Carey didn’t think he would complete the task but Robbins gradually convinced him through a systematic process of positive visualisation. Carey pictured the coals as soft, fresh moss. After he took his first step, he felt he was standing on gravel. The experience “gave me tangible proof that I could do something that I basically thought was impossible beforehand”, he says. “It made me fully realise that we don’t know our limits when it comes to the mind.”
Although the relationship is largely clandestine, with little holding hands in public, elite GAA teams have embraced sports psychology in the past few years to the point that mental preparation now goes beyond the boundaries of sports psychology. Some of football’s most enlightened managers have the results to back that up.
When he was manager of Mayo, Leitrim and Galway, John O’Mahony exposed the players to an occupational psychologist who had worked in industry. In 2002, Joe Kernan enlisted the help of Hugh Campbell and Des Jennings, variously described as psychologists and team builders. Mickey Harte used them, too, when he was in charge of the Tyrone minors in the late 1990s.
Harte still retains the services of Bart McEnroe as a personal motivational adviser while, last year, Kernan recruited Billy Dixon, one of the world’s top image consultants, who specialises on the image of authority and self-confidence. Dixon worked with the England Rugby World Cup squad in 2003.
Although John Carey draws many of his ideas from sports psychology, he is a performance coach who works with the Cork hurlers. The practice is completely new in hurling. While the working model Carey has developed is primarily used in life and business coaching, it fits the sporting arena.
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“A lot of what I do is certainly new in GAA terms but the mind is an area which will either make or break you,” he says. “My approach is very straightforward and down to earth because I don’t do anything that I can’t prove to the players.”
To illustrate some of his ideas, he clicks on his computer and opens up a file, which he used last Tuesday morning at a physical health and awareness course with the Defence Forces. Carey asked one of the troops to hold his right arm out straight while facing the crowd with his back to a large screen.
He offered him €100 if he could keep his arm straight while Carey tried to push it down to his side. When a positive image appeared on the screen behind the volunteer, Carey couldn’t budge the trooper’s arm. After a negative image appeared, Carey maintained his trend of never having lost that bet.
“The group saw the negative image and he picked up on it,” he says.
“The minute one person begins to doubt, it’s all over. A commentator will normally say that a team’s legs are gone but it’s primarily because somebody has thrown in the towel mentally. Even though other lads are trying their hardest, they can’t do it. They’ve been drained. The plug has been pulled.”
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Carey works on ensuring the plug stays in the socket at all costs. In last year’s All-Ireland semi-final, after Clare went seven points ahead and Cork were forced to substitute two of their marquee players, Ronan Curran and Brian Corcoran, Ger Loughnane wrote “Game Over” on his notepad in the TV studio. Cork didn’t fold.
“Even when their backs were to the wall, Cork were able to access their mental strength resources to dig it out,” says Carey. “A couple of players didn’t perform individually but they still didn’t cost Cork anything. They didn’t lose the head or give away stupid frees and they didn’t drag anyone else down. If you look at other teams during the championship, a number of players cost their side the game by bringing the rest of the team down with them.”
Curran had also been cleaned out in the All-Ireland quarter-final against Waterford. Carey had a number of one-to-one sessions with him before the final. The Galway centre-forward, David Forde, had been instrumental in Galway’s success against Tipperary and Kilkenny but Curran blew him away.
“Going into the final, my confidence should have been very low after the two previous games and there was a certain amount of pressure on me,” says Curran. “At centre-back you try and pivot around the centre and read the game a bit more. But when my confidence is down, I tend to go marking the man a bit more because I’d be thinking, ‘If he gets another point here, I’m screwed.’
“John was there to divert that thinking from me and he was great at focusing my mind. He got me thinking that just because a couple of fellas had got the better of me, why should I change my game after winning All Stars in the previous two seasons? I really needed John and you’d never know what could have happened me if he wasn’t there.”
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That back-up was completely new in Cork because they had never used a sports psychologist before. Under Donal O’Grady, management grasped a practical knowledge of the practice and its importance. The walls of the dressing rooms and meeting rooms in the hotel on match-days were host to a gallery of pictures communicating subliminal messages and catchphrases intended to build an environment of heightened awareness and passion.
Bringing Carey on board put things on another level and they had an itinerary on motivation almost every weekend. Before the All-Ireland final, some of the players felt they didn’t have any beef with Galway, as they had with Kilkenny the previous year. So they focused heavily on their defeat to Galway in the 2002 All-Ireland qualifier.
Cork have taken preparation in all areas to a new standard and a lot of Carey’s work this season is sure to centre on how teams will react to Cork’s perceived sense of increasing separatism in the hurling world. “People have focused on the issues of the lads training in Boston (at the Railway Cup) and that none of them went on the All Stars trip,” says Carey. “But the reality is that successful individuals and teams set higher and higher standards for themselves. Sometimes there can be a high price to pay for that because it isn’t always the most popular option with others.”
Ultimately, Carey’s role is nothing without the dedication and hard work of players and management but his record is impressive. LIT had him on board when they won their first Fitzgibbon Cup last year and Knockainey came to him after getting sucked into a relegation battle in the Limerick senior hurling championship. They won a replayed relegation semi-final by 16 points.
Carey’s line of work, though, is always about the future, new targets and persuading people to perform to the maximum of their ability.
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There is one Cork panel member from whom he expects huge results this season. All that has held him back up to now is his mindset.
“There is a theory that it’s ultimately minds which compete and the limits of the mind are unquantifiable,” says Carey. “The Egyptians were able to carry out operations without anaesthetics and the Aborigines were able to communicate telepathically. We’ve maybe lost that ability to access our mental strengths in modern times. Most hurlers and footballers can achieve anything; they just don’t know the limits of their capabilities.”
In the modern GAA sporting environment, unleashing that power within is becoming ever more important.