Phelan bids to make capital out of new training plans
LADIES’ FOOTBALL
Daire Walsh
CORK ladies’ football defender Róisín Phelan is hopeful a curtailed training programme can help to bring the best out of her game in 2021.
Based in Dublin as a dentist, Phelan travelled up and down to Cork for the duration of last year’s condensed inter-county window. Thanks to an arrangement with Rebelettes manager Ephie Fitzgerald, she will now concentrate on individual training during the week, before heading back to her home county for collective weekend sessions.
“Travelling that much was a big strain,” Phelan said. “You’d find you were picking up little niggles more easily than everyone else. Just purely from sitting down more and driving more.
“Ephie felt and I felt that, by the time the end of the week came, I was an awful lot more tired than other people; that I could perform better if I would do some more work up here, then come down ready to rock and rumble at the weekend,” she said.
“I was down this weekend just gone. It was a long time since we’d seen each other. For people who are used to seeing each other so often, it was lovely just to get back together as a bigger group, see all the collective effort that everyone made, coming together as one.”
Currently in their second week of pre-season training, Cork will begin their National Football League campaign with a Division 1B encounter at home to Tipperary on May 23.
This will be followed by subsequent showdowns against Dublin and Waterford, with a semi-final and final to come if the group stage goes according to plan for Fitzgerald’s charges.
While securing a 13th NFL title will be high on the agenda, Phelan feels these matches will serve a wider purpose as the year moves on.
“It’s great that we get those matches in before championship,” she said. “While it was great that we could play last year, there wasn’t a whole pile of time for challenge matches. Having read interviews since, people were really struggling with a lack of game time coming up to championship. It was really putting a strain on players. It’s nice this year that there is a little bit of a lead-in.”
When it comes to the All-Ireland series, the five in-a-row chasing Dublin will still be the team to beat. However, the Jackies will have to plan for their latest defence of the Brendan Martin Cup without the services of the recently-retired Noelle Healy.
Phelan plays alongside the former Mourneabbey attacker in the red of St Brigid’s in Dublin and is glad that her adopted club will still be able to reap the benefits of her footballing talents.
“She’s an incredible athlete and she definitely could have kept going if she wanted to. If she felt the time was right, then the time was definitely right for her. I’m glad to hear that she will be continuing to play with club and that we will benefit from hopefully a little bit more energy levels from her.”