Top county trained in spite of player fears
MANAGEMENT MET WITH OFFICIALS TO RUBBER STAMP TRAINING PLAN GAA CALLING ON CLUBS AND COUNTIES TO REPORT BREACHES
IN light of the GAA’s dramatic U-turn and decision to sanction counties who break the September 14 inter-county training ban with possible expulsion from the All-Ireland championship, the Irish Mail on Sunday has learned of one prominent senior county football team who have been back in collective training since early June.
In fact, senior football management met with county board officials on Thursday night with a view to rubber-stamping a county training plan for the coming weeks – in direct contravention of the GAA’s guideline.
And this, despite several players raising concerns about the health risks concerned, right down to the detail of team showers.
An official of the county board could not confirm whether any training had taken place when contacted by this newspaper for comment.
The idea that players would be meeting to train at the start of last month when the country was in Phase One of the Government roadmap is a damning one when the GAA has been working on producing a safe ‘Return to Play’ roadmap for all its players.
That involves an e-learning resource for every club player and a Health Questionnaire that has to be filled out initially and resubmitted online before every training session. It was only on June 24 that all club pitches were officially reopened with full contact training from June 29.
It remains to be seen whether any county will now press on with collective or pod inter-county sessions or continue to make county players off-limits to clubs for training or for challenge games before club competition officially starts from July 17.
On RTÉ’s GAA podcast, former Armagh star Oisín McConville expressed his belief that the majority of counties had been training in contravention of the rules and suggested that the counties who were not would suffer when the Championship gets under way later this year.
Referencing the assertion by Laois football manager Michael Quirke that his players had not trained, McConville said: ‘I know Mike quite well and I am going to have to ring Mike and tell him he needs to get training quickly because everyone else is training and if Laois are the only team in the country that’s not training then they are in for a mighty fall.
‘A lot of the rhetoric I have heard around the country is that there is a serious problem between inter-county managers and clubs,’ added McConville, who is now managing Inniskeen McGrattans in Monaghan.
‘I’ve found that it has sort of flipped on its head and that the lines of communication have been open. When the lines of communication are opened up between intercounty managers and clubs I think it’s all for the better.’
On Friday, everything changed when the GAA vowed to get tough with any county who breaks the inter-county training ban between now and September 14, with the threat of expulsion from the All-Ireland race.
After a chairpersons’ conference call, led by president John Horan and director general Tom Ryan, the decision was taken to now actively pursue and sanction counties who train during the club window.
The GAA is calling on clubs and counties to report county teams that breach that window with the threat of a ban under Rule 7.2 (e) of the Official Guide covering ‘misconduct considered to have discredited the association’ and a ban that would effectively end any hope of competing in a winter AllIreland championship.
The Irish Mail on Sunday also understands that there was an admission at the conference call from some counties that their teams had been engaged in training in recent weeks – in direct contravