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GAA

23rd May 2018

Paul Galvin taught London footballers most important lesson of the GAA

Niall McIntyre

That’s what makes the difference.

Just as a work man should never blame their tools, that same work man should never conveniently forget the dangers of failing to prepare. Because then you run the risk of your most important tool of all becoming blunt, and you’re the only one who can be responsible for that.

It’s the biggest cliche of all but that’s only because it’s truer than the rest of them. Practice mightn’t make perfect but it’ll sure as hell make you as good as perfect as you can possibly be, and that’s all that matters.

Those who make it in the GAA and all of the best sports people are all obsessed with their game. They live and breathe it, they eat, sleep and drink it.

It’s never off their mind because not only is is the most important thing, it’s actually the only thing that matters. And it matters so much that it does actually keep them up at night, that it does haul them over to the gym early of a Sunday morning when it’s the last thing they want to do and that it does pull them around laps of the pitch of a wet and windy January Monday.

It matters so much to them that it can put them in bad form for a week or even a month but it’s like a drug and even though it beats them up they’ll keep coming back to for more because the old adage that they’re only as good as their last game is driving them on.

Gaelic football mattered so much to Paul Galvin. So much that he did 100 press ups and sit ups in the toilets of the Bailey Pub in Cork in the middle of a night out because he was so desperate to come back from a shoulder operation stronger than he was before it.

The London footballers are in training at the moment for their first round of the football qualifiers which will take place over the next few weeks.

Manager Ciaran Deely had Paul Galvin over for a session with the Exiles recently and the 38-year-old Lixnaw native taught the London lads a lesson that he’d learned over the years.

The lesson is that practice is the most important thing and if you’ve to make sacrifices to get that practice in, such as buying a cheaper pair of boots, then you’d be best served making it.

A ball and a wall is what improves your skill, it’s what instills that confidence, that gives you that ball manipulation, that gives you the extra edge when you’re in the field training.

That’s what it’s all about.

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