It may only be the beginning for Clare’s Senior Camogie team in the Liberty Insurance All-Ireland Camogie Championship but how they start will determine how they finish.
That’s the view of trainer Brian Enright as he emphasised the importance of their opening clash with Offaly this Saturday in Sixmilebridge. “The main objective is Offaly on the 18th of June and just to win that, if you win that the whole mentality of the thing changes, you’re playing week in week out so the amount of training you do between the matches is fairly limited but getting that win on day one is huge because it’ll lead to a different mentality amongst the squad and gives us that little momentum which I think is away to Cork which would be a massive game so really it’s Offaly and no more than Offaly”.
How to beat Offaly is simple according to the quick-witted Newmarket-on-Fergus man “score more than them”. He adds “Because we beat them and I think we beat them by seven points in the first round of the League, if we go in with a mentality that ‘that’s what’s going to happen again’ we won’t beat Offaly. Championship is championship you know just trying out the usual one-liners here but we have to approach that game in the right attitude, the right focus and a good work ethic and hopefully get over the line”.
Saturday’s game is a chance for Clare’s work over the past seven months to bear fruit and Enright cannot wait. “I’m really looking forward to it, we’re training now since November and we went down and had about three months of wet and windy and cold weather below in Newmarket and Shannon and training all over the place and it’s great now when you see the sun shining and the warm weather and the ball is hopping and you’re looking forward to our first crack at the Championship against Offaly”.
Looking back on Clare’s League campaign, the UCD graduate feels they missed out on a big opportunity for developing their younger players by failing to qualify for the knockout stages. “Overall we would have been disappointed that we didn’t qualify for a semi-final, we started great with wins at home against Offaly the first day and a tough win away against Wexford, a very seasoned them in Wexford the second day out and then I won’t say wheels came off the wagon, we put up a good performance against Tipperary at home they caught us and we were depleted a bit for our last two matches which skewed really where the team is in its development. Overall disappointed because we could have got to a semi-final and that would have led to more experience, in general it was a good campaign”.
Brian spent four years away from the camogie scene having guided Newmarket-on-Fergus to two consecutive Senior County Camogie Championships in 2010 and 2011, he doesn’t think much has changed in the game. “Not really. I got involved in Newmarket camogie with Seanie McMahon back in 2009 and I was with Newmarket camogie senior team until 2011 and then four years with the Newmarket senior hurlers and back now to the Clare setup. I suppose the only real difference is you’re probably training a higher standard of player alright but the training is more or less the same, the ethos and the work ethic is still the same that would be the only difference, I don’t see a major difference between the actual collective training between men and women, they both train equally as hard and both groups are equally committed so there wouldn’t be any difference from that point of view”.
During his time in charge of the Cork Senior Camogie team, Paudie Murray has brought Gemma O’Connor and Aoife Murray back from retirement. This won’t be happening in Clare according to Brian. “Being my first year I wouldn’t off hand be able to name all the retired players, we can’t bring them all back and we can only put out fifteen on the day and another five so we’re happy with the squad that we have at the moment”.
Owner and co-founder of Shannon Cryotherapy Clinic based in Tracklands Bus Park, Ennis, Enright is used to dealing with some of the top sports stars in the Country as one of only two cryotherapy chambers in Ireland. It’s the commitment away from the field that impresses him the most about top athletes.
“The only thing you’d learn or pick up from meeting players and speaking to players is personal commitment, what players do and it’s what people don’t see, people see players on the field playing well playing poorly having good days having bad days but they don’t see what top class players do or inter-county players do male or female outside of training, that’s the real commitment when players are training on their own and watching their diet and they’re watching their social life and their sleep, that’s the real stuff that the general public don’t see and maybe players don’t get credit for that enough, it’s a five six day a week training regime between recoveries and training and lifestyle in general so it’s a huge commitment”.
A member of Tony Considine’s backroom team during his stint as Clare senior hurling manager in 2007, Brian admires how self-driven the Banner’s flagship camogie team are. “I wouldn’t have known too many of them outside of the Newmarket girls and a few more, from day one they’ve been highly committed to training, very committed to training, there’s been nothing new there, they haven’t necessarily have to be driven in training too much, they’re self-driven a lot of them and the older players and the core group of players on the team are driving the younger players which is great because that just leads to continuity so really nothing too different to what I’ve been used to”.
In his profession, Brian puts clients in temperatures less than 110°C. In the heat of Championship, his occupation suggests that he’ll bring a cool, calm and collective approach to the sideline. For Clare Camogie his addition could be just what the doctor ordered for catapulting them on to reach their potential in the All-Ireland Championship, or in this case the physical therapist.