This weekend is all about preparation for the Donegal and Kerry players. Eamonn Fitzmaurice will have his team down in Fota Island, Jim McGuinness is going to Lough Erne. It's a special time to be a footballer, your whole life is consumed with this one game and this is the best place to be.

Away from everyone who doesn’t matter, surrounded by the people you’re going to go to war with. It’s intense. The fact the final is coming up means everyone’s mind is concentrated. You’re trying to get a handle on what the coaches want from you, trying to learn your role in the game plan, getting to know your opposition as well as you can.

There are two types of training camps – pre-final and pre-championship. Most players aren’t lucky enough to get to play in an All-Ireland final but just about every player from a serious county has been away for an early-season camp at one stage or another. Some of them are pure drudgery.

You’re living out of a bag in the corner of a hotel room that is spilling nothing but training gear. It’s the one time in your life you’ll pack a bag for a trip away and not go to the wardrobe for anything that might be hung up or ironed. I remember going for trips that were to last seven days and having to pack 14 sets of gear because we didn’t know whether anything would be washed.

There was one trip away where I was sharing a room with Tomás and in the connecting room, Paul Galvin and Colm Cooper were doing the same. If you walked into either room three or four days in, none of us could have been proud of the smell that was coming out. Dirty gear all over the place, sun beating in through the window just to help it along.

These things are ruled by trial and error. I’m certain that nowadays everything is taken care of – the gear gets washed and the food is perfect. Lads have their spare time filled with activities and distractions. They can thank us for being the guinea pigs.

First camp

The first training camp I ever went on, we brought one book between us. I can’t even remember what the book was but I remember it being a lonely soldier. I’d say it was Diarmuid Murphy who brought it, he’d have been literate enough compared to the rest of us. But by the end of the week, we were all on his level – that one book had to do the lot of us. Boredom is a great teacher.

The novelty of going away together wore off very fast. This was a time before iPads, before smartphones, probably even before box sets had really taken off. We weren’t exactly the audience for Spanish television and we went through the small collection of DVDs in a couple of nights.

We went to La Santa in Lanzarote. We were basically feeling our way into this. Leeds Rhinos rugby league team were there at the same time as us and a few times we were scheduled in for a weights session straight after them. And sure by the time we lifted the weights they’d been doing off the bars to set up our own workouts, that was nearly as good as doing the session itself.

Even so, there was great merit to it. We got a month’s training done in the space of a week. We built up a bond through living in each other’s pockets. We laid a foundation for the year to come and we were able to refer back to it as we went on. Over the years, we refined it and tweaked it and cut out the things that didn’t work.

Pre-final camps

The pre-final camps would have benefitted from that sort of trial and error. They’re shorter, shaper, more intense versions. Everybody is working away under the shadow of the biggest day of the year so everybody rows in. Something as small as travelling together on a team bus makes it different to, say, training on a Tuesday night where everyone arrives and leaves in their own cars. It sounds like nothing but what it does is build a sense of mission.

Management is crucial around now. These players are in the shape of their life. Some of them are like a prize racehorse bursting for the stalls to open. Others are standing in the stable, waiting for the day itself to arrive before they rise themselves. A manager has to be able to slow down the first lad and gee up the second. First, he has to be able to tell what’s best for each one. It isn’t easy.

The other thing they have at the front of their mind is the opposition. Don’t listen to any manager that says they’re concentrating on their own game. Even if they think they’re telling the truth, they can only be concentrating on their own game in the context of the team they are about to meet.

This weekend, Kerry will be looking at Michael Murphy. Every player has habits, most of the time without even knowing it. How does he get on the ball? Who looks for him any time they’re in trouble? When things are going wrong, where does he go? Break it down, pick out things for the players who will be around him to be conscious of, come up with a plan.

