New code key to end turf war for young guns

On Gaelic Games:Players are the last people given genuine consideration when the wellbeing of counties and their various teams are at stake, writes SEAN MORAN

CLEARLY A country that can move determinedly from floods, unequalled in decades for their torrential intensity, to water shortages and back again in the space of a few weeks cannot find planning an easy task. For years the GAA has agonised over the best way to order its fixtures, particularly at this time of the year – which is of course peculiar given that, although recent weather has been exceptional, January could never be described as the best time to be playing football and hurling.

Yet it is the month that especially in football creates the most outsized demands on younger players, the very ones supposed to be protected against the threat of burnout.

It is not the requirement to be physically fit that creates the problem. Obviously amateur players can only attain a certain level of fitness and without the professional facility of taking mandatory rest periods during the day are limited in the extent to which they can productively push their bodies.

The pressure comes from the one aspect of Gaelic games that must boggle the mind of any casual onlooker from another sport: multi-eligibility. Footballers and hurlers of a certain age play for an enormous number of teams during the course of the same season. These teams have largely different managers (occasional overlap between senior county and under-21s) all of whom want their players primarily focused on one specific outlet.

What happens in January is that a number of the teams with which a young footballer of, say, 20 is involved crash into each other’s schedules. Intercounty training begins, in many counties the under-21s will be starting to convene and third-level colleges are the most highly geared with Sigerson, Fitzgibbon (for any dual players) and all of the other competitions about to start in a few weeks.

Into this chaos the GAA stepped and imposed a mandatory closed season for county panels. It’s only been running a couple of years and already causes much grumbling from intercounty managers and trainers as well as widespread rumour that it is not being observed – that in windswept and remote fields around the island, the surroundings for many dark deeds throughout our history, players are brought together contrary to regulation and forced to train.

Comparisons often overlook that the games are amateur and structured differently to other sports like soccer and rugby, whose seasons start with serious competition and maintain their intensity throughout. Gaelic games open with the pre-season competitions, which are low intensity and move into the National Leagues, which although picking up tempo are not as intense as the championship.

Any attempts to alleviate the initial training burden have caused trouble. Admitting third-level sides to the pre-season competitions and requiring students to turn out for their college, regardless of county selection, in order to resolve any conflict of availability provoked open rebellion leading Tyrone manager Mickey Harte to insist on fielding such players in the McKenna Cup. Harte and other managers argue that the pre-season competitions are the primary opportunities to take a look at younger players, the very demographic most likely to be involved in college panels at what is the peak of their year.

This is nothing more than essentially a turf war over young footballers. In terms of nationally-administered player welfare this is an obvious area for attention. A code of practice governing what young players caught in such a tug-of-demand, which for some will go beyond January, should be required to do would make sense. It would be drafted between college coaches and intercounty managers and mediated if necessary by provincial councils or more likely Croke Park – given the frequency of third-level attendance outside of the home province. At present the idea in the early months of the year anyone should be required to drive between wherever they are being educated and where their county team trains is unacceptable.

The issue of under-21 commitments was of course addressed by the GAA’s Task Force on Player Burnout in 2007, which recommended the amalgamation on a trial basis of the minor and under-21 championships into an under-20 grade. This would have had the advantage of making the one grade a summer event, reducing the pressure on Leaving Certificate students by expanding those eligible to compete and removing the pressure on under-21s at this time of the year. Needless to say the idea provoked a storm of “never did me any harm” reminiscence and in the event it was withdrawn on the morning of the special congress convened to consider the proposals.

The same day a sensible proposal to prevent players involved with county under-21 football panels taking part in the National Leagues was kicked to touch because of “drafting difficulties”, which could have easily been resolved either on the morning or by the drafting sub-committee – although it’s unlikely the proposal would have been carried given the fate of subsequent proposals to address the same matter.

One central fact emerges from this: players are the last people given genuine consideration when the wellbeing of counties and their various teams are at stake.

At the end of last year, having returned from Australia and a trial period with AFL club St Kilda, Kerry panellist David Moran reflected with what amounted to bemusement that such concerns were unknown in Melbourne. “There was no talk of burnout,” he told Gavin Cummiskey in this newspaper. “They train so much harder and because there is no work and no driving your body was able to rest. You are able to work real hard for the training and then go home and sleep or relax. Do what you want to do because you don’t have to go to work. There was only one guy pulling out of you. Burnout is not an issue, which I thought was surprising because obviously there is so much talk of it here and it’s only amateur. Over there you have to train so much harder and there is no talk about it. It was never an issue.”

In other words, back home teams are the priority not players.