Intensity and focus gone mad!

Sometimes you have to wonder do managers and players lose the plot in their pursuit of the All Ireland.
Kildare's Under 21s played in an All-Ireland final against Kerry recently the first time Kildare had been there for long many a day.
A great day out for the county and you'd have thought that the county seniors would have been there to roar on what should be the backbone of the county side for years to come.
Not so. Instead the senior watched the game on TV from their training camp in Cork where they were for a challenge game for the weekend.
Apparently the senior side had been warned about the 'risks' associated with a four-hour round trip by bus!
Is it just me or is this madness?
Surely to God the seniors would have got something out of watching the young players many of whom must come from their own home clubs?
It doesn't happen every day after all.
It's one thing to be focussed on the next big game, against the giants of Wicklow no less, but this sort of stuff smacks of madness.
It is sounds typical of the set-up in Armagh in the early part of the decade.
However, that was already a very good Armagh team which needed to believe they could win after blowing it in 1999 and 2000.
The type of focus and intensity encouraged by Joe Kernan helped get them into the winner's enclosure in 2002 but for all the focus and the intensity Armagh never made it back again.
I remember reading a piece Micky Harte wrote in his book Knocking on Heaven's Door contrasting his laid back approach to Armagh's intensity and he simply said he knew which set of players he would rather spend the night with.
I fully understand the pursuit of excellence but I reckon it needs to be pursued on the training ground and the bottom line should always be that a player's love of kicking the round white object remains the focus of all good things in training and that you can do the mental intensity thing until you're blue in the face but that nothing compares to a sheer enjoyment of the game.
Someday when their younger colleagues make the breakthrough the Kildare players will realise that a four hour bus trip might not have been the biggest difficulty they ever faced to see their county in an All-Ireland final.

Red Hand Dooher sees red

Brian Dooher's straight red in his first club game back from injury is a blow Mickey Harte's Tyrone could well have done without.
Dooher had scored two points for Clann na nGael in his first start in a senior game in a year before being sent off.
His sending off will delay any chance he has of making it back on to the Tyrone side for the Ulster championship.
Technically Dooher could be back and fit for Tyrone's first game in June but there is now no chance of Dooher being match fit and I'm sure that Mickey Harte will be raging at someone as influential as Dooher seeing red.
Harte must reckon that he is jinxed given the injury lists he has endured in recent seasons and Dooher is not the first Tyrone star to get himself sent off before big games.
I am doubtful that Dooher can ever be the same force for Tyrone as he was in 2003 and 2005, but he has been a great player for his county and he is respected as a leader.
He is coming to the end of what has been a great career, it's a shame that he has compounded his injury problems by seeing red.