Three-week break ideal - O'Shea
September 23, 2014
Tipperary manager Eamon O'Shea. INPHO
Eamon O'Shea believes the three-week break between the drawn All-Ireland SHC final and the replay has been ideal.
Tipperary and Kilkenny will renew acquaintances at Croke Park on Saturday evening - 20 days on from their epic drawn decider - and the Tipp boss admits that his players have had ample time to regroup:
"I would say if the replay was played the weekend after, then both teams would have been very tired," he says in The Irish Times. "I really think so. Because the All-Ireland final is such a big day in the players' life, and they really do have to come back down from it a bit.
"I can't speak from huge experience about having three weeks to prepare again, but it's been ideal, really, in that the first week was about recovery. The second week was about getting a bit more work done. And this week is about tapering again.
"In economics there is a term called 'ceteris paribus', where everything is held constant. But nothing stays constant in this game. Everything changes. Every game is going to be different. Even though it will be against the same opposition, there will be different circumstances, different conditions, different everything.
"That drawn game is gone. The All-Ireland final of 2014 the first day is over. There will be different circumstances, and we'll try to approach it like that. So it's less about improvement, really. It's more about adjustment, to different circumstances. That's the way we approach it."
