Squareball, gaa shop, gaa gear, gaa tshirts, clothing, merchandise.

It’s that time of the season, when the well-paid manager is starting to figure out what’s what and who’s who in the shiny new club he’s just joined and it dawns on him that he’s here for one year of what remains of his sorry life. That’s if he can stick it that long. But all for a nice fee you understand?

Couple or more grand, god knows what else in the hand, distance is no obstacle when you’re preaching the gospel of the latest thing in conditioning, training, tactics and a bit of psychology. Sounds like a night on the pub with John ‘Beefy’ Morrison. But before you can play a good game you gotta talk it, maybe later you’ve gotta walk it too. We’re talking of course about the elephant in the room, the gorilla getting into the elevator, the bête noire of the GAA. The one and only. The paid manager.

An Uachtarán Christy Cooney has vowed that the PtB will aggressively look into the phenomenon of fellas that travel for miles to take a team of their own, all for the love of the game you understand? Of course we all know that palms concerned are greasier than in a Soho brothel.

But back to our man the paid manager, what’s he up to at the minute. Not for him the usual G-A-A regalia, our fella comes head to toe in the uniform of the garrison game of rugby. His last club struck a deal with the classy CCC to kit out their training sessions, plus he once did a session or two helping out at a rugby club so ever since he wears it. Just to be different you understand?

Well, he’ll have more of a repertoire of drills, skills, spills and frills than the Sydney Circus. If you’re being paid, you need to put on a show every time you run a training session, to let the lads and the boys on the committee know they’re getting value for money you understand?

Up thonder at the pitch in the half light as our man goes through a bewildering routine of activities drawn from ballet, rugby, pelota and cycling, a few of the oul hands hangin over the fence look on in wonder.

Jaws drop at the sight of a quarter the squad busting their thoins on spin bikes round the sides of the pitch, as another group engage in some boxercise punctuated by the almighty thwack of the coach leathering them in the belly region with a sparring pad or worse again a medicine ball. “McGurn did this with Bernard Dunne” our fella roars as he circumnavigates the group thwacking another unsuspecting hoor, who’s hangin together with twine after doing planks for a core-busting two minutes.

Another group of fellas are hangin upside down from the crossbar holding a twenty kilo dumbbell in each hand as three honeys brought in from the local hockey club hit them in the stomach with the flat of a shovel clad only in bra and knickers. Makes them hard, mentally and physically he says.

Two boys get up from a prone position to run like blue f*** into two other big hoors holding tackle bags. With every impact they hit the deck, only to get up and go again. Visibly shook, drooling with each impact, on they go. Another group are rabbit jumping about the place before firing a big bastard of a medicine ball at the man opposite, “It’s for yer gloots” one groans, “the other added wistfully “I thought he said it was for the hemorrhoid muscle.” Could be right.

“No other club is doing this,” our man and his partners in crime gulder as they pace the training grid oblivious to the fact that just five hundred yards down the road the camogie squad are doing an identical routine their manager also having spent the winter seeking best practice and listened to the gospel of McGurn, McCloskey, Stevenson and these other boys that have drunk in the house of pain and are passing on a heady brew at coaching seminars country wide. Take them players down into the hole and then bring them back new men.

Hearing that something special is going on, the moneyman from the down the road pulls into the carpark, the Beemer X5 crunching on the gravel. He’s bankrolling the operation and it’s his money’s gone on getting these boys here and paying for all the fancy gear.

“I’m paying big bucks for this you understand?” he growls through gritted teeth before summoning the new manager and his support team over to enquire “Are they playing the championship with a f***in  medicine ball this year?” Not raising a laugh and maybe not trying to he adds: “You understand this new fangled training stuff is Ok but I’m payin money to see results. I don’t give a shite what yous boys do so long as you win the championship.”

Not that it matters a hate if half the team can’t run, can’t kick, the other half drink too much and the whole lot of them would gladly miss a training session if a bit of tail presented itself. We’ll return to this vista of wonderful training later in the year. Just now new fangled is good enough. Keeps the boys hanging over the wire happy anyway and sure that’s enough!