It isn’t all deadly serious. The year we played Armagh in the final, the management made a big thing of getting a set of orange jerseys for our A versus B games. The big idea was to show the players how professional the whole set-up was – look what we thought of, kind of thing. After one of these games, a selector went around picking up the orange jerseys but when he counted them up he was a few short. “Ah lads, don’t tell me ye’re robbing the jerseys? Where’s the honesty lads? And after all the trouble we went to get them for ye. What sort of mentality is that at all?” And all that would have happened was we’d have hidden a few of them in somebody’s bag. But you’d never fess up.

Ticket scramble

Players are nervous around now. The ticket scramble gets handled so much better now than it did when I was playing but it’s still a hassle. I saw that the Donegal County Board had to make an appeal last week to people not to be annoying players for tickets. I could surely have done with that!

There was one year two tickets went missing on me. On top of the natural nerves for the final, this was the last thing I needed. I was going around like a bear, convinced someone had helped themselves to them. I got on to Marc and Tomás, accusing them both. They told me what I could do with myself.

That Christmas, I was going to a function and I put on a suit I hadn’t worn in months. Three months, to be exact about it. The two tickets were in the inside pocket. I decided to keep my counsel until now. Sorry about that, lads.

You can’t be worrying about any of those sideshows this weekend. The job of every player this weekend is to go home on Sunday night with a very clear idea of what his job is. It’s about creating certainty and confidence, so that if x happens, y is what we’re going to do about it.

It has to be managed properly or else you can leave the camp overloaded with information. The one thing worse than going into a final underprepared is going in worrying about every last little thing. So managers have to be careful not to overdo it. You have to strike a balance between leaving no stone unturned and making players second-guess themselves because they have too much information.

Fitzmaurice and McGuinness will trying to outthink each other and plan for contingencies all over the place. The challenge then is to make it user-friendly. What are Kerry going to do with Ryan McHugh? What are Donegal going to do with Kieran Donaghy? What curveball can one manager throw at the other?

Cold calculation

And for the players, it’s a matter being cold and calculating now. Getting yourself into the mindset that says no matter what is thrown at me, I’m going to be calm about it and I’m going to react well to it. Nothing is a setback for the next week, just something to be worked out. And everything can be worked out.

I always loved the old story about Jack O’Shea waking up on the morning of an All-Ireland final in Malahide. His room-mate was Ger O’Driscoll, I think, and the way the story goes is that O’Driscoll opened the curtains and told Jacko it was bucketing rain. “Excellent,” said Jacko. “Exactly what I was hoping.”

Kerry were in the final again the following year and again Jacko and Ger were rooming together. Again, Ger was first out of bed, only this time when he opened the curtains it was a glorious morning. “Excellent” says Jacko. “Exactly what I was hoping.”

That’s the mindset. Ready for anything and everything. If McGuinness and Fitzmaurice send their players home sharing that conviction then half the job is done. The rest is details.

It’s arguable Donegal’s players will have an easier time achieving that conviction. For most of them, this is their second All-Ireland final. They know what to expect, both from the occasion and from themselves. They know that however fit and strong they are, the All-Ireland final will have them with their hands on their knees huffing and puffing after 10 minutes. They’ll expect it and deal with it and carry on.

Final experience

Whereas for most of the Kerry players, this is their first one. They’ve played in big games and physical games and tight games but they haven’t played in a final. At the same time, they do have a lot of experience around the place in Gooch and Marc and Declan O’Sullivan and Darran O’Sullivan. Those guys will be doing a lot of talking this weekend.

The one thing I don’t think anyone will be saying this weekend is that it’s an experience to be enjoyed. Nobody who’s been through the experience of playing in a final can say they found it enjoyable. There are plenty of enjoyable experiences in life but trust me, this isn’t one of them

This is what you’ve worked for your whole life. This is the end of the road as far as you know. Most people never get back for another one. Trying to enjoy it is a total waste of energy. Use that energy to win.

If you do, then you’re in for one of the most enjoyable experiences of your life. It’s that bus journey out of Croke Park. You’ve had a couple of beers in the players’ lounge, your body is sore, your muscles are aching, the Garda escort is leading you through the streets to your hotel.

And above all, Sam Maguire is sitting at the front of the bus. Nothing beats that.