SIDELINE CUT:Early morning training sessions, the appointment of three captains – the modern GAA manager will use
anything to get an edge on his rivals in the hunt for honours, writes KEITH DUGGAN

IT NEVER felt like they had really gone away but this week marks the official return of the GAA. The winter hibernation is over and Gaels of all hue have returned to the training field in the usual welter of enthusiasm, grand ambition, new-fangled ideas and early season paranoia.

This is probably the most democratic week in the GAA calendar, when a ball has yet to be kicked or hurled and all counties, all teams are equal. Anything is possible! And this is the time of year when everyone in the GAA is watching everyone else.

It is a well known fact that any self-respecting county has its own form of Stasi who pass on whispers about what neighbouring teams are doing and thinking and saying. For the past few months, the GAA county scene has been little more than a rumour.

The idle weeks of nothingness, when the infamous winter ban forced county teams to spend a few weeks not running slow laps and playing possession games and running shooting drills, leaving the manager with nothing to do but think. So he’s fixated on what other managers might be doing. He wondered if everyone was observing the winter ban. He, too, heard the stories about furtive training sessions at obscure locations organised by other county managers.

And he worried about it! He wanted to be with his players, to make sure they were bonding and preparing and eating and sleeping. He couldn’t help thinking that the work other teams may be doing behind closed doors could make all the difference in a few months’ time. And he worried about how to get ahead. He gritted his teeth with envy when he heard Pat Gilroy had told the Dublin boys to set their alarms for 6.30am sessions this January. Secretly, he believes this to be a great idea but knows that he would look foolish – and bereft of ideas of his own – if he copied it. But it freaks him out. The idea of the Dubs hard at work while the capital sleeps is alarming.

In fact, it ruins his sleep. He finds he is waking at 6.30am to look at the ceiling and imagining the Dubs happily jogging through a deserted Stephen’s Green or punting footballs across the silent Liffey or even having a dawn run around on the fabled sward of Croke Park. At that time of the morning, the entire city is their training ground.

He hears on the grapevine that Galway have appointed three captains for the season ahead. His brow furrows at this one and he is confused. He wonders if the Galway men are banking on winning a hell of a lot of silverware this season and if they have extremely small mantelpieces.

He wonders – if he is Jack O’Connor or Mickey Harte or Conor Counihan – how this arrangement is going to work come September. Will each captain lift the Sam? Do they all get to make a speech? And who comes forward for the coin toss? Is there a vice-captain for each captain? Three captains! It is radical. But it is new. And new is always good. If Galway have a good season, expect Tomás Ó Flaharta’s multi-captain improvisation to be hailed as one of the smartest ideas of modern times and expect future teams to line out with seven and even eight captains.

The modern Gael will use anything to get an edge. Anxious managers flick through their dusty LP collections hoping to get some flash of inspiration from The Joshua Treeor The Greatest Hits of Rod Stewart. They note sadly that they haven't really updated their music collection since they were 20 years younger, four stone lighter and sporting fetching blond highlights on fringes that have receded faster than Bertie Ahern's presidential intentions.

Glumly, they peruse their DVD/video collection and wonder if there might be anything quotable to take from A Fistful of Dollarsor A Few Good Men. They know in their heart of hearts that they can't use the Any Given Sundayspeech anymore. It is a pity, because they do a decent Al Pacino at this stage but even Division Four teams are using the 'Inches' speech now. They remember reading somewhere that the rugby boys were shown a video of The Wizard of Oz by Declan Kidney. They race down to the video store to rent a copy but find it is gone and opt for West Side Story on a whim.

And before they know it they are sitting with the squad in a darkened function room; sitting with their killer half-back and temperamental full-forward and promising midfielder who the local 'paper said was "considering" emigrating to Australia. They note that the players are all covertly firing off text messages even as Natalie Wood sings Hold My Hand And I'll Take You There! (Somehow! Someday!)And they will, at that moment, feel foolish and alone and conscious of the generation gap. They will remember that harrowing footage of Kevin Keegan all those years ago, admitting that the job was a bit too big for him.

But! If, in five or six months time, their team wins a big match and the moody forward is interviewed after scoring 1-11 and smilingly recalls watching some ancient crap called West Side Story that “really made me think”, then every other manager will automatically study the old classic intently, wondering what it was about that film that made the others play so well.

The musical will enter the growing catalogue of films and other popular trivia which GAA teams have drawn on to bond and to win.

Anything goes in these early days. Mistakes can be made and players can look awful and it can all be written off. Even the best sides look puffy and laborious in these early January games, when it is so cold that the hot breath from the players fills the field and soon it is like trying to watch a match being played in a London fog. But still the crowds come! Holed up in the house for too long, the fans too have felt the effect of the winter ban. They are eager for a look at their team, to see what the manager has been up to, to see if there is a sign that there might be anything different about them this year.

Meanwhile, on the sideline, the manager will fret. He will see things the rest of us can’t. He will get a ‘feeling’ about the entire season ahead based on a messy passage of play in the fourth minute of the game. He will wonder whether if he went out and bought skinny jeans for all his players, would they then start playing like Paul Galvin.

These are the thoughts that run through his mind as he patrols the sideline scanning the field for something that resembles a GAA team. He knows he has a lot of work to do but that he has, at least, time to wipe the slate clean and start again – which, regrettably, is not the case with this column.