Other teams could learn from Mayo’s midweek training arrangements for travelling players

It makes sense.

In the current Mayo panel, there are thirteen players that live, work or study in Dublin. Dublin is a long trek from Castlebar, where the Mayo footballers usually train. Last year the following ten players were all based in the capital city.

• Tom Parsons
• Seamie O'Shea
• Jason Doherty
• Chris Barrett
• Rob Hennelly
• Conor Loftus
• Stephen Coen
• Paddy Durcan
• Conor O'Shea
• Diarmuid O'Connor

This year, with new faces added to the panel, like St. Pat's Drumcondra student Ciaran Treacy - there are a few more. Instead of facing this journey home for training every Wednesday, after a day in work or a day in college, the Yew County's Dublin based footballers, for the first few months of the year anyway, meet up and run a training session themselves in Dublin. Obviously, when the championship rolls around, Stephen Rochford and any inter-county manager, for that matter, would want to have their whole panel in the same place for training - but in January, February, March and even early April - what is the point in dragging lads home on a six, sometimes seven hour round trip? Most teams are in action of a Friday evening and a Sunday morning for training of some sort or a match at this time of the year anyway. Isn't two days together enough? Anyway, early season sessions are usually based on fitness work and ball-work drills, so while it would be ideal to have everyone training together, it's not going to do any irreversible harm by having them split into different groups for one night a week. Especially when there's still a group of them together to motivate each other. And surely, wouldn't it help a player's morale and motivation along the way? Because that slog home isn't easy. Players don't have a minute of a rest after their work-day. Club players all over the country sit in a car for two/three hours before hopping out to train. Surely that's not best practice for preventing injuries? They'd bite the Mayo lads' hands off for their midweek set-up, which Cillian O'Connor revealed to us today.

"There's a few of us (in Dublin) so for the first few months of the year we'd train up here during the week together so we don't have to go home until the weekends," said the Ballintubber club man at the eir launch of their coverage of the National Leagues. "Those journeys during the year can be a little bit tough, but we're not the only county with that challenge. There's other teams that have that too. I suppose with the life of a teacher it's not as bad as the guys who are in offices and work in Dublin all year around.

"There's a good few county teams that'll do it. I know lads from Sligo, Westmeath, Donegal they'll do sessions up in Dublin during the early months of the year just to save the travel. If you have the numbers those collective sessions can be of high quality. So if it saves the travel and the trek it's a positive," said the 25-year-old. "As the year progresses then managers may want to bring players back to Donegal, Sligo or Westmeath during the week to work on things as a group. I suppose it's up to each team to get the balance between the quality of training collectively but also not needlessly carting lads up and down the road. "It's not too bad. And then as the year progresses, in the past we've started going home for collective training during the week," he added.

It's a common sense approach by Mayo and other teams that do it. It's good man-management by managers that do it, and it's definitely appreciated by the players. Club players around the country are being dragged home on Tuesday and Wednesday nights in January. Wouldn't they be a lot better off meeting up with the other lads around them for a running session or a puck/kick around? Wouldn't they be hungrier come the weekend, then? https://twitter.com/eirSport/status/953652615237251073