A growing army of sports medicine professionals work behind the scenes to keep GAA players in the best possible shape, writes JOANNE HUNT
WARMING UP at draughty training sessions in January, a Sunday in September must have seemed a lifetime away for the Dubs.
A county denied the Sam Maguire for 15 years; some of the current team could barely kick a ball the last time Dublin won a senior football final.
Now with that September Sunday in sight and one more game to ask of their battle-weary bodies, it's team physio Kieran O'Reilly's job to make sure those bodies are up for the match. It's 70 minutes for which he's been preparing for months.
"The work starts off-season," says O'Reilly. "We start training in January, so we'd get them into the clinic before that for screening."
Working alongside fellow physiotherapist, James Allen, and team doctor, Prof Gerry McElvaney, they are part of the growing army of sports medicine professionals enlisted to keep county players in the best possible shape.
While Gaelic football might be an amateur sport, there's nothing amateur about their approach.
"We'd be on a third season with these fellas now, so we'd know most of them and their injuries," says O'Reilly.
"We might be identifying things that the players themselves are not yet aware of - muscle groups that might be overworking or might not be working efficiently.
"By doing that, we can put together a pre-habilitation programme that will enable players to correct some of the problems, so we're being proactive rather than waiting for an injury to happen."
And it's not just the players who tog out on those January nights. "We'd be at every training session - even the cold winter nights," says O'Reilly.
"Our time would be spent doing pre-hab exercises or strapping fellas - they might not necessarily have injuries, but they may have a history of ankle or shoulder injury, so we would strap them as a preventative measure."
While 90 per cent of O'Reilly's work is behind the scenes, his emergence on the pitch on match day, cure-all bag in tow, is probably what the public most associates with the role of sports medic.
"You're trying to replicate what you would do in a clinical setting as quickly as possible," says O'Reilly. "You're trying to get information from the player, get a diagnosis and sometimes you can do some treatment, but you might only have 30 seconds."
Is it hard to get a player, desperate to play at all costs, to tell the truth about the pain they might be in?
O'Reilly says he's grateful that the verdict on a player's fitness to continue is shared.
"We're all wired-up - the manager, me, the statisticians who are looking at things like the number of kick-outs won, the number of catches, wides, that sort of thing.
"We would talk about a certain player whose performance might be decreasing and decide that the player might need to come off."
He says it's the player's welfare, particularly in amateur sport, which is always the priority.
"If a player is going to further damage himself or put himself at risk of more serious damage, then sense has to prevail and, in the heat of battle, you have to tell them they have to come off.
"At the end of the day, these fellas have to be able to work and provide for their families and you have to think about their quality of life after football too."
So does he get to enjoy the games?
"You don't really," he says. "The play moves on, but you're looking to see if anyone has picked up knocks.
"There have been times when I haven't really been too sure of the score because you're so busy treating people. You don't get to enjoy it as such, but you're still pitch-side and in the thick of the action."
Working with both amateur and professional sports people (O'Reilly is also physio to the Ireland cricket team), he says the biggest difference between the two modes is recovery time.
"The professional guy can do his couple of hours training and then he has the rest of the day off, he can go to bed in the afternoon," says O'Reilly.
"The amateur guy still has to get up at half six in the morning and go to work, do eight hours in an office, or driving around or teaching kids in school."
Yet despite the demands of having to earn a living outside of their sporting careers, he says his GAA charges are no less fit.
"Our guys would work as hard as any professional, they'd be as fit and as strong and they'd definitely train as hard."
So on the sidelines at Croke Park, what will be going through his head?
"My main concern will be to see what's going on as quickly as possible, whether that's to take a fella off and get someone else in or, if it's something more serious, to make sure we can get onto the pitch as quickly as possible to treat injuries," he says.
"The aim is to have 15 fit and able bodies on the pitch for the 70 or 75 minutes. And obviously you'd hope that the lads would be as successful as possible."