In today's Irish Independent, Kilkenny legend Richie Power reflects on St Kieran's dominance in the Croke Cup (three in a row now) and with it, Kilkenny's endless control over hurling, which seems set to continue through to the bicentennial commemorations of the Rising.
Power, who's a Kieran's alum, made the following admission about the education/hurling balance at the school.
"Your hurl is in your hand nearly every second of the day," Power says. "It's just constant. When I was there I was on the wall ball every single day of the week. You were just looking forward to getting out with the hurl, it was what you lived for in Kieran's.
"The minute the 11 o'clock whistle goes you're out for the 10 or 15 minutes and it's the same with the one-hour lunch. You had the hurl in your hand so often you were perfecting the skills without actually realising what you were doing.
"You were spending at least five hours a week pucking around with the lads, and that's completely separate from the training you're doing. Over six years that adds up to a hell of a lot of hours and I developed most of my hurling in Kieran's to progress with Kilkenny."
This got me thinking about Malcolm Gladwell and the Beatles. Say what you want about Gladwell, his 10,000 Hours Rule from his book 'Outliers' has struck a nerve with performance coaches. The 10,000 Hours Rule is almost so obvious it hurts, but it is the obviousness of it that makes it resonate with athletes and artists. It boils done to the following: it has been surmised by Gladwell and others that it takes a person about 10,000 hours of practice at a given subject to attain true mastery of it. Gladwell looked especially at the Beatles and two years in Hamburg, where they honed their abilities playing long sets in dingy nightclubs.
Compared to their competitors, the Beatles had a distinct advantage --- they had played together for so long, they knew each other inside out. Songs like 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' were underwritten by countless hours of playing together. Gladwell also looks at the likes of Bill Gates, who quit college to focus on computer programming. The lesson is pretty simple - genius will get you so far. Practice, especially at a young age, will lift you to a higher level.
When we try to understand the incredible success of Kilkenny hurling, we have to go back to the grassroots and study how passion for the sport is bred at a young age. Kieran's has essentially become a jedi training school for hurling. Let's do the math on Kieran's hurlers. Power says they were pucking around for 5 hours a week at school (separate to training). That adds up 20 hours a month. Multiply that by 9 months and you get 180 hours a year. Multiply that by 6 and you get 1080 hours over a given student's time at the school..
Essentially, Kieran's hurlers are leaving secondary school with 10% of their 10,000 hours complete, and that's not counting a second of training or game play.
Forget about trying to come up with strategies to beat Brian Cody's tactics. Kilkenny are going to prove incredibly difficult to beat over the coming years and decades unless other counties can match this level of commitment long before a second of the Championship is played.
