THE is a big hole in the lives of many Irish people at the minute, with GAA activity still only in the early stages of restarting.
Most of us have the support and interest of our local club, while others only really follow the inter-county game and have little or no affiliation to a particular club. October must feel like a lifetime away for them.
Must-do is a great master and the GAA message has been mixed. Effectively the high brass wanted people to ‘tout’ on their county team if they attempted to break away from the GAA guidance on when inter-county training could restart.
‘Touting’ has a bad name in the north and given that there were no ‘real’ sanctions proposed initially, you have to wonder if the GAA were actually serious in attempting to shame county management into following guidelines. Or were they just ticking a box?
Either way, they weren’t long in distancing themselves from this approach and changing tack.
Again, I see no sense in the one-size-fits-all approach the GAA have decided to adopt.
An inter-county player should be able to recommence inter-county training once his club team have been knocked out of their respective club championship.
What possible reason could there be to prevent a player from doing this?
From a logical, even sports science perspective, a player will be training hard in the lead-up to club championship games.
Should their club be beaten and knocked out of the club championship, this may then lead to a significant tail-off in intensity and de-loading in training preparation and game-time.
Again, this inevitably means that an inter-county player will have to ramp up training again when county team preparations recommence. It is effectively two pre-seasons in the space of a few months.
What you could be looking at are two or three different phases of training ‘loading’ and this will undoubtedly lead to higher instances of injury.
I very much doubt that player welfare issues such as these have been considered.
At this stage, I suspect it’s about ticking boxes at Croke Park and getting fixtures agreed and played within the calendar year.
It will be interesting to see if crowds and spectators will be allowed back to watch the games by October.
Again, it’s a wee bit away yet and a lot can change, but already, as things in society begin to loosen, one would presume there will be sporadic bursts in Covid-19 infections. Allowing spectators into games in autumn and winter will be a big call.
The pandemic may not have had the impact on club football I had assumed it would have. My own club are getting great numbers at training, with a few on extended leave in other parts of the globe having returned to the sanctuary of their home comforts.
This gives a team a bit of a boost and this strength in depth is particularly important in rural areas, many of which have been decimated by emigration in recent years. I have heard of similarly good attendances in other clubs.
The fact that young people have been locked away from activity for so long has made them re-assess what sport and, in particular, the GAA means to them.
Those who have fretted over taking a break from the game but couldn’t quite bring themselves to follow through on it, had this break from activity forced upon them and, in a way, have recharged the batteries from a mental and physical perspective.
MANY have had their say on Jack McCaffrey’s recent decision to step away from inter-county football (note this was step away and not retirement). I am certain he will be back – probably as good as ever.
McCaffrey has had the fortune of winning five All-Ireland medals with Dublin, multiple Allstars and man-of-the-match accolades, all after already taking a break from the game before.
So perhaps the key is to take yourself in and out of that intense environment on a cyclical basis.
Commit three years – break – commit three years – break, and so on.
Jack is young enough to still do that another few times anyway, with Diarmuid Connolly also undertaking a similar course, although Connolly’s latest return has not set the world alight in the same manner as McCaffrey’s performances have.
What we are seeing at inter-county level is a semi-professional/ professional team and player environment.
Individual preparation, diet, tactical analysis – no stone is left unturned.
The intense preparation, both physical and mental, can be overwhelming for many players and managers and increasingly that is why individuals are burning out very quickly.
Few now are seeing a decade of service, when in the past you were just breaking into your stride 10 years into inter-county football.
Of course, it takes a strong manager, coach and management team to facilitate a player having the confidence to step out of the inter-county bubble without affecting their long-term chances of rejoining the squad in the future, or dare I say it, even further into a season.
A lot of managers in the past have taken a player’s decision to step away all very personally and held it against players.
I know players I have played with in the past that needed a break, sought one, and that was the last time they played in a Down jersey.
The only choice in the one-size-fits-all approach has been ‘you are either in or you are out’. Again, I think this is totally wrong. Nothing is that black and white now.
In more recent times, we have seen player contracts or codes of conduct in our game. I have always seen these as a sign of a deeply insecure manager or coach, someone who doesn’t trust his players.
A player may feel obliged to sign such documents, indeed pressurised to do so, but I consider this a weak approach. Fundamentally, managers and players are not that different.
Both want success, both want to better themselves and both believe they can make the difference.
So on that level, players and managers should be able to work towards a common goal.
So contracts or codes of conduct should be unwritten in my eyes, then it is much deeper in a person.
And the best managers can always tap into that.
