Latest news with #ÉamonnFitzmaurice
Irish Examiner
25-07-2025
- Health
- Irish Examiner
Sitting up and taking notice: Kerry's former head of physio aims to bring ‘elite' thinking with Habitus Health
It's more than a decade since Ed Harnett worked as Kerry's head of physio as the Kingdom claimed the All-Ireland, under Éamonn Fitzmaurice, beating Donegal in the 2014 final. These days, Mr Harnett is the chief executive of Habitus Health in Cork, a healthcare tech company specialising in ergonomic and workplace risk assessment. Habitus now has 6,000 users on its platform from 15 companies, and this month is closing on adding a further 12,000 users from more than 200 separate manufacturing sites — something which would be 'game-changing' for the company, says Mr Harnett. The clients might have changed from dealing with Kerry footballers, but the knowledge acquired working with Éamonn Fitzmaurice now drives the Ballincollig-headquartered company. 'My club was Finuge in North Kerry. I played with Paul Galvin and Éamonn Fitzmaurice back in the day. I was an average wing back,' he says. 'I was gone when they started winning stuff! I was head physio to the Kerry senior football team during Éamonn's time as manager and he brought an awful lot of that new thinking into that Kerry set-up, where data was so important. 'We looked at the whole medical support for the team. I set up a network of orthopedic surgeons both in Santry and locally. If there was an injury on a Sunday, we had the scan done and dusted by Monday." Mr Harnett worked in the Kerry set-up from 2012 until 2016. In 2016, he co-founded Habitus Health with Breffni Allen from Cork, who had a background in computer science. Habitus is a tech company at its heart, and its original focus was a sensor for workplace ergonomics and healthcare. "We developed a wearable and built an app and an algorithm that would detect spinal movement. So if you slouched, say beyond 20 degrees, you'd get a haptic sensation — a buzz in your chest to remind you to move. We piloted in Cork County Council with around 70 people and we were getting 2,000 'reminders' a day." Kevin Tattan, Habitus, head of product, and chief executive Ed Harnett. Enterprise Ireland was an early backer, while the European Space Agency invested as Haptus researched preventing muscle injury in zero gravity. Then Covid hit. "We had our first funding raise when it struck. The bottom fell out of the supply chain. The price of chips went from 40c to €5 or €6 and there were a number of chips on every sensor board. It wasn't doable." The company switched direction to analysing movements. "That's when we got seriously into the computer vision technology in the workplace. We developed the idea of the workplace athlete. All this money is thrown on players to perform for 60 minutes a week, but here we have millions of people sitting for eight hours minimum a day. We should treat each of them as an elite athlete. Computer vision technology and AI are now key elements of the Habitus Health offering. Using a tailored, data-driven approach, assessments are often out incorporating video assessment. The most pressing cases in a company can be triaged all at once. Employee workplace health can be monitored for as little as €2 a month, and the company has moved beyond office workplaces into sectors like manufacturing floors and aviation. From its headquarters in Ballincollig, Habitus continues to expand, currently raising a further €1.3m in investment. It employs eight people in Cork — including former Cork City head of S&C, and former Wexford camogie manager Kevin Tattan as head of product — along with eight others worldwide. The company is rolling out its workplace health and safety platform across Enterprise Ireland's 900 Irish-based and global staff. Contracts in construction and tech operations in the UK, and others further afield, are imminent. All based on simple but economically sound ideas. "Healthy workers drive high-performing companies," says Mr Harnett. "When you apply the science to the employee, it's mind boggling how it's not being done. Your number one asset is the person — if someone doesn't turn up for work, there's going to be a pinch on your bottom line." Read More Employers have more ways than wages to reward staff, says expert
Irish Daily Mirror
24-07-2025
- Sport
- Irish Daily Mirror
RTÉ and BBC go head to head with heavyweight All-Ireland SFC final coverage
