MOSTLY HURLING:With the safety net removed, teams need every advantage or aid managements can muster in the cause, writes John Allen

AS THE hurling season moves on and the safety nets are removed, every game becomes a final of sorts. For all GAA players the whole season is a kind of limbo though. For club players, there's the huge uncertainty that surrounds the fixtures. Holidays can't be booked because there isn't a master fixture list that won't be altered many times to suit the county manager.

For the county stars, there is a master list and it will ensure they are playing on the pre-planned date. That is, until it comes to knockout time; then it's lose and you're out and the season is over.

So, from now on, every advantage has to be used by the management to try and ensure his team are fine-tuned to the nth degree when the next day of reckoning arrives.

The physiotherapist sometimes has to perform miracles. Avoiding injury in club games can, in itself, be a bit of a miracle. Players try and rest as much as possible between sessions, which isn't always easy to do when the day job has to be attended to.

Most players have their own little rituals in the build-up to, and on, the big day.

While I'm not privy to what goes on in others dressing-rooms, I know many managers now plaster the walls with inspirational sayings or controversial newspaper headings.

I remember a few years back when Dinny Cahill, then the Antrim manager, was quoted, correctly or otherwise, as insulting our "Great One" Brian Corcoran and the lion-hearted Niall McCarthy. This was just what was needed to add fuel to a lacklustre build-up to a game for which we were finding it difficult to motivate the players.

The derogatory headlines spent a few days in the dressing-room and then travelled with the team to the capital to decorate the Croke Park dressing area.

Inspirational quotes have definitely become part of the mental build-up in many dressing-rooms.

I recall being delighted with myself one evening a few years back when I came upon what I thought was a long-lost Muhammad Ali quote while researching on the internet. I probably have seen it 100 times since on posters and in books but at the time I thought it was a mislaid gem. I committed it to a poster and used it at the first training session of 2005.

"The fight is won or lost far away from the witnesses, behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road long before I dance under those lights."

So said Ali, and it seemed the perfect introduction to the pre-season slog in the mud on cold, dark nights when sane people are watching Coronation Street or Fair City (only joking).

For us in Cork, over the past few years, once the first championship game was within sight, the quotes almost made their own way onto the dressing-room walls. Apart from deprecatory newspaper headlines, all the posters had to be of a positive nature.

After the Munster final that same year, when Tipp were bet and the hay saved, I got a text from one of the players that night. It ran to 99 words, all perfectly spelled and without abbreviations: "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotion, spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never tasted victory or defeat."

Apparently it's credited to the US president Theodore Roosevelt.

I was quietly delighted at least some of the players were buying into the quote-appreciation society. But, from observation, we knew they were.

We'd also always put a quote on the weekend itinerary sheet given out at the last training session before big games.

If we were ever stuck we could and did resort to Vince Lombardi, the great Italian-American football coach.

"If you settle for nothing less than your best, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish in your life," or "The game is won by the team with the greatest desire."

Or one of my favourites: "If you cheat on the practice field, you'll cheat in the game. If you cheat in the game, you'll cheat the rest of your life. I'll not have it."

Is there a value in these quotes? I don't really know, but I do believe that positive thoughts are hugely important, especially on the days of big games when doubts creep into the fragile minds of many players.

As the pressure is building up and the self-doubt is creeping in it's important to be surrounded by positive people with positive words both spoken and written.

Would the marketing gurus of the planet spend millions on advertising if they did not believe their companies stood to gain from it?

They believe the words and pictures they force on people's minds push them into going out and buying their products.

Psychologists also encourage clients who are trying to break habits they're less than pleased with to put notes in prominent positions in their homes, cars and work-places so that they'll constantly be reminded about what they should be doing or thinking to achieve their goal.

So, all in all, if these words of wisdom are positive they can't hurt, can they?

I'll leave the last words on the subject to that most eloquent of new- age philosophers Homer Simpson.

"If you really want something in this life, you have to work for it. Now, quiet - they're about to announce the lottery numbers."