The Long Stretch

It looks like we’ve turned the corner for the current year. When you get to the age I am you look upon experiencing The Long Stretch in the evening as an achievement. The cold hard winter just past was one of the worst I’ve experienced in terms of basic survival. On a couple of occasions it looked like my goose was cooked. After training a couple of squads undercover in December, given the ban on collective get-togethers, I’d return home to find the heat off because of frozen pipes or the wife’s forgetfulness. It got so bad one evening that by the time the stout left my glass and entered my mouth, it had frozen solid. We were barely lasting the night out on a few occasions. In order to survive it took cute thinking. I said to herself, what would a polar bear do as they seem to be content in the cold? We took it upon ourselves to not shave for a month and eat fish raw like the bear itself, no hands used. We survived. And no better sight than a hairy woman to keep the blood pumping around your veins.

The Long Stretch also allows managers to have a good, close look at their troops. By wearing multiple layers of clothes during the January training and the lack of showers in the changing rooms because of the frozen pipes, the boss doesn’t have the chance to see who has wintered well. From experience, you need to do that from the off; catch them on the hop. My first training session would see the lads strip naked and standing in front of me. Some were dubious about my intentions but it gave me a fool-proof assessment of who was eating like a gluttonous sow over the festive period. I’ve nothing against gorging on all manner of stuff over the off-season but it gives me a better insight into who needed a few more laps at the end of the first few sessions.

But my methods and techniques would have you up before the magistrate in today’s world. Asking a group of grown lads to strip to the bone seems to be frowned upon now. That makes the job of the trainer a doubly hard one. It’s only when they pull on their match day jersey that managers get to see if the 36 lb turkey was eaten, bones and all, during Christmas week. Last week’s televised Monaghan and Tyrone game was a case in point. I’m sure McEnaney couldn’t believe his eyes when his side kicked about before the game. A couple of his charges looked like they devoured a weighty relative or two as a Christmas party dare. Mickey didn’t get off lightly too. I wouldn’t be one for looking at players’ arses but a couple of his old hands had backsides on them that wouldn’t look out of place at a Weightwatcher’s convention.

Boys like Corkery and McGonigle had a naturally beefy structure to them, no matter how hard they trained. But these lads were exceptionally talented and that compensated for the excess luggage. The vast majority of us are hindered by it. That’s why the long stretch in the evening lays bare the secret they’ve been hiding over the last couple of months. The showers are hot and there’s no need for the extra layers of clothing on the field. Shaming the players who didn’t admit to the extra indulgence since October was a common tactic in my day. My brother suffered for his sins one season, having loaded on 3 stone in two months. When his belly fell out over his trunks during a bout of sit ups, our manager acted with the speed of a bullfrog’s tongue. He got the brother to stand against the wire mesh, tied him to a pole and told the rest of us to tease him with ‘fatso’, ‘gulpen-head and ‘three-bellies’. He then brought out a selection of cakes and creamy buns and told us to feast on them with gusto in front of his very eyes. The mental torture was unbearable, even to watch, and from that moment on, the ‘long stretch’ was feared by every man who had let himself go over the winter.

As well as the weighty issue described above, the longer nights put paid to the soap-watching. As soon as the clocks go forward, you’d kiss goodbye to a twice-weekly doses of Fair City or Emmerdale. You started later and finished later. I once caught a goalkeeper of mine who had been sneaking a miniature black and white portable and chargeable TV into the back of the net. He’d been getting away with it for a couple of months until Dirty Den met his maker in a whodunit affair. Unable to bear the suspense, he refused to take a kick out until the episode had finished. There are some boys who suffer withdrawal symptoms from the TV worse than the drink or smoking. They’d become accustomed to slouching down on the settee over yuletide every evening and taking in the goings-on in Albert Square or Ballykissangel.

So you’d understand why manys a club player doesn’t share in your enthusiastic embracement of The Long Stretch. It might mean a bit of extra gardening or throwing the children outside for an hour or two for you, but for the reserve left-corner back, it signals a physical humiliation in the shower and going cold turkey on the box in the corner of the living room at the same time. Bear that in mind the next time you make fish-supper remarks directed at the burly corner-forward.

