Bohs'senior therapist Stefano Manassero interviewed by Mark Lane.

"Well, I came to Bohs in January ’99. Bohs were more or less in the relegation battle at that stage. Roddy Collins had just come in and had brought in a few players, the likes of, Kevin Hunt, Paul Byrne and a couple of others. He had also got rid of a few as well around then."

"I think he had gotten to know me through boxing, because at the time I was working for Scott Welsh who was heavyweight champion of Britain. So it was probably through word of mouth and the Steve Collins’ connection that Roddy got to know about me. He asked me to come in, just to help him out. He knew I used to be a bodybuilding champion and he was really interested in the gym programmes, diet, and even the massage therapy. Plus I think he was looking for people with a winning mentality, you know, people who were ambitious too."

"Obviously Bohs had a big name. They would be appealing to anybody. I didn’t know many other teams in Ireland. But I definitely knew Bohs. So that’s how I came to end up here."

"We did well in the beginning. We got about eight, I think, positive results in a row and that got us up to about fifth or sixth place. We even thought that we could get an UEFA cup spot at the time. But then we had a bad run. We lost three games and just used up whatever resources of energy were left. We had a really bad patch where we were creating a lot of chances and couldn’t put them away. So we found ourselves in the relegation play-off against Cobh Ramblers. It was a bad time but we got through it."

"I knew though that things would only get better. Roddy was very ambitious and Bohs are a BIG CLUB. We also had some great players. Kevin Hunt was playing some unbelievable football and I also thought we had the best player in the country at that time in Paul Byrne. He really had it all. There was a good feeling about the future despite the bad season."

And what was the physical condition of the team like?

"Well, at that time, they were very much amateurs. I think they were training twice a week in the evening time. I came in to a few training sessions and they were in Dalymount. We were training and playing on the same pitch, so the pitch was terrible. There was no other training facility and it was an amateur side. We knew though that we had some talents but we had to work at it. We weren’t taking any body fat percentages or anything like that because everything was very basic." So that was something we brought in for the next season, ’99-00. Roddy was thinking about going professional. So that season he was able to bring in about half of the players as professional and half of them stayed as part-timers.

We just built from there. We brought in a few new players. I think he got rid of ten and brought in ten players. The aim for that season was to get into the top six. I think in the end we finished third, but really we were second (you know what he means-Ed.). We also got to the Cup Final and took it to a replay, which was very disappointing. So that success was gave us another shot for the season after. Well we just kept improving and improving and the next season we got The Double. What can I say about that? It was a strange season which ended up very well!"

So how has the training changed since Stef came to the club?

"Well people think I am involved a lot more in the actual training than I really am. But the whole club improved. We brought in more coaches. In the beginning it was just Roddy, John Lewis and me. The next season Pete Mahon and Liam O’Brien came along. This year it’s me, Stephen Kenny, Liam O’Brien, Dermot O’Neill and Gino Brazil who has a good input on team matters too. We keep improving and adding to the club. It’s not just one person."

"As for the difference this season. Well first of all we have stability. Last season was very up and down and a bit of a shock to the players. Stephen Kenny did something that not many managers would do; he kept all the backroom staff. He gave everybody a chance. He saw how we worked and decided to keep us all. He just added Dermot O’Neill for the goalkeepers coaching. That is a big factor, that we train our goalkeepers as specialists. Last season we didn’t have goalkeepers in the training sessions, as they were both part timers who were never there. That’s a huge improvement."

"Another thing is that Liam O’Brien brought in loads of new training techniques and training games. Each session is different and it keeps it all a lot more fun and a lot more interesting. That is important for the footballer’s point of view as it keeps things fresh and keeps the players sharp."

"Stephen Kenny brought in a lot more fitness based training. He wanted the players (and the coaching staff) fitter, more tuned in and more professional as a whole. We are certainly kept on our toes ;-)"

"My role has also largely developed. Before, I would take the team for stretching and warm up, and cooling down, before and after a game. Now we do at least two classes of stretching per week. This is usually the day before a game and a couple of days after a game. Each class usually consists of 30, or more, minutes of a whole body stretch. This is designed to prevent muscle strains and so on. We also have much more of an emphasis on gym work. We have general programmes where the whole team go to the gym and work together and then I write specific programmes for individual players. They are all different and need work in different areas."

"We also have the players thinking more about their diet. It’s a general sports diet. It is a high carbohydrate, Mediterranean style of diet. It emphasises a big breakfast, which does not include sausages, bacon or other fatty foods."

Did that not upset any of the players?

"In fairness, maybe when I started here, that would have been the mentality of some players. But that is a difference between amateur and professional players. The professional wants to improve himself all the time. So this has actually been very easy. Particularly as the first player we targeted this regime towards was Glen Crowe. But once Glen started losing weight and looking sharper and faster, then everyone else wanted to be the same. They all wanted to be as good as him, especially the youngsters. In fact, he’s having a great effect on the under-21 and under-18 teams. They are now coming to me asking for this diet."

"But it is not just diet. There is a lot of cop-on involved, you know, eat the right foods and leave out the junk. They don’t really eat that much chocolate, crisps or McD’s. They don’t really go for kebabs at 2am anymore either, unless we’ve had a great win and we’ve had a few pints. So generally the players look after themselves a lot better after training. We still go for a few drinks but are just more moderate."

How would Stef compare the fitness of Bohs’ Players to players in the higher divisions in England?

"Definitely we are First Division level. It is difficult to compare really though. But our youngsters, for example Jason McGuinness, have been competing at the same level, or even better, with the under-21 lads based in England. So I would say we are getting there, but it is difficult to tell. I was reading that some of the players in the English Premiership are reaching level 18 on a bleep test. Some of our guys are hitting level 16, but they only start at level 8 whereas we start at level 1. So we will be looking at that again soon."

"One thing we do here now is that we weigh the players every week. We can check if they are putting on extra pounds. If they did they have to do extra work. For example, one extra pound and they have to do thirty minutes on the bicycle. Obviously if they put on more then you are talking about a serious session!! But they are very careful. Another thing we do is to check their body-fat percentage. This is done with a calliper. When we started doing this a lot of the players were on around 18%. This season most of the players are around 11 or 12%. We have some exceptional players that are around 9 or 10%. We spent three days in the University of Limerick at the training centre. We were doing about five training session a day in there and it was very hard. But the trainer there was very impressed by our fitness. We did one run, called the Shannon River Run, which is just under five miles long. They had to target a thirty-one or thirty-two minutes. Most of the players did it in under thirty. They actually left the triathlete who was training us in seventh place. He was well beaten by Glen and Kevin amongst others."

"So you can see that the fitness levels have increased. This is a lot to do with Stephen’s mentality. He is a fitness fanatic and pushed the players hard. And it has showed. It is a combination of all the coaching staff’s work."

Mark Lane

Beidh ár lá linn Bohs!!