No one said it would be easy, so when St Vincent’s thought about ways of extending their unbeaten club run which now stretches back to September 2012 – an incredible 27 months – freshness was always going to be paramount.
Kicking and boxing each other inside a cage might not be everyone’s idea of freshness, although it was certainly something different for the St Vincent’s players. For the management it was also a way of reinforcing the team spirit which has helped the famous Dublin club win back-to-back county football titles for the first time since the 1970s.
So, while Sunday’s Leinster club final against Offaly champions Rhode will be won purely on football terms, presumably, St Vincent’s have included several sessions of mixed martial arts as part of their preparations – visiting the Straight Blast Gym (SBG), on the Naas Road, over the course of the season.
"We wanted a fresh approach, just to change things slightly, so we did a bit of mixed martial arts," says Hugh Gill, the St Vincent's vice-captain and long-serving defender.
"SBG is where Conor McGregor started out, although he wasn't around at the time. It was great, very enjoyable. We did a bit of wrestling and a bit of grappling and a bit of circuits. Eoin Brady is particularly good. Shane Carthy is a bit of animal. I think Mossy Quinn fancied himself at it but no, he wasn't very good.
“But it was great to see a different angle, to a different sort of training. The training is just insane. And I would have followed McGregor from early in his career and mentally, how he approaches things is just quite impressive.”
Unbeaten run
Not that St Vincent’s have been ignoring their football arts: they go into Sunday’s final with surely the longest unbeaten run of any team in the country, given their last championship defeat was to Ballymun Kickhams, in the quarter-final of the Dublin championship back in September 2012. Ballymun went on to win the Dublin title that year (losing out in the All-Ireland club final), but St Vincent’s swiftly re-emerged to win the 2013 Dublin and Leinster titles, then the All-Ireland, in March of this year.
Now, they’re one more win away from back-to-back Leinster titles, and not even the legendary St Vincent’s team of the 1970s ever managed that.
“It’s been a long old run alright,” says Gill, “and the prospect of getting another Leinster under the belt is a huge incentive to keep it going. And there is still a lot of hunger there, in that we do have a big panel.
“But when you’re going this long without a break you do need to be a bit smarter in your training. There’s a fine line between getting fit and over training. So we do adapt our training approach . . . . Even when we had matches during the summer I don’t think we were training as much.”
If anything St Vincent’s look a slicker, more productive team than the 2013 version – helped by the increasingly reliable Diarmuid Connolly. Not that St Vincent’s are overreliant on Connolly, as their Dublin final showdown with St Oliver Plunkett’s proved.
Pretty well
“Yeah, Connolly probably had one of his quieter days, and they marshalled him pretty well. The same with Mossy. And other lads came up trumps; the likes of Ruairí Trainor,
Gavin Burke
, Shane Carthy and Ciarán Dorney. So I think that kind of answered a few people.”
Connolly, however, will definitely be singled out for special attention by Rhode, and even Gill admits he’s never ceases to be amazed at what his team-mate can do.
“He’s awesome, and I’ve been training with him since he was about 10 or 11, and we’ve always played on the same teams.
“This has probably been his best year, as he’s only now fulfilling his potential. And he would be a big leader on our team, very vocal. He doesn’t do too much of this media stuff but he’s definitely someone I look up to. The last year or two, he’s been extremely consistent.
“He’s only a year older than me (at 26) so he can get only get better. I’m just looking forward to seeing what that is.”
Indeed while St Vincent’s may be considered a largely young team, for many players Sunday also offers the chance to win a third Leinster title, to go with the 2007 title, the season they also went on to collect the All-Ireland outright.
“Of the 33 or 34 on the panel now, nearly every one of them have an All-Ireland and most of them two All-Irelands. We’re also a bit more mature, and the bit of experience always helps.”
Dublin manager Jim Gavin, meanwhile, has added some further experience to his backroom team by bringing in former fellow All-Ireland winner Jason Sherlock to act as forwards coach for 2015.
Sherlock played alongside Gavin when they won the 1995 All-Ireland, and has worked with several Dublin development squads in more recent years.
