Latest news with #Currid
Irish Examiner
25-06-2025
- Sport
- Irish Examiner
Caroline Currid joins Paul O'Connell's Irish rugby management set-up
Renowned sports psychologist Caroline Currid has been drafted into the Irish men's national team's management setup by interim head coach Paul O'Connell for their two-game mini-summer tour of Georgia and Portugal. Currid has built up a remarkable body of work, not least in GAA circles, having been involved with All-Ireland football winning sides in Tyrone and Dublin, and with Tipperary when the Munster county captured a Liam MacCarthy title. A key part of the enormously successful Limerick hurling project under John Kiely, it has been noted since the county's quarter-final loss to Dublin last Sunday that Currid has now been absent the last three times Limerick failed to go all the way, in 2019, '24 and '25. Former Limerick hurler Niall Moran and ex-Dublin star Ryan O'Dwyer are just a couple to have mentioned that correlation this week while numerous players from various counties have praised her contribution down the years. Limerick's Declan Hannon has labelled her work as 'pheonomenal'. Currid, who has been working in the performance/psychology sector for two decades now, has also worked with Kenyan Olympic 800m champion David Rudisha, Celtic Football Club and across the business world. Irish rugby has landed a major coup in co-opting her onto their summer staff, though this isn't her first foray into the sport: there was a year spent in a consultancy role with Johan van Graan's Munster during the 2021/22 season. Currid will be working with an inexperienced Ireland group in the absence of so many regulars who are on tour with the British and Irish Lions. Jacob Stockdale has 38 caps but he is only one of six players with more than ten appearances to his name. A dozen have yet to play a single minute of Test rugby at the highest standard. A former Gaelic footballer who won a Junior All-Ireland title with Sligo, Currid goes back a long way with O'Connell whom she interviewed 17 years ago for a study she was compiling on mental preparation among high-performance athletes. Currid has since admitted that she was shocked by his preparation at the time with O'Connell subsequently writing about the meeting in his autobiography and how he felt a nomination for World Player of the year in 2006 was undeserved. The pair were soon working together and would do for years, O'Connell's renowned attention to detail and obsessiveness evident in how he ate through whatever books Currid would send his way. The IRFU has had high-profile experts in similar roles in the past. Former Armagh footballer Enda McNulty worked as a mental skills coach with the national team from 2013 for seven years and Gary Keegan is currently part of the operation. Keegan, who revolutionised Irish elite amateur boxing, spent over four years with Jim Gavin's all-conquering side. Now a performance coach with the IRFU, he is currently in Australia with Andy Farrell's Lions tourists.
RTÉ News
23-06-2025
- Sport
- RTÉ News
Niall Moran: Limerick missed Currid's emotional disengagement
Former Limerick hurler Niall Moran believes the absence of sports psychologist Caroline Currid from the Treaty set-up in 2025 was costly in their shock All-Ireland quarter-final loss to Dublin on Saturday. While stating that it can't be deemed the sole reason for Limerick's loss, he did say that her absence can only have weakened them and felt signs of that were evident at Croke Park. Currid has been involved with All-Ireland winning sides in Tyrone and Dublin, both football, and Tipperary in hurling while she was also involved as John Kiely's side lifted the Liam MacCarthy four times, and was notably absent on the three occasions they missed out since their 2018 breakthrough. "One loss to the Limerick backroom team over the last two years is Caroline Currid," Moran said on RTÉ's Game On. "I've never worked directly with her but I do often wonder in situations like that quarter-final and the lead up to it, it wasn't about getting the bodies physically right, it was about getting the mind back to where it needed to be. "When it came to the fight I thought Limerick looked shot... Cian Lynch was booked for a high tackle, I just looked at him and thought he looked pale. "I think that has happened every one of us from club level to county level whereby if you're not on it, you get found out. I just think for Limerick that was ultimately the sword they died on." Moran added that given Limerick's dramatic Munster final loss to Cork on penalties, there was always going to be a mental battle for the Dublin game – and it's one they lost. "It's the nature of Caroline, you probably are emotionally disengaged because everyone in there, you are so invested emotionally and sometimes you build things up to be bigger than what they are. "If you have somebody whose emotionally disengaged, who has the ear of people, you see things for what they are, the small things. "Trust me, I'm not putting it down that if Limerick had Caroline Currid they'd have won that match but I just felt that emotionally it was a very tricky game." Also speaking on Game On, former Dublin hurler Ryan O'Dwyer agreed with Moran's assessment of the impact Currid can have on a team. "There seems be a thing when she leaves (that) teams don't meet the high expectations that they've created for themselves. "I know people are going to say she was with them before they won an All-Ireland, but they were a developing team then. I think she played a massive role (in their success)." O'Dwyer worked with Currid for a season when hurling for Dublin and he felt her expertise was obvious. "It's not just about a talk or a speech she gives or anything like that, she structures things in such a way that you can give all your focus, all your energy to hurling. "She sorts out your life around the game so when you're training you're 100% there, when you're going to a match you're 100% there both in body and mind, emotionally, structurally."