RTÉ and the BBC have released their star-studded line-ups as they go head to head for All-Ireland SFC final audience ratings on Sunday. The terrestrial broadcasting giants are bringing out the big guns in a bid to sway viewers to their own coverage. RTÉ's TV build-up starts first at 2.15pm from Croke Park, ahead of the 3.30 throw-in, with the BBC's underway from 3pm on BBC Two NI. The national broadcaster's coverage - on RTÉ 1, due to the Women's European Championships final being shown on RTÉ 2 from 4pm - will be hosted by Joanne Cantwell, and she will be joined by ex-stars Tomás Ó Sé (Kerry), Peter Canavan (Tyrone) and Lee Keegan (Mayo) for analysis. In fact the Kingdom will be well represented on RTÉ, with Éamonn Fitzmaurice - who masterminded Kerry's 2014 final victory over Donegal - joining commentator Darragh Maloney in calling the game in real time, while Damian Lawlor will report from the touchline. Éamonn Fitzmaurice (Image: ©INPHO/James Lawlor) The BBC's programme, meanwhile, will be anchored again by Sarah Mulkerrins and she will be joined by ex-stars Oisín McConville (Armagh) Philly McMahon (Dublin) and Conor McManus (Monaghan). Commentator Thomas Niblock will be joined by three-time Sam Maguire winning manager Mickey Harte, while ex-Donegal star Brendan Devenney and Tyrone's Owen Mulligan will be with Mark Sidebottom for analysis and Maurice Deegan will provide a referee's insight into the biggest calls. Mickey Harte (Image: ©INPHO/Andrew Paton) The BBC interviewed celebrity guests Paul Mescal and Rachael Blackmore, among others, for last Sunday's All-Ireland hurling final and more stars are expected to join their coverage this week. Meanwhile, the RTÉ News channel will also have Irish language coverage of the build-up and the game from 2.55pm. Later, as is traditional, RTÉ 2 will have The Sunday Game cameras live from the winners' hotel from 9.30pm. Jacqui Hurley will host the programme and a number of pundits, including Donegal's Mark McHugh and Kerry's Tomás Ó Sé plus Ciarán Whelan, Cora Staunton, Enda McGinley and Paul Flynn, will look back on the afternoon's action and reflect on the football championship in general as well as picking The Sunday Game team of the year. Get the latest sports headlines straight to your inbox by signing up for free email alerts.
RTÉ News
22-07-2025
- Sport
- RTÉ News
Why do 90% of minor footballers not make the senior grade?
Analysis: The odds of progressing from county minor to county senior are overwhelmingly stacked against young players for a variety of reasons As Kerry gear up to face Donegal in next weekend's All-Ireland senior final, the spotlight will inevitably fall on the stars set to grace the field. But beyond the headlines and heroics lies a more uncomfortable truth: the odds of progressing from county minor to county senior are overwhelmingly stacked against young players. It's a sobering reality that should also serve as a note of caution for Tyrone's hope of a golden generation, despite their impressive success at underage level in recent times. How many make the jump from minors to seniors? In 1994, Kerry won their last All-Ireland minor title before a long drought that ended two decades later, in 2014. That 2014 win, under Jack O'Connor and against Donegal, was the first of five consecutive All-Ireland minor titles. By the end of 2018, a new Kerry senior dynasty felt inevitable. In fact, Éamonn Fitzmaurice was strongly criticised during his final year as senior manager for not promoting more of those minor players. If making the grade means starting a championship game for Kerry (not just a National League match or coming on as a substitute), the numbers are sobering. Minor panels typically carry more than 30 players, but we will keep it at 30 for this piece. In these calculations, a playeralso could not be counted twice so a player who was a Kerry minor for two or three years was only counted in his last year of being minor. From 1994 to 2013, 60 players (10%) from those minor squads went on to start a senior championship match. From the brilliant run of 2014–2018, the figure is 18 players (12%). The average number of players produced per All-Ireland minor winning sides (1994, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018) is 3.1 while the equivalent number for all other sides in that time who didn't win a minor title is 3. Of the 78 players who did make the transition to senior championship starts with Kerry, exactly 50% of these were county minors for more than one year. A notable correlation but, as yet, not proof of causation. Does physical size matter? Research measuring 162 elite inter‑county footballers across six squads between 2014 and 2019 reported a mean stature of 6ft, with midfielders and goalkeepers tending towards the taller end of the range. That has real-world implications: players who thrive at minor might not have the physical tools to progress further. Unfortunately, genetics will play a large role here. A 5′9″ wing-forward can shine at 16, but that same player will most likely get swallowed up at senior level. "Supporters need to realise that minor football has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to senior football", commented one former Kerry player me bluntly. "The physical difference is massive and takes most of us years to get used to." The opposite is also true. We often see 'outstanding' minor players whose dominance is largely down to early physical development compared to their peers. By the time they reach senior level, that edge is gone because their peers have caught up with them. Former Tyrone star Kyle Coney has acknowledged that his early physical maturity gave him such an advantage. "At minor level I had a couple of years of size on most fellas and was a bit bigger and stronger," he says. This is where bio-banding comes in, a method of grouping young athletes by biological rather than chronological age to level the playing field in development. In the GAA, bio-banding practices have improved significantly in recent years, thanks to the work of researchers like Fionn Fitzgerald and Rob Mulcahy. Whether bio-banding will impact on the numbers playing senior for their county remains to be seen, but it is certainly a big step forward. 