Women!

Surely there is no one who can deny that Ladies football is a fine spectacle. It’s normally a free-flowing affair with spectacular goals and mesmerising solo-runs the length of the field. The lack of a third man (woman) tackle and the ability to pick the ball straight off the ground makes it a much more watchable sport than the men’s football. The big attendance at Sunday’s game between Dublin and Tyrone must also validate my assessment. The performance of the Dublin full forward, Sinead Ahern, was something I haven’t witnessed since Peter Canavan in the early to mid 1990s. She stirred emotions in me that haven’t surfaced since the 70s I think.

Many moons ago I had spotted the marketing potential of this version long before it became a game shown live on TV. I was living in Derry City at the time and by putting messages in the bulletin and fliers in pubs, I managed to round up 30 players who would represent the first Derry side. They came from all parts of the Oak Leaf with the females from Ballinderry, Loup and Maghera being the heartiest built, matched with a ferocious temper and attitude on the field. Matches were hard to come by but the likes of Monaghan and Waterford would play us in friendlies until we found our feet. Soon we were the talk of the province and Monaghan, who’d had it all their own way for years, were delighted to see decent competition at last, just up the road.

Now you may say it was a dream job and at times it was. There was no masculine ego to massage or hangovers to contend with. No broken jaws or legs from dirty tackles in training. No backchat or attempts to overthrow you. The girls were very well behaved and eager to learn at first. Yet gradually, things began to turn sour such was my inexperience at this type of management. The first major incident occurred at the worst possible time, before the Ulster Final versus Monaghan. I had the girls well primed and actually fancied my chances of lifting the damn thing. My captain, Susan Doherty, was the jewel in the crown. She was as good as Brolly, in fact, even better as she never hid in any game at all, even against Tyrone. Susan was a strongly built girl, about 12 stone, very hairy eyebrows with a low voice. Once she was on the ball and had built up a head of steam there was no stopping her. The best in the country she had been for at least two years. I knew she would get taunted the odd time by opposing players who were making out that she was really a man from Moneymore because of the odd appearance of a hairy chin. I wasn’t sure her own team wound her up too but I had my suspicions.

Before the game I gave a rousing speech about being the first Derry side to win it and that it shouldn’t be left up to Doherty to win it; it was to be a collective effort. The error I made was in my concluding sentence. I told them that they need to match every thing Susan does, “because if there’s one thing Susan has, it’s a great big set of balls”. Unfortunately, the whole shebang broke out in fits of laughter and Doherty took to the hills. In floods of tears, she bailed up the road before the game, never to return to the area again. We lost the match by 15 points.

It was a tragic misjudgement and I told myself that from then on I’d watch everything I said in the heat of a contest so that I wouldn’t offend anyone. That didn’t last long. The following year we were in a similar situation. Susan Doherty’s presence wasn’t too harmful as a young minor made the breakthrough in sensational style during the National League. Her name was Alice Campbell. Again, she had unusual traits. Alice was a heavy-set girl in the region of 16 stone – a Geoffrey McGonigle type Ladies footballer. But no full back could handle her skill. I was told that she constantly battled with weight since her early teens and was rather sensitive about the issue. I knew to watch my turns of phrases in her company. But again, I lost the run of myself before the big game. I was giving out individual instructions on the field before the game. I wasn’t going to say anything to Alice at all as she was a natural star anyway. For some reason I did though. I told her to “throw your weight about in the full forward line. Use your weight to intimidate the full back.” I meant nothing by that but the consequences were, dire akin to Doherty’s response. The opposing players as well as our own overheard that remark and began guffawing loudly. Humiliated, Alice headed back to the changing rooms, and that was that. She never darkened my door again unfortunately. Her husband did. He was a bouncer up in Dormans. Put it like this, I couldn’t eat solid food for three weeks after his ‘visit’ I resigned immediately, out of my depth. We lost by twenty points.

So you see, managing the Ladies team is much more than getting the girls to run around a field and kick a ball as is the norm for men. Women are sensitive beings and one loose word could set off a chain reaction of tears and tantrums. It’s a frightening prospect before every big game. Crossed wires can result in an overnight stay in the hospital.