Clubs are getting ‘hammered’ by playing schedule – Fennelly

FORMER Kilkenny star Michael Fennelly believes club players are still “getting hammered” despite attempts to tighten up the intercounty schedule.

Fennelly retired from inter-county hurling on the eve of the 2018 season and spent the summer in the US on the basis that he would miss little in the way of action for Ballyhale Shamrocks.

“The club scene is getting hammered the whole summer there with no games,” Fennelly said as the 2018 Electric Ireland Minor Hurling Team of the Year was announced. “That’s why I went off because I said, ‘What’s the point in staying here, I’d like to be playing over in America’ and it was a nice opportunity to do it.

“But there’s no point in having Mickey Mouse games in the summer as well, to be honest, for the club.

“So the club is definitely going to be hammered, players are going to get less interested and are going to go off and play other sports.

“Even myself, coming back from the Kilkenny side of things, my interest levels are going to be less because the year is massively drawn out for club players.

“You’re starting in January and basically we trained hard for January, February, March for two games in April. We actually only played one game, and that was us done until August.”

Fennelly is set to miss this weekend’s clash with Ballyragget as he continues his long-running battle with injury but he believes a tighter, more defined club schedule would aid the club player greatly.

“(Club) follows inter-county. That’s the kind of sequence, the way it goes. That’s getting more serious and club gets more serious. It is like, it’s a hobby at the end of the day and we’ve to realise that. But at the same time, you’re there to put in work and that.

“Before you’d three sessions a week maybe, which is grand, but now the gym is an important aspect of preventing injuries, of getting stronger.

“That could be another one or two sessions. Next thing it could be up to four or five sessions a week. People are asking me had I loads of time off since I left with Kilkenny; I was like, ‘I’m training four, five nights a week still!’ That doesn’t change, time didn’t change. I had longer travel to go to Ballyhale as well. You’re still putting in the same workload, you still have to mentally be preparing for your training sessions.

“It is demanding and what the answer is, I don’t know. I’d love to scale down the club season to maybe six months max and actually do it all then, and actually hit it hard.

“Then you have time off and you’re hungry to go again at it. Instead, it’s just dragged out.”

See Factfile on Page 44 for Minor Hurling Team of the Year