WATCH: Limerick Academy’s Darragh Droog on making “it work” during the lockdown

For the Head of Youth Athletic Performance at the Limerick Hurling Academy, the current restrictions have called for serious rejigging in plans for Darragh Droog.

While once the talented S&C would be able to interact with hundreds of players weekly, all this has had to change with online platforms proving crucial.

“It certainly has changed my role as head S&C of the Limerick Hurling Academy in terms of engagement. What we would have had was six nights on the pitch and two or three in the gym, contact with hundreds of players each week. Al that has changed and how you remain in contact has changed. We’ve gone online as most have.

“From an athletic performance point of view we are actually able to keep on developing bar open running or pitch specific running for the sport itself. In terms of strength development and understanding body movement, we are actually ahead of ourselves. While before we naturally had to share our time with the hurling, but now we almost have exclusive rights to the players with no hurling! From that point of view we are very lucky, we’ve been lucky with the weather and having online platforms to work with.

“Yes it’s changed, yes we are not in direct contact but we are able to make it work.”

Droog was S&C coach to the successful minor Munster winning side of 2019 and is looking forward to getting back onto the field with nothing beating meeting players individually in order to understand them better and thus help them improve.

“I miss the human connection point. While you’re still on screen with 40/50 people, it’s fine, but it’s a bit false. You miss the human interaction point, asking people how they are, having a conversation. It’s grand but you still can’t beat a human interaction point, with coaches as equally as players so looking forward to that coming back.