Tipperary captain, Seamus Callanan, says whichever team can adapt best to a winter championship will prosper.
By John Harrington
Tipperary captain, Seamus Callanan, says he and his team-mates are taking a Darwinian approach to this year’s hurling championship.
Darwin’s famous theory of evolution, known as ‘survival of the fittest’, suggested that organisms who better adjusted to their environment had the greatest chances of success.
No team has experienced playing an All-Ireland championship in the depths of winter before, and Callanan believes whichever team can best adapt to that challenge will have an advantage on all their competitors.
“It might suit the likes of myself – coming in a bit slower!”, says Callanan.
“It’s a new challenge but we all love the summer hurling and the ball flying everywhere. The team that adapts best to it will probably come out on top.
“It is different because it will be a small bit slower and the ground is giving a little bit underneath you. Your hard work and will to win more than ever will really trump it. It’s a new challenge but it’s great.”
A heavier sod is just one of the challenges that teams will have to overcome in the coming weeks.
Playing matches in an empty stadium is another. The best players feed off the energy from a packed stadium, so will the lack of a crowd make it more difficult to source the required level of motivation needed to perform at your peak?
So far for Callanan, who starred for Drom-Inch in their Tipperary club championship run, that hasn’t been the case
“It was probably a bit pleasant actually,” he says. “You don't hear the lads giving out to you!
“But actually it was very strange, I suppose if a point goes over the bar you kind of expect to hear some bit of noise about it, if a big hit goes in you expect to hear something.
“In a way you nearly have to create your own atmosphere on the pitch, with your teammates. It is strange, you do miss it, supporters miss it, everyone does, but these are the circumstances that we're in.
“If we have to go without supporters to make it safe, and supporters can still see it on television, I know it's not the same, but once everyone keeps healthy... if we can do it for this year and hopefully next year will be better again, but these are the times we're living in.
“We don't really have much of a choice in this so you have to put the head down and get on with it.
“I think anytime you can get to play in a Munster semi-final, if that can't motivate you, if a championship being played off in 6-7 weeks can't motivate you to really put it all in for that...
“At the end of the day your medal is going to be the same, whether it's a 2020 medal, it will mean the same, so your motivation comes from within as well and from the people around you, and wanting to do the best you can for Tipperary. So that will always be there, and if it's not there you're in the wrong place.”
Tipperary captain Séamus Callanan with his manager Liam Sheedy before the 2020 Munster GAA Hurling Senior Championship Final against Limerick at LIT Gaelic Grounds in Limerick.
Sunday’s Munster SHC semi-final against Limerick will be played under lights in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, another reminder that the 2020 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship is a bit different.
All the players have played plenty of floodlit Allianz League matches, but Callanan admits it’s another environmental change that players will have to make the best of.
“Ideally you'd be playing it during the day,” he says. “It's probably a little bit more difficult playing hurling under lights than it is football.
“Whatever conditions come at you on any given day you have to be in a mindset, you have to have your mind, your body, everything ready for whatever is thrown at you on any given day. Whether it be a sliotar, the lights, no crowd, whatever it is, you have to have yourself in a good headspace to deal with all those things.
“That is something that you would be working on leading up to the current championship. So there's nothing going to happen in the Munster semi-final that's going to be new to you. You're going to have prepared for all those things.
“They're strange times, there's nothing normal about it, whoever adapts the best to it, and whoever can try and control the controllables, is all you can do.”
Tipperary have failed to successfully defend an All-Ireland title since 1965 and there was quite a bit of talk again at the start of the year as to whether they could finally end that long wait to win back to back titles.
It’s a challenge that seemed to weigh heavily on Callanan’s generation after winning All-Irelands in 2010 and 2016.
Seamus Callanan celebrates with his family after Tipperary's victory over Kilkenny in the 2019 All-Ireland SHC Final.
There is so much water under the bridge since winning the 2019 title now, though, that any accumulated mental or physical fatigue has surely evaporated.
“It's a bit strange, it feels like it's nearly Liam's third season with us, as if this year is broken into two years,” says Callanan.
“As any other year goes it's all to play for, I know it's a cliche or whatever. It seems so long ago that we won the All-Ireland final. It seems like a lifetime ago now, through the current circumstances.
“That's the end goal for everyone, they would love to be in a position to do that (defend the All-Ireland title). For us the step is to get to the Munster Final, that's the concentration now. You always say if you can win your first match it gives you good momentum going into the rest of the Championship. That's the sole focus.”
Had there been no All-Ireland Championship this year then the sense of an opportunity missed would surely have been most acute for players in their 30s who know they don’t have too many years left at this level.
The spine of this Tipperary team is still made up of players who fall into this bracket like Callanan himself, Pádraic Maher, Brendan Maher, Noel McGrath, and Patrick ‘Bonner’ Maher.
“I'm definitely in that bracket anyway,” says Callanan. “I'm glad the year is going ahead, but at the same time if it didn't, and once everyone was healthy and okay that's far more important.
“But I'm 32 years of age now as well, so it's different for maybe a 21-year-old losing a year compared to us at that age.
“I'm still enjoying hurling, still loving every second of it, I'm glad to be playing but there are bigger things as well
“We're fortunate to be able to bring a bit of joy to people over the next few weeks. It won't make up for a lot of things that are going on, but hopefully it's something that can contribute to a bit of positivity around the place.”
