“We have this thing in our head that we have to be collective like 97 times a week and we don’t”

Mike Quirke looks on the bright side.

He could have picked a better year to start his managerial career, that's for sure, but the former Kerry footballer is taking 2020, and all its imperfections, in his stride.

"It was a great choice of mine yeah, to start off this year during the pandemic, I picked a good one," the Laois senior football manager laughs in a GAA Hour interview with Colm Parkinson.

But in the short while he's been at the helm, Quirke has done much to impress. In the League, Laois were making progress before the interruption and in the mean-time, the Kerin's O'Rahilly's club man has been improvising in the lock-down. "The technology has been a great help. Nobody knew Zoom existed three or four months ago and now we're saying we can knock real value out of this. Rather than bringing lads in for a 20 minute video session, lads could be at home in their sitting room drinking a cup of tea doing it. "We have this thing in our head that we have to be collective like 97 times a week and we don't. I think down the line, we'll see a bounce out of this as well." Hallelujah. The local lockdown in Laois has caused an even greater disruption to the season but when things get going again, any eye-catching club performances will be noted, and rewarded. "Club games are the only barometer we have. We haven't seen guys in five months. Just say it's somebody who hasn't been in our group before and they put in a big performance, and they back it up a couple of weeks in a row, then it would be very unfair not to take a look at that guy. You have to give guys the incentive..." "I think after the lock-down and that, fellas are just bursting to perform." Another inventive idea has been his organisation of coaching workshops with the clubs, which basically entails coaching the club coaches to an inter-county standard. "It was something that we had spoken about long before any pandemic. It's not to dictate to the club coaches, it's just to provide some information and see if guys would pick it up and bring it back to the clubs. The idea is to broaden the base of talent that you have. With Tom Hargroves coming in with the physical side of things too, he gives a good steer on the best way to keep guys match fit and so on. "Why not make that information available to all the clubs as opposed to just keeping it for the senior county team. The more that have it, you hope in the long term that the better standard of player comes available to you..." As for the blanket ban on inter-county training, Quirke wouldn't see any harm in a one-session per week system. "I think there would be no problem with guys training one night a week with the county team of a Tuesday then going with their club of a Thursday and playing the game at the weekend. But if that would be the case, that would be across the board and it would have to be the story. At the moment if you have a few counties who are doing that (training) and getting ahead on others, that's when you run into problems..." You can listen to the Quirke interview and much more from Thursday's GAA Hour here. https://soundcloud.com/sportsjoe-gaa-hour/mike-quirke-interview-paul-clarke-resignation-intercounty-training-omerta