Let players go back and be club men, urges Boylan
Meath legend calls on county managers to place their trust in players as football prepares for championship
MEATH football legend Seán Boylan has called for a “total assessment” of the GAA playing calendar with the four-time All-Ireland-winning manager insisting that they must “do what’s right for the player”.
Boylan holds out hope that the long-lasting ramifications of the coronavirus pandemic will force changes within the structures of the GAA and the 77-year-old is adamant that intercounty players should not be forbidden from regularly representing their clubs, as has been the case in many counties in recent years.
“Haven’t we all been stopped in our tracks?” Boylan told the Irish Independent. “Everybody has been completely stopped in their tracks and it’s time for a total assessment, it’s time for total fair play.
“Do what’s right for the player. Let him play club championship and trust that he’s going to be right for the county. Don’t ban him from playing with the club. If you do, you’ll get nowhere and it’s the same the other way around.
“Let them go back and be club men for a little while now. County players will keep themselves right anyway but can you imagine what it’s going to do for the clubs to have all their top players there for the summer, it’s brilliant and clubs will be thriving.”
The GAA’s decision to enforce sanctions on counties that return to training before September 14 also delighted Boylan – who managed the Royal footballers from 1982 to 2005 – with players no longer left in limbo serving two masters at once and he feels that the club must now get priority.
“Championship comes first. If club championship is first then you play that, plain and simple. You can’t serve two masters at the one time and you have to trust the lads that they’re going to be ready. That sounds simplistic but it’s not really,” he said.
“You can worry about three or four months ahead and prepare for it but you can’t do it until three months’ time. Everybody just has to be so thankful that there are games going on at all because it wasn’t looking good for a long time this year.”
SEÁN BOYLAN is emboldened by the prospect of inter-county action returning later this year with the Meath legend expecting several shocks during the straight knockout football championship.
There will be no second chance or a shot at redemption should a high-profile county be shown the exit door and Boylan, who guided the Royals to four All-Ireland SFC titles in his 23-year reign, believes that those with thriving club championships will be best served this winter.
“It’s going to be really exciting because you have to win every match. So it’s going to be really competitive and lads will be playing with their clubs knowing that they need to up their performances to be ready for county games,” he said.
“We won the Centenary Cup in 1984 and that was the first open draw in the history of the game. Who would ever have expected in ’84 that Monaghan and Meath would end up in the final? The resurgence from that to this day in both counties has been huge following it.
“That’s the beauty of this, teams have to be ready. If the club isn’t competitive, counties will be in trouble. County players are back with their clubs now and it’s up to them to take the thing to a different level. Train as if you’re playing for the county and it’ll lift the tide in those clubs.”
While some county managers are unlikely to be happy about the GAA backtracking on previous statements not to impose sanctions for
This is a bit like Chernobyl. You can see nothing, you can hear nothing, that’s a very eerie thing
counties which train collectively before September 14, Boylan is adamant that more trust needs to be shown in players from those at the helm.
“You generally get injured far more often in training than playing actual matches for your club or county, so let’s never again have a situation where you play a club championship match on a Saturday and the county manager wants you on a Sunday morning, that’s bull **** ,” he said.
“Let’s be sensible about it and trust the players. Trust has to come into it from managers. They have to trust their players that they will have themselves in peak condition. You don’t need to train every hour that God gives you.
“The team we had in ’87 and ’88, four of the lads were over 30 when they won their first Leinster, they’d all been there over 10 years and won nothing but when they got the sniff of how to win as a team, it was nothing to do with their birth certificates.
“You’d hate to think that they would have ever missed a moment of it but there were times when I would have taken the chance and said, ‘I don’t want to see you’. And they are things that you have to do.
“Lads have to be content with themselves that they can do that. You don’t need to train seven days a week, you need to recover. It’s so important to start back with the clubs so that everybody gets out there.
“To have walked by the GAA pitch and not seen kids out there the last couple of months is a killer, but the hunger that will be in everyone when it starts back will be huge.
“It will more than make up for any possible drop in quality because they haven’t been training together as much as other years. Let’s just make the most of it this year and enjoy it.”
Boylan also hopes that talk of inter-county commitment being a weight on players will disappear given the unprecedented health crisis gripping the world at present, as talk of the sacrifices being made boils his blood.
“Don’t start saying it’s a fierce burden having to train and play, that drives me around the twist, the sacrifices that lads are making. Hang on lads, it’s no sacrifice to play football or hurling, you either do it or you don’t want to do it,” he said.
“That was always the way it was. If someone didn’t want to do it then that was okay, that was fine. If you make yourself available, then give it everything you have – and that’s the way it should be.”
The 77-year-old thought he had seen it all during his lifetime but the coronavirus pandemic forced a rethink with the Dunboyne native “lucky to live on a farm” and be cocooning with his family in splendid isolation.
The purchase of a new bicycle kept him active during lockdown and he implores everyone to go back to basics in all aspects of life when Covid-19 eventually eases.
“This is such an extraordinarily vicious virus that you just have to mind each other. We’ve had times of flood and snow and winds but they seem to be a bit easier to cope with afterwards, this is a bit like Chernobyl though,” Boylan said.
“You can see nothing, you can hear nothing, you can feel nothing but there’s something there and that’s a very eerie thing.
“The strict regime that we were given was absolutely the right thing to do, because you can’t take a chance with it.
“There’s so much communication on the WhatsApp and on Facebook now, Jeepers, let’s just start talking to each other again. Lift the phone and ring people, it’s 30 seconds and it’s worth far more than all the texts.”