'Sick of football' by the age of 18 In recent years, several former county minors have told me directly they were "sick of football" by the time their minor careers ended. After five years of development and minor squads, strength and conditioning, diet monitoring, video analysis and countless hours at the county Centre of Excellence, all before even reaching their 18th birthday, mental fatigue had set in. From RTÉ Radio 1's News At One in 2018, new research highlights negative impact of GAA, including poor mental health, on senior inter-county players One player recalled a dark moment on the night he won a minor All-Ireland: "was this really worth all those years at the Centre of Excellence since we were 13?" Are we giving players a taste of county football in their teens, hungry for more or leaving them dreading entering another county set up? More than anything, are we even giving them a voice? From a purely performance-driven point of view, especially in terms of producing seniors, we have to ask if winning too young is actually counterproductive. Would a player be better off experiencing short-term pain through defeat, building resilience and long-term hunger, rather than winning early, feeling satisfied and believing there's no need to continue their hard work? It must be stressed that development squad issues are a systemic problem, and not specific to any one county. Former Cork manager Brian Cuthbert alluded to it in his PhD thesis: development squads suffer with poor alignment between academy, club, school, parent, and player goals; there is poor long-term planning and the emphasis on early success leads to burnout, not development. From Munster GAA, Dr Brian Cuthbert at the Munster GAA Club Forum 2025 on getting the balance right between competition and development Is there a solution to this? More emphasis on school-based training This is where players are with friends in less pressurised settings and have increased contact time with coaches (as recommended by Cuthbert). To underline this point, people seem to forget that the five Kerry minor teams of 2014-2018 had key players from four Hogan Cup wins, namely Pobalscoil Chorca Dhuibhne (Éamonn Fitzmaurice's school, in 2014 and 2015) and St. Brendan's College Killarney (2016 and 2017). Manage expectations for players, parents, clubs and supporters Playing minor is an honour, but not a guarantee of senior success. The same applies to development squads. When clubs highlight under-14 or under-15 development squad appearances on social media, it raises the question: is the focus on development or validation? Sustainability Coaching for retention isn't just about downplaying the importance of winning. It's about keeping the game, and the process of preparing for it, sustainable. Younger players are pushed into completing weekly questionnaires monitoring their gym routines, nutrition, sleep and hydration, when the focus should still primarily be on skills, games, and, dare I say it, the ball. If a 16 or 17 year-old is already rebelling against daily/weekly questionnaires, how can we expect them to sustain that for another ten years at senior level? If 90% of county minors never play senior championship, that's where the real analysis needs to focus What about the ones who don't make it? I've learned a huge amount from my two PhD supervisors Dr. Phil Kearney and Dr. Ian Sherwin, but the airplane analogy Phil showed me one day really struck a chord. During World War II, Allied analysts studied the bullet holes in aircraft that returned from missions. Most of the damage was concentrated on the wings and fuselage. Logically, the military considered reinforcing those areas. But mathematician Abraham Wald, working with the U.S. Statistical Research Group, realised they were looking at the wrong planes. The ones with damage had survived. The planes hit in places like the engines or cockpit never came back. This led to a foundational concept in survivorship bias: the mistake of focusing only on visible successes and ignoring the unseen failures. It's the same in Gaelic football. We often look at the tiny percentage of minor stars who become senior county players and assume the system is working, but they are the survivors. If 90% of county minors never play senior championship, that's where the real analysis needs to focus. Those are the planes who never made it back. Officially, county minor football is about development. Managers talk about building young men for the future, but they know they're judged on results. They also know those results shape under-20 succession plans for managers looking to move up the chain. Development is the official line, but winning is the currency. In the end, it's a grade that often seems caught between two stools and it's the players who hit the ground the hardest.
