By John Harrington

When life throws you a curve-ball, you can either duck or swing harder than ever.

Former Dublin hurler Joey Boland opted for the latter approach when the COVID-19 pandemic threatened his Sports Physio Ireland business.

Founded in in 2015, what started as a small physiotherapy company rapidly expanded into a more holistic physical wellbeing business incorporating a physio-led fitness gym.

The lockdown has meant he and his team can no longer meet their clients on a face to face business, but they’ve quickly adapted to the new reality.

“It was difficult but we were very lucky,” Boland told GAA.ie. “I have to say the team that we have are phenomenal. When we shut down we had a big team meeting and we just said, Guys, we've got a couple of options here. It's totally closed and we go on social welfare, stay open for a while longer which none of us agreed with, and the third one was we would just have to pull together and bring all the knowledge and ideas that we can together and work hard to create something to keep us alive until God knows when.

“Our primary business is physiotherapy and that is all online now. We have our physiotherapists booking patients in online. You're on your Zoom call and your rehab is done in a one to one scenario in the exact same way.

“So, if you pull your hamstring, you're on the video call and you're shown exactly how to manage that injury and progress the exercises that you can do from home.

“All the way so that you're back out on the pitch running in the next three weeks. So it's like a management tool and exercise prescription tool which is 75 per cent of physiotherapy anyway.

“We can't do the hands on stuff, but we have the technology now to get your foam-roller and get yourself releasing yourself and stretching which can really compensate for that.”

Boland and his team have been just as pro-active in terms of the personal training aspect of the business by creating two different online platforms.

One platform caters for members of the public who want to get live access to Sports Physio Ireland’s training classes, and the second platform caters for elite athletes.

Boland believes this ‘Athletic Development Educational Platform’, currently accessible for free on a trial basis, can be an especially invaluable resource for inter-county and club GAA players who want to ensure they’re fitter, faster, and stronger than ever by the time they’re allowed to play competitively again.

“It's for any player of any sport but we base it mainly around GAA players because that would be our niche,” says Boland.

“It's for sportspeople who want to use this time to be productive with their athletic development.

“We have combined all of our knowledge from chartered physiotherapists and strength and conditioning coaches and put it onto one platform where they can get access to top strength and conditioning, top biometrics and running mechanics sessions, and a huge injury-prevention and athletic development section.

“So, if you're a GAA player in Galway and you want to improve your speed, or your hips have always been at you, then if you're on this platform you've so many things to be working on from an education point of view so that when you eventually get back onto the pitch you haven't just wasted your time, you've reinvested in yourself so you're a better athlete when you get back out there.”

When collective GAA action does resume, those players who apply themselves most diligently in the interim will have an obvious advantage.

There is unlikely to be much time for collective training before matches are scheduled, so the onus is on players to be ready to hit the ground running.

Boland believes those who have a history of injury could make especially good use of the current lay-off to ensure that when action is resumed they can take their game to a whole new level.

“If I could turn the clock back and I had this time when I was a 23-year-old inter-county player, I'd make the most of it,” he says.

“Because when you're in the middle of a season you don't have the time to do any of this stuff because you're training Tuesday and Thursday and preparing for a match at the weekend and the last thing you want to be thinking about are your weaknesses or thinking am I a bit slow.

“This is a time when you can self-reflect. If you're a GAA player and you play seven seasons on the trot then you've built up a serious amount of stamina, speed, fitness, and speed.

“But if you're an inter-county athlete when you're 20 and you break down for about eight weeks every year for the next seven years, then your confidence is shot, your speed is shot, everything is shot. The biggest predictor of injury is previous injury.

“So if I was a young GAA player and I wanted a good run at it, then the most important thing is to understand your body first, have access to stuff that you know is perfect for you to do because the rest will look after itself.

“If you're on the pitch training consistently and getting faster and building your confidence and tactics, then you will improve as a player. But if every season you break down when the load comes on you, then you're never going to reach your peak as an athlete.”

Boland retired from inter-county hurling himself after the 2018 season in part because of the demands of growing his own business.

A powerful performer at midfield or centre-back for Dublin, he won an Allianz Hurling League Division 1 title in 2011 and a Leinster Senior Championship in 2013 and looks back on his career with a good deal of satisfaction.

“I had a good career, I really enjoyed it,” he says. “When I started off in 2008, Dublin had lost to Westmeath in the Championship the year before.

“We went through a couple of different periods where we were trying to get up to the top, and then from 2010 to 2013 we had some really good success, we were on the crest of a wave.

“I think we were doing a lot of this athletic development stuff ahead of a lot of other teams. Anthony Daly came in as manager and the likes of Ryan O'Dwyer joined the panel and a few of us were maturing as players.

“At that stage it is everything. It's your whole life, and there was nothing more important that being the best athlete and hurler that you can be. I've some seriously good memories, it was the best time of my life.

“Ger Cunningham came in then, and his philosophy was slightly different to what Anthony Daly's was. The team was getting old and stale because it was the same team there for about five years.

“Ger came in and was a fantastic coach but there was a lot of changes made very, very quickly. I understand that a manager probably had to come in and make a good few changes, but it just didn't work out. Maybe there was too much uncertainty between manager and players and results didn't go our way so that was a down period.

“Then Pat Gilroy came in and gave us all a new lease of life. Pat Gilroy is a serious operator. He's up there with the best managers that I've ever worked with. He just blew me away with his ability to bring a business mindset to a structure. It was just black and white.

“If you're performing well and hitting your KPIs then you're in the team. If you're not, then you're not, and that's the end of it.

“It's only now that I can look back, reflect, and see the importance of what he brought to the Dublin football squad before Jim Gavin.

“Like, he totally changed Dublin football back then and he has now laid some serious groundwork for Mattie to build on.

"When I look at the Dublin panel now, they have a serious bunch of players. The likes of Eoghan O’Donnell, Shane Barrett and Danny Sutliffe are as good as there is out there.

“I expect them to win a Leinster very shorty under Mattie and the lads”