‘When they’re lost in the game, you’re on a winner. It’s when they’re distracted you have problems’

Updated Jan 13th 2021, 5:00 PM

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FORMER TIPPERARY HURLING manager Eamon O’Shea explores the power of imagination and visualisation as we kick off the second season of How To Win At Dominoes, The42‘s coaching podcast.

Fresh from his Europa League excursions with Dundalk, host Shane Keegan is once again digging into his little black book to dial up some of Ireland’s sharpest coaching minds for a weekly podcast exclusive to members of The42.

Former Tipperary manager Eamon O’Shea.

Widely regarded as one of the best hurling coaches in the country, O’Shea was an influential member of Liam Sheedy’s 2010 All-Ireland winning management team in Tipperary. He later took over as manager of the seniors between 2013 and 2015, reaching an All-Ireland final in 2014 and achieving Munster glory in 2015.

O’Shea returned to Tipperary’s backroom team in 2019 where he worked under Sheedy once again as they helped guide the county to Liam MacCarthy glory at the end of that campaign.

“The power of the senses and the power of the imagination is something that really interests me,” he tells Keegan on the podcast.

“They are people who can allow players to visualise better than I can. I don’t have [the] skillsets but at a very simple level, you can use your imagination.

“You can take it up levels to allow people more formally use visualisation techniques. But to me, they have to see the gameplan and they have to see the structure of the pitch.

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“If you take a player out, whether it’s a football pitch or a soccer pitch or a rugby pitch, and stand your players on the side of that pitch, and have them look at that pitch, and have them absorb and embed themselves in that environment, and see the blade of grass 31 or 30 metres from the goals [and] align their thinking; they have to be at one with the game, to embed themselves in the game so that they are lost in the game.

“And when they’re lost in the game, you’re on a winner. It’s when they’re distracted [that] you have problems.

“When it happens, it’s a great day.”

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