Brendan Coleman eager to assist Cork players
Cork senior hurling team selector Brendan Coleman. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
"He's just a great people person, first and foremost," Cork selector Brendan Coleman responds when asked about manager Pat Ryan.
"Then his knowledge of the game, his acumen for hurling is so vast. It's fantastic and he loves it. He can talk about hurling, he can talk American sports, he can talk about politics.
"I suppose he has such a great relationship with the lads and he's so selfless to allow them to grow and develop. He takes great pride in that, which is a lovely trait to have."
Ryan's connection with the Cork players is deep. When a difficult Munster Championship round robin day was endured against Limerick, Ryan remained cool. That was critical according to Coleman. "It hurt us really," Coleman says.
"It was an outlier, but it still hurt us. We had seven days to turn it around. Waterford were coming and they had nothing to lose. We didn’t forensically go through it. That's the great thing about Pat.
"We left Limerick and Pat knew what we had to do. We didn’t go wide. We went quite narrow. It was Monday night, the gym session.
"It wasn't even video. It was just a quick gym session. There was a simple graph put up and it told the story in terms of turnovers."
Cork manager Pat Ryan and Patrick Horgan after All-Ireland SHC Semi-Final win over Dublin at Croke Park. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
Valuable lessons were learned during that Limerick loss. "There's a number of things we look at in terms of turnovers that was down for us in the Limerick game, but there's other areas around the puckout out as well," Coleman explains.
"If you notice, it was clear we weren't at it and then there was a sense around the management that we left the players down in terms of not navigating that three weeks properly. It’s a case of you lose, you learn, so we learned a huge lesson in that."
Following the dramatic Munster Final triumph, Cork were primed for the Dublin date at Croke Park. "The four weeks was excellent, we referenced May 18th and how bad it was," Coleman remarks.
"There was learnings in the three-week gap in terms of what we could do better so we had that too as a reference point really. We took that on."
Preparation was vital. "Week one after the Munster final was low-key and you could see that there was a significant effect on their energy levels, so we kind of came down for a week and the three weeks from there were excellent," Coleman says.
"The first week, we were back in for a gym session and some guys were released to play with their clubs, if I can remember correctly. There were club games that week so we had reduced numbers and it was very little contact - just the skills work, short and snappy - with the aim of getting the bodies right for the following week with a full panel. Then we went hammer and tongs for three weeks."
Throughout the current campaign a player driven approach has been facilitated by Ryan and his management. "The players are there to play," Coleman says. "The backroom are the backroom and we're all there for the one purpose - to try to let these fellas grow."
