A tough training regime in the winter of 2014 led to Waterford winning the league title in the spring of 2015 according to former Déise boss Derek McGrath. After suffering relegation the season before, the team hit the Warriors gym and the gallops in Kilmacthomas to prepare for the Division 1B opener against Limerick.
“Fergal O’Brien came in as physical trainer and he put his stamp on the boys straight away,” McGrath explained on Friday’s Lár Na Páirce show. “Because the team were down, we were able to ask them to go through the rigours for the whole winter. We often did double sessions. We did double sessions on Saturdays, we trained in the morning in Gary Walsh’s gym and then Fergal would bring them to the gallops in Kilmac. We tightened the circle. The media pressure was off us because the general narrative was that Waterford are building for the future because they’ve brought some of the minor winning team into the panel and they won’t come to fruition for a few years. We felt as a management that we had some really good young players here. That took a bit of pressure off us. We had a really hungry bunch of players. We trained Christmas Day of that year, we just felt that we needed a psychological and a physical edge and Fergal certainly gave us that. We had a couple of good social days out over Christmas and people might find that unusual in the middle of a really, good physical preparation. We became a really tight group and we had to come out fighting. Thankfully, we did in the first match against Limerick which was probably the catalyst for a good couple of years.”
The players emptied the tank on the gallops in Kilmacthomas. “It was a 1.5 kilometre run on lovely mulch where the horses run out. It was time trial runs, groups of six from the bottom to the top. The boys repeated them twelve times and this was on the back of a morning gym session. Some people would argue that it’s not the most scientific but we just felt that given where the group needed to go that they needed to go a certain point of perseverance. We were certainly in agreement with Fergal in terms of what needed to be done. Great memories from the gallops I have to say. Easy for us as a management up at the top roaring them on, it was a little bit harder as you made your way up!”
Listen back to the full interview with Derek McGrath from Friday’s Lár Na Páirce.