RTÉ News
30-06-2025
- Sport
- RTÉ News
Éamonn Fitzmaurice surprised by Jack O'Connor outburst
Éamonn Fitzmaurice was surprised by Kerry manager Jack O'Connor's decision to take aim at his team's detractors following their swashbuckling All-Ireland SFC quarter-final win over Armagh. The All-Ireland champions were sent packing from Croke Park as a devastating 15-minute spell in the second half saw Kerry reel off 14 points unanswered and ensure their passage to the last four despite some indifferent form this season. Addressing the media after the game, O'Connor lashed out at critics both inside and outside the county. "We were being portrayed as a one-man team," he said, while also appearing to have a swipe at Darragh Ó Sé in the Irish Times, who said there was an air of inevitability about Kerry exiting to Armagh at the quarter-final stage. "Dublin got beaten by Meath in the Leinster Championship and I didn't see any ex-Dublin players coming out slating the team or slating the management like we had down south in our county," he added. Speaking on the RTÉ GAA podcast, Fitzmaurice said given the nature of Kerry's performance, he was taken aback by O'Connor's comments. "I was surprised because generally after a win like that, Jack is effusive," he said. "I'd say on a human level he was hurt. I know he had a small bit of a nibble after the Cavan game last weekend, but he obviously decided this week that he was going to unleash the double barrel. "He had his say, and probably feels better for it today." Having entered the game as underdogs, Fitzmaurice, who led Kerry to Sam Maguire in 2014, says they're was much to enjoy from a Kerry perspective with a return to the capital in a fortnight to take on old foes Tyrone. "It was an amazing performance," he said. "The last few weeks, as it has turned out, has been good for them, because it has brought an edge out in them. "I was proud of the players and the approach of the management team. You could see what it meant to the players afterwards. "The trick now will be trying to get to that level again in two weeks' time." Watch the All-Ireland Camogie Championship quarter-finals with RTÉ Sport. Waterford v Clare on Saturday from 2.15pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player and Tipperary v Kilkenny on Sunday from 1.15pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player. Watch the All-Ireland Hurling Championship semi-finals with RTÉ Sport. Cork v Dublin on Saturday from 4.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player and Kilkenny v Tipperary on Sunday from 3.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player. Follow live blogs on and the RTÉ News app. Listen to commentaries on RTÉ Radio 1. Watch highlights on The Sunday Game at 10.15pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player.
RTÉ News
30-06-2025
- Sport
- RTÉ News
RTÉ GAA Podcast: Kerry haven't gone away, you know
Éamonn Fitzmaurice and Lee Keegan join special guest presenter Marty Morrissey and Rory O'Neill to look back on the weekend when eight became four in the All-Ireland football championship. Kerry looked incredibly impressive as they dethroned Armagh, while Meath surprised everyone but themselves as they saw off Galway. Donegal and Tyrone kept up hopes of an all-Ulster final as they saw off Monaghan and Dublin respectively, with the latter defeat spelling the end of the Dessie Farrell era. Watch the All-Ireland Camogie Championship quarter-finals with RTÉ Sport. Waterford v Clare on Saturday from 2.15pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player and Tipperary v Kilkenny on Sunday from 1.15pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player Watch the All-Ireland Hurling Championship semi-finals with RTÉ Sport. Cork v Dublin on Saturday from 4.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player and Kilkenny v Tipperary on Sunday from 3.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player. Follow live blogs on and the RTÉ News app. Listen to commentaries on RTÉ Radio 1. Watch highlights on The Sunday Game at 10.15pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player
