Ballygunner and former Waterford hurler Shane O’Sullivan ahead of the AIB GAA Munster Senior Hurling Club Championship Final where they face Borris-Ileigh on Sunday November 24th at Páirc Uí Rinn.
By John Harrington
When Shane O’Sullivan was 14 years old, an audience with 1996 All-Ireland winning Wexford manager, Liam Griffin, changed his life forever.
Griffin was an alumnus of De La Salle College and had been invited to speak to O’Sullivan and his school hurling team-mates by their teacher Derek McGrath.
He spoke for an hour about the power of the mind, and how visualisation, goal-setting, and motivation were the most important factors behind Wexford’s unexpected All-Ireland Final win in ’96.
What Griffin had to say unlatched a window in O’Sullivan’s mind that has stayed wide open ever since.
When directed by McGrath at the end of the talk to thank Griffin for his time on behalf of the whole team, O’Sullivan took the opportunity to ask Griffin how he could further learn about performance psychology.
Griffin recommended a book called ‘The Inner Game of Tennis’ by Timothy Galloway, and O’Sullivan promptly went out and bought it and took the first step of a life-long journey.
Today, O’Sullivan is an Executive, Leadership and Performance Coach with his own company Inspiring Excellence.
He doesn’t just help other people unlock their full potential, he’s convinced that his career choice has also helped him maximise his own ability as a hurler.
“A hundred per cent, a hundred per cent,” said O’Sullivan, who hurled with Waterford for 13 years and will be a key man for De La Salle in Sunday’s AIB All-Ireland Club Final against Borris-Ileigh.
“I have obviously the academic qualifications, and someone can give you the theory about how you can perform to your best, but you have to be able to apply that in front of 30,000 people in a big match, where one mistake is gold.
“You can test, practice, like your own guinea pig for all the world, and you know what works. You learn what doesn’t, very fast.
“And you learn from different players and management, because they have different leadership styles as well. So without a doubt, it’s something I was very lucky to be involved in, from my own involvement as a player.”
Is there any moment during O’Sullivan’s career when he made a mistake in a match and used his performance psychology expertise to put it behind him quickly by steeling himself mentally?
“A hundred per cent. A memory of probably every match. Every match you make mistakes. What separates the best players from the also rans is you make mistakes, and just refocus and connect in the moment to what’s next.
“So all of the great players we see in football and hurling in Ireland a the moment, I think that’s the real differentiator – they can make a mistake and refocus.
“It doesn’t impact them as much as maybe it would with a younger player.
“Or a player that doesn’t have the same confidence or doesn’t have the skills to be able to refocus. Skills like mindfulness, grounding techniques, refocusing, triggers, positive talk, etc.”
A relaxed looking Shane O'Sullivan makes his way onto the pitch ahead of the 2010 Munster GAA Hurling Senior Championship Final between Cork and Waterford.
Some people are naturally more confident and emotionally durable than others and so find it easier to move on from set-backs on the field of play.
For those who aren’t as mentally robust, is it possible to develop those skills?
“Yeah certainly, (with) practice,” says O’Sullivan. “It’s like everything. People look at the physical game, so if you want to get stronger, you go to the gym. If you want to improve your first touch in hurling, you go to the alley.
“If you want to improve your mental game, you have to go to the mind gym. You have to actually practice these skills over time, and then you get better.
“It’s the same principle. If you look the brain – neuroplasticity – the more neurons that are wired together, so you’re actually using different synapsis in your mind to be able to connect them and make them stronger when you really need them in a high-performance game. It’s the exact same principle.”
O’Sullivan’s background in performance coaching doesn’t just help him during the course of a match.
He also implements a variety of mental training techniques in the days before a match to ensure he’s as well prepared as possible for the test to come.
“I’d use mindfulness every day, three/four times a day, visualisation, focusing on the positives, what can go right when you’re performing to your best,” said O’Sullivan.
“But also a ‘what if’ approach. Paidi O’Sé used to do this more organically but he used to walk the beach down in west Kerry and he used to bring the football.
“There’s a wonderful photo of himself and I think it’s Eoin Brosnan but he’d walk the beach and he’d think ‘what if this happens, what if that happens?’
“That’s mental rehearsal, that’s visualisation, that’s mental preparation. People wouldn’t have associated it because there’s no scientific label on it but all of the good players, they’d practice those.
“I’m not going to compare myself to Paidi O’Sé now but he was a brilliant role model for mental preparation.
“There were a number of other things as well but those were the key ones. Mindfulness for me, to get into a flow state, is probably most powerful.
“Even before or during a game, just to focus on the moment. You make mistakes or someone scores a point on you, you’re mind can think of future/past/future/past, but what you need to be is present, in the moment, what’s happening at that time.”
Ballygunner joint captain Shane O'Sullivan celebrates with his partner Ciara, son Ferdia, aged 2, and his nephew Cian, aged 10, after the 2018 AIB Munster GAA Hurling Senior Club Championship Final between Na Piarsaigh and Ballygunner at Semple Stadium in Thurles, Co. Tipperary.
O’Sullivan and his Ballygunner team-mates certainly look like they’ve developed a flow-state in recent years.
They’ve won the last six Waterford Senior Hurling titles in a row and are warm favourites to beat Borris-Ileigh on Sunday to make it back to back Munster titles.
To what extent has the team’s collective strength helped deliver such sustained success?
“I think it doesn’t have to be that scientific, it’s more of a spirit that we’ve built up over the years,” says O’Sullivan
“Obviously every team has a spirit. Dublin has a spirit. Borris-Ileigh have a fantastic spirit, and I think that maybe separates teams as well.
“When a game gets into the melting pot, the closer you are as a group, the stronger a possibility of you coming out of that challenge, united, not having arguments on the pitch, et cetera. So that definitely stands to teams.”
This Ballygunner players wouldn’t have achieved all they have together were they the sort to take an opponent for granted.
Borris-Ileigh are very much the underdogs coming into Sunday’s match, but O’Sullivan insists he and his team-mates are in no way complacent about the challenge ahead.
“They're a formidable side,” he says. “I'm not just saying that to say it, but they are actually formidable. Obviously, personally watching it, over the last few weeks, their team is very, very strong.
“They've nearly an All-Ireland senior inter-county winner in every line. You've Paddy Stapleton, Brendan Maher, Dan McCormack, Conor Kenny, then you have young Devaney in the full-forward line who's the grandson of one of the greatest players to ever play the game.
“So we're under no illusions that they're not an unknown to us. And anyone in Tipp who has watched them, I'm sure they're not an unknown.
“And to beat Glen Rovers so convincingly, one of the power-houses of Munster hurling for generations, they're definitely not unknown. From my point of view.”
