Ian O'Riordan talks to athletics coach Jim Kilty, who is currently working with Wexford hurlers, about tactics
Since expanding his coaching interests from athletics into Gaelic games Jim Kilty has become a little obsessed with hurling statistics. After quickly gaining his reputation in his adopted sport as fitness trainer to the Tipperary hurlers that won the All-Ireland in 2001, Kilty has passed on his ideas to several county and club teams and now works with the Wexford hurlers.
It's his fresh and slightly novel approach to Gaelic games that helps make those ideas particularly interesting. As coach to World Indoor 60-metres hurdles champion Derval O'Rourke, he knows a thing or two about speed and technique. Yet Kilty admits he is still learning the specifics of football and hurling, and especially the tactics.
"I believe the big traditionalists in hurling like Kilkenny, Cork, Galway and Tipperary never bothered with too much tactics," he says, "because they could beat everyone else without them. I think Donal O'Grady started to change that with Cork, and they were the first traditional hurling team to really look closely at tactics.
"I know Wexford went big on tactics when they beat Kilkenny in the Leinster semi-final two years ago, because they needed to. But Cork have really changed it all. I think everyone has followed suit. Kilkenny and Tipp are probably the last of the traditional teams to adopt very definite tactics."
Such tactics will be on display in Sunday's Munster semi-final between Cork and Clare. Kilty has been impressed with the way Cork have adapted their game. "To me it all starts with their puck-out. Donal Óg Cusack has the ball in hand ready to puck out almost before the other ball goes over the bar. Then say their right-half forward, Timmy McCarthy, gets lost, and runs across to get the puck-out. One of the Cork midfielders runs in to collect the ball, and puts it over the bar.
"Donal Óg can also give a quick one whenever he feels midfield is being crowded out. The whole idea really is creating space between his half-back and half-forward line. If no one responds Donal Óg sends it up the line. That's why I feel the success of Cork is Donal Óg. He can also stand still for his puck-outs, while most other goalkeepers need a run at it. He makes that Cork tactic work, and he's also one of the deep thinkers of the game.
"Cork aren't just fast in getting from A to B, but also fast in reaction and thinking. They've great consistency in the team, as we've seen by picking the same team for Sunday."
Clare, Kilty feels, have a useful tactic, which frequently means utilising an extra centre back, but they have a more obvious tactic too: "Clare still have great physicality, and great mental strength. Their one criticism for the past few years was their lack of forwards, but I think they have that now in Barry Nugent and Tony Carmody.
"I feel Kilkenny are also more tactically aware this year. For the last six years their tactic was to get big players who could catch the ball over the head. Now they're playing a more direct game, picking out the player, and giving him more time on the ball."
Tactics, however, will only work as long as the players have the speed and technique to implement them. Kilty's philosophy on training is based on the SAQ combination (speed-agility-quickness) but that too is evolving as he uncovers more hurling statistics. With Damien Young, the Tipperary substitute goalkeeper, he's conducted or adopted studies that look at the movements of hurlers and footballers. "Essentially the ability to react to a situation, on an irregular but consistent basis, is what makes a good hurler. That's what you have to train them for. The way you progress on that is to overload and allow adaptation.
"When I started out coaching distance runners, I had two main choices to bring about improvement. I could increase the repeats, or shorten the rest period. For a sprinter, you'd do the complete opposite. You'd decrease the repeats, and increase the rest, and get them to run faster that way. This was the difficult thing for me to understand when I first moved from being a middle-distance coach into sprinting. It was the same when I went into hurling coaching. I had to look at things differently.
"One of the things we found out in hurling is that a player gets to where he wants to go in five steps around 50 per cent of the time. And within 10 steps around 73 per cent of the time. So that 18 metres or so is the important speed distance in hurling, and the major training area.
"We also know this will need to be repeated between 60 and 90 times by the various players in the game. So stamina training is still important in the sense of repeating the effort. I call that 'speed repeatability' more than stamina."
Kilty also points to the 2002 All-Ireland final involving Kilkenny and Clare, where Henry Shefflin apparently had the ball in possession, in hand or on his hurley, for 28 seconds during the game. Around 12 seconds of that entailed setting up DJ's goal, yet he still scored 1-7.
"That's not exceptional for a full forward," adds Kilty. "We also found midfielders make between 70 and 90 runs per game. Half backs and half forwards make between 70 and 85, and full backs and full-forward lines between 60 and 75 runs. And in the 2003 final the ball was in play for as a little as four seconds, and as long as 119 seconds. But the average was only 37 seconds.
"So while people always talked about the heart and lungs being the engine of any player, with a hurler that engine is really the neuromuscular system."
