Tipperary GAA legend reveals surprising difference between ‘pressure' of playing for club vs county
TIPPERARY legend John "Bubbles" O'Dwyer has explained why he felt greater pressure playing for his club rather than his county.
The prodigious half-forward
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'Bubbles' will be one half of talkSPORT Ireland's new podcast Beyond the 65' alongside Wexford ace Conor McDonald
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New episodes of the fun-filled hurling show will be released every second Wednesday
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Each discussion will be chaired by talkSPORT presenter Luke Delaney as all angles of the hurling season are covered
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He's now launched
In
He remarked: "I never would have gotten nervous for inter-county games, I'd have gotten more nervous for club games.
"Because there's probably more pressure on you there. You're expected to run the show there y'know?
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"But county games no. As Conor says, you have your work done by then and so matchday is probably the easiest part.
"I'd say going up through minor and under-21 teams before senior that there's always some pressure there.
"But the most pressure you feel comes from yourself. The manager or other players don't put any pressure on you at all really.
"I never would've found any pressure only for club games."
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The bulk of the episode focused on the extreme training regiments modern players are subjected to in pre-season to prepare themselves for the long season ahead.
Interestingly, both men noted that there has been a huge increase in how demanding workloads have become over the past decade.
RTE GAA pundit Enda McGinley reacts to Dublin vs Meath on The Sunday Game
The virtual professionalism of inter-county set-ups where every session is classed as a red, orange or green in terms of intensity has trickled down to the club game too.
On what exactly goes into one of those most severe red sessions, McDonald stated: "You're looking at running between 7-10km whereas with your orange it'd be 5-7km while a green is handy enough.
"That's your Thursday night before Championship job.
"And in red sessions that's tackling, running, hitting. At no point is it a conversational pace!"
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McDonald and O'Dwyer agree that John Kiely's Limerick side have raised the bar at club level as well as inter-county
O'Dwyer then chimed in as he emphasized this is all a relatively recent phenomenon.
He remembered: "Around 2014 or 2015 this talk of red, orange and green sessions was absolute gibberish to us.
"Now club teams are doing it. You have some clubs forking out seven or eight thousand euro for these GPS units.
"It's crazy. And with that comes more pressure on the manager or coach because everything is tracked."
The 33-year-old later acknowledged that there is definite value in being able to gauge your fitness level across pre-season and league.
However, he did add a word of warning that he feels sometimes modern players are inhibited during matches by fretting about how much ground they've covered rather than playing naturally as the game dictates.
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