Austin Gleeson has been chasing after his stunning form of 2016 ever since and, in a bid to finally recapture it, has decided to cancel Christmas.
“Just literally I’m going to empty myself for the whole winter,” said Gleeson who witnessed the axing of captain Noel Connors and Maurice Shanahan by new manager Liam Cahill and surmised that no Waterford player’s position is safe.
It’s that move by Cahill, lighting a fire beneath the entire Deise panel, that has partly driven Gleeson to take radical measures over winter though, if he’s honest, it’s mostly a personal thing for him.
He looks back on his Hurler of the Year award in 2016 and feels regret about failing to frank it with sustained form afterwards, his dip in subsequent years mirroring that of the team generally.
Waterford did reach the 2017 All-Ireland final but after beating Cork in the semi-finals that year, lost eight of their next nine Championship games, drawing the other one.
“Everything I was doing, I just felt it wasn’t right and I don’t know why,” said Gleeson of post-2016. “I was trying different things, I was trying different fitness programmes, different gym programmes, different everything just to try to figure out what it was but it just wasn’t working so it has been a difficult few years.”
Gleeson reflects now that he didn’t deal well with being named the best player in Ireland.
“I was very young getting it, very naive,” he said. “Even that winter, a number of different award ceremonies were on, I probably would have went to the opening of an envelope, just to experience it all. If I could look back, I would have cut a lot of them out, to be honest. I was missing a couple of training sessions because I was going to these kind of award nights and it just kept going from there and I couldn’t get back to where I wanted to be and where I was in 2016. I suppose I still haven’t come close to getting to that point again.”
Mixed up in it all is the fact that he doesn’t know for certain what his best position is having mastered many.
“I honestly haven’t a....I don’t really know,” he said. “I played midfield for the club this year. I felt like I was starting to get the fitness back and get my hurling back and start to enjoy it again, I suppose. So maybe midfield, give midfield a go and try to learn how to break from there and different things.
“I’d love to sit in one position and just learn how to play that position. It’s something I haven’t been able to do in recent years. Look, as I said before, if it takes me sitting on the sideline to win games, I don’t really mind. That’s being honest with you. If the lads feel that they need me in one position to win a certain game, or if they don’t need me to play in a certain game to win, I’ll have no problem with that. I’m just sick of losing.”
He wants to start, of course, and to be a big player again which is why Christmas is cancelled.
“I’ve always enjoyed my Christmases, if you want to put it that way, like every player does, because it’s the only time of year you have to sit back and relax with friends and family,” said Gleeson. “This year I’ve made a conscious decision myself that I’m not going to do that. I’m going to train and really sew into it. Everyone is exactly the same. It’s going to be a 10-month process instead of saying, ‘Oh, we’ll be grand if we start really training hard in January’. Everyone is just going to go at it now from November.”
Seeing Connors and Shanahan cut from the group has naturally sharpened Gleeson’s focus.
“It’s after making us train harder, a lot harder. The fear is there that he’s laying down his own marker. It’s something that maybe we needed, needed big time, to make us just be hungry again I suppose. It’s after happening.”
UPMC, which offers trusted, high-quality health services at UPMC Whitfield Hospital in Waterford and other facilities in Ireland, is the new official healthcare partner of the GAA/GPA and will work to promote the health of Gaelic Players and the communities in which they play.
By Paul Keane
