
Many of the players took the opportunity to head off to the sun but went with a word of warning from Kerr. Since reporting to their Portmarnock headquarters last Wednesday, the intensity of the Irish training has been steadily ratcheted up and Sunday's game against Celtic was designed to restore the player's match sharpness.
Ireland midfielder Matt Holland believes that Kerr has got it right and his players won't have any problems with fatigue.
"You get to a stage of the season every year when you are maybe ready for a break but the season has finished and we have had nine or ten days holiday since then," said Holland. "That little period has refreshed us and it's funny but I was just itching to kick a ball again. The season is quite long and you start think that you can't wait for it to end. But ten days later you are itching to get back out there anywhere. This will be like a mini-season but everyone seems fresh and ready to go."
Kerr used all 20 players at his disposal on Sunday in Glasgow and Andy Reid believes that Kerr got it right by varying the amount of time people spent on the pitch.
"With the World Cup games coming up, it was important that the lads got a run-out and I think everybody has benefited from it, including myself. Everybody got the necessary amount of football. I think Brian looked at it in terms of how much people needed and gave it to them accordingly."
While Kerr has worked diligently to ensure that fatigue is not a factor Reid reckons that the importance of the games means the players are prepared to go through any pain barrier to get two wins.
"You're on that much of an adrenaline buzz with such big games coming up, I don't think it will be a problem at all for us. We go out in every game we play to try and get a win, so I don't think the two games coming up will be any different," said Reid.
And there will be plenty of time to take on Harry's Challenge, especially if the job is finished successfully next Wednesday.
Gerry McDermott
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