Farney men thriving on Porter’s thirst for fitness perfection
WHEN Monaghan claimed their second Ulster title in three years last summer, a picture did the rounds on social media of the Farney superhero Conor McManus taking a picture of one of the backroom staff with the Anglo-Celt Cup on the Clones pitch. It went viral to illustrate that McManus was not just a top-class footballer but also a sound lad, but it unwittingly thrust Ryan Porter into the limelight.
The Tyrone native has been a key member of Malachy O’Rourke’s backroom team as Monaghan have established themselves as part of the footballing elite in the past three seasons. But despite once being called ‘the best trainer in Ireland’ by former Tyrone defender Ryan McMenamin, he prefers to keep a low profile.
He shares a car with O’Rourke and Leo McBride, another member of the backroom team, as they make the regular 45-minute trip from Tyrone to Monaghan’s training complex in Cloghan. Those journeys aren’t spent discussing the tactics that have made Monaghan a force, rather slagging off Manchester United supporter O’Rourke about that club’s decline.
However, Monaghan’s reputation as one of the fittest and most wellconditioned teams in Gaelic football has only bolstered Porter’s reputation up North. A qualified sports scientist, Porter feels that the development of strength and conditioning in GAA is down to managers becoming more open to the methods used. Porter’s working with one of the progressive managers around in O’Rourke but Monaghan’s continued presence as a contender will shine the light on Porter too, who previously worked with Donegal during Brian McIver’s tenure.
However, he says that the methods that players use have to be the correct ones for those players. At the moment, many club teams are lifting training programmes off the internet – or even off county team training. ‘And it might not be appropriate for the players they have or the team. They wouldn’t have the same support structure as a county team and that is when players run into trouble and get injured.
‘Strength and conditioning is a buzz word i n GAA, at the minute, bu t mostly what we do is about injury-preven- tion. And that means that players are recovering properly, resting properly and that sort of thing.’ And while bulging biceps are now a common sight on any county player, Porter rails against the idea that all GAA players are doing is lifting weights. ‘There’s this perception out there that county players are li f t i ng weights seven
nights a week. That’s not true. There may be some weeks when players don’t touch weights in the gym at all, because it is just as important to work on their agility, flexibility and all those sort of things. That is why it is important to have the training plans that you are doing tailored for your players, or else it can be counter-productive.’
Coming on board with O’Rourke, Porter knew he was going to work with a talented bunch of players. And even though they have won two Ulster titles in three years, he feels there is more in this team and they have more to give.
‘You are always looking to improve and we always want to improve this team,’ Porter says. ‘In the National League, the games are coming thick and fast, you have big games almost every week.
‘Playing Dublin one week, Kerry the next, Donegal the week after that. It is in stark contrast to the Championship, where you mightn’t have a game for a month. So it presents different kind of challenges.’
Monaghan, of course, present their own challenges. It ’s often remarked upon that they have the sixth smallest population in the country, and that their footballers are making the most of scant resources but Porter says it is not something management ever discuss.
‘It’s not something we pay heed to. You hear it now and again, that there is just over 60,000 people living in Monaghan but Malachy has had a look at every footballer in the county. And at the end of the day, it’s 15 players against 15 on the pitch and everyone has the same on their squad, they can only work with a match-day panel of 26. And those numbers are the same everywhere. We have a bunch of very talented footballers who came together, they want to work hard and improve themselves and have a very supportive county board behind them. If you have all that, it doesn’t matter too much about numbers.’
Monaghan’s League campaign has stuttered since they lost by a point to Dublin in Croke Park last month. Despite Conor McManus kicking 12 points, it was the sort of game that might have mentally drained the team. But Porter insists that the team were mentally in a good place the following week, and that Mayo were marginally better on the day.
Given their promising start to the spring has hit a roadblock, two points against Kerry in Clones today would be welcomed. It will give the management team something else to discuss on the road to training next week too, rather than Louis van Gaal’s imminent departure from Old Trafford.