Lions guru aiding Cork hurlers' All-Ireland bid from 15,000km away

Irish Daily Mirror

a day ago

Pat Ryan has revealed how performance guru Gary Keegan is burning the midnight oil down under to bolster Cork's All-Ireland bid.
Keegan has been a key member of the Irish senior rugby set up since 2020, when he was brought on board by coach Andy Farrell, who has also absorbed him into his Lions backroom team for the current tour of Australia.
The Lions face the Wallabies in the first Test match of the series in Brisbane next Saturday, the day before Cork take on Tipperary in the All-Ireland hurling final, though he's still making his presence felt some 15,000km away.
Keegan first made his name with Irish boxing teams in the 2000s and has since worked with Jim Gavin's all-conquering Dublin football squad, the Tipperary hurlers under Liam Sheedy as well as having a couple of stints with the Cork hurlers under Kieran Kingston - and Ryan was keen to get him back on board when he took over from Kingston ahead of the 2023 season.
He said: 'I'd worked with him in 2017 and he's got a great affinity for these group of players, do you know what I mean?
'He was adamant he wanted to stay involved. Look, obviously his work schedule had got busier and things pulling off him and all that side of it, but he was adamant that he could do it.
'He's probably down to us maybe five or six times a year, he does an awful lot of one to ones with the lads, does one to ones with myself. We do an awful lot of Zoom calls actually, which helps with with more of a collective zoom together.
'He's done one or two of them since he's been away in Australia with the lads, and he'll do one or two more before the All-Ireland, and in fairness to him, he makes the effort.
'Like he was up at half three the last day after one of the matches, he's got really, really keen, he's got a great affinity to these players, and as good as a fella that you could meet.'
Ryan explained how Keegan pointed out to him how he was 'managing instead of leading', something he felt he was guilty of in the lead-in to the harrowing 16-point defeat to Limerick earlier in the Championship.
'Gary would speak an awful lot of that with me, that you need to lead maybe a bit more, instead of maybe managing the situations a bit more.
'It's not taking over or anything like that. It's just that you're giving the direction clearer to people and you're giving the direction of what we want to do and the standards and the expectations of everybody is clearer and then fellas just go and do their jobs, whatever their role is within our group.
'In fairness, I think the fact that we did perform really really well in 2024, the players believed in us as a management team more.
'And when the players are believing in you as a management team and understand that you're doing the right things and that you can get them to where they want to get to, what their dreams and what their expectations are, that gave us a bigger footing again in 2025 to go on and expand our game plan and expand the way we wanted to do things.
'Then we set up a leadership group and that has worked really really well this year. The lads that have come into it have been brilliant.
'From 2023 to 2024 it was better, to 2025 it's even better. We're much more player-led in what we're doing, how we play, how we analyse matches, how we come back at it. We've a fantastic analysis and video group led by Tomás Manning that really really go after a lot of the things that we want to do.
'And we've dialled it down a bit as well. The 20-minute video sessions are gone. It's 5, 6, 7 minutes regularly, just to get fellas tuned in and that seems to be working as well. But it's working at the moment, it's going well, but the proof is in the pudding on Sunday week.'