The doctor who doesn't believe in pills

Rugby/World Cup countdown: Gerry Thornleytalks to Dr Liam Hennessy, the IRFU's national fitness d irector, about the theory and practice involved in Ireland's World Cup efforts

As an 18-year-old, Liam Hennessy earned an athletics scholarship in the United States to pursue his dream of competing at the Moscow Olympics in the pole vault. He was there with Kevin Currid from Dalkey, the one-time Irish 400 metre hurdle record holder. Hennessy was five-and-a-half inches away from the B standard qualifying when he was presented with a career and life-defining moment.

"There was one defining moment when I knew this wasn't for me, and I knew that this was wrong," he begins, "I'm now in the bowels of New Mexico and the coach put two bottles on the table, dianabol and deca durabolin, in front of me. They are two oral steroids. Pills. He said: 'if you want to get to Moscow, take them'." It was 1979. They were in the middle of the New Mexico desert. Mobile phones didn't exist. There was a seven- or eight-hour time difference. For all their hard work, this was their best chance. Testing, per se, hardly existed. They rang home and sought advice from, amongst others, Philip Conway, a coach in Belvedere, and Al Guy, the Irish Athletics secretary, and were advised that it would be cheating.

Despite plugging away for the rest of the year, within a week Hennessy went into a library to start reading up on how to become bigger, faster and stronger.

"All the research was in the East (of Europe), the Eastern Bloc countries were dominating, and then of course we all knew that drugs pervaded everywhere, so I knew this was wrong and that's what started me on this whole science area. I went to Loughborough, finished in UL, and then did a PhD after the masters in all this area, and then did post-doctorate work as well."

As well as working with Stephen Aboud at the IRFU academy and with Bective Rangers and Old Wesley, Hennessy looked after the Tipperary hurlers for five years in the late 1980s and early '90s, a productive period for the county compared to now.

He hails from Cappawhite, over the mountain from the Toomevara bar we met in. During our hour-long chat, he's interrupted by a local sports enthusiast who implores the good doctor to return to his native county.

The IRFU's national fitness director since 2000, in tandem with the team's fitness coach, Mike McGurn, and the strength and conditioning coaches and nutritionists working in each of the provinces, Hennessy has witnessed a change in the strength and fitness of Ireland's top tier which, compared to this point four years ago, he likens to chalk and cheese.

"In 2003, we were playing an awful lot of catch-up in the physical side and all the other sides. Remember, we were dealing in three-, four- and five-week pre-seasons," he reminds you, widens his eyes in wonderment and simply asks rhetorically: "Where are you going?

"In order to set the foundation for a house, you've got to really dig down and be solid. I suppose a good analogy would be that back then we were trying to launch rockets from a canoe. We're launching rockets from a battleship now. We have all the stats and the gap in 2003 was pretty significant in terms of the physical level of development we had," he recalls, comparing Ireland to the Big Five, and even stating that Ireland were behind Wales, if similar to Scotland on the basis of horse trading stats subsequently.

The key in bridging the divide was the introduction of 10-week pre-seasons and reducing the number of games. "It's been tough on the provinces," admits Hennessy, "but the gap was closed, physically, about two years ago. By that I mean in terms of power, strength and speed. So that was good, accelerated process and the players know that that gap has gone."

Viewed in the context of Ireland's main World Cup pool rivals, France and Argentina (whose players are not centrally contracted and only now are involved in lengthy pre-season training), it's encouraging to hear Hennessy observe: "If you were just relying on a seven- or 10-week programme now, the extra percentage points you gain would be at a far lower level if that (10-week pre-season) hadn't been in place."

In further aping the Southern Hemisphere countries, Hennessy would like a bigger mid-season window. It has helped Ireland's cause that 15 frontliners were exempted from tour duty in Argentina, allowing them a four-week holiday and a 10-week pre-season by the time Ireland play Scotland, with the rest having a seven-week pre-season.

All along, Ireland have been using the cryotherapy centre in Spala, Poland. With the advent of longer pre-seasons, the effect of the work there has been intensified. During this pre-season, all the Ireland players have done two five-day camps in Poland followed by recovery at home.

"The gains you make there are just excellent and we have the stats; 1,300 minutes in one five-day period, that's over 20 hours of high intensity work. "

This is twice what the Irish players were capable of four years ago.

"It's tough work. These guys are driven, though, and they've a good reason to be driven, because they fear nobody at all," Hennessy says, calmly and satisfactorily.

This isn't necessarily reflected in size. John Hayes, for example, is hardly going to become any bigger. But, according to Hennessy, some of the players have doubled their "power output" from the same body weight. Given the increasing demands of the game, never mind the gap Ireland had to bridge, it was essential progress which not all other countries could make.

From 1997 to '99, Hennessy worked with Bayern Munich, researching speed and power and working with the coaches at the celebrated Bundesliga club. A keen student of other sports, as is widely known, Hennessy has been training Padraig Harrington for 10 years.

"We've looked at a lot of other sports, but you can't bring in something new without preparing the ground for it, and rugby has become a science and a sport in its own right, it's a model now that others look at it because it combines everything; speed, strength, power, stamina, endurance and mobility. While there are principles which are the same, the specifics make it so different."

Hence the IRFU conducted their own three-year research programme on training rugby players, at the University in Limerick, "to give us the information to make them faster and quicker, and we haven't shared that with anybody. It's been very valuable information, setting up studies as to how productive training methods were and how we could make the same time more productive."

Tom Comyns, who conducted the programme as part of his PhD, is now with Munster and the data is being applied at provincial and national level.

In many instances, the Ireland players who will take part in the 2015 World Cup are emerging or have recently emerged into the rugby system. Hennessy talks about the utter lack of a proper physical education programme in schools in this country.

The IRFU sought to introduce their Fit For Fun programme for primary school kids, focusing on speed and agility, but the sponsor pulled out and they didn't have the money to keep it going. Even so, they keep plugging away, and he has been encouraged by the response of rugby-playing schools to the union's introduction of their CCC, Certified Conditioning Coaching. Eighty coaches went through this course during the summer, and Hennessy expects the rewards to become manifest in about four years' time.

Luck with injuries will be critical to Ireland's chances at the Coupe du Monde and research shows that injuries have increased four-fold since 2003.

Nonetheless, the rate in Ireland has stayed the same; 25 to 30 per cent will be injured by the third or fourth game of the season. This is primarily because of the focus on players not returning before they have fully recovered.

"Ironically," he adds, "the modern player retiring will be in far better shape than the amateur player was because he's in far better care."

He has no qualms about children playing the game to whatever level suits them "to keep them focused in those tender years. If you look at the top level in anything, you shiver, because it's the extreme. But there are several other levels in the game. Look at Tag Rugby. The high performance level is not the only level."

He is not naïve enough to think there is no drug use in rugby, or the world of sport in general, though he questions their usefulness in rugby.

Reflecting back on those innocent and relatively ill-informed days of 1979, Hennessy says, "If you said to me back then 'would I realise that people can make it without drugs?' I wouldn't have known. I can now say 'yes', but it's a lot harder, and you have to be far more methodical, far more patient, but it can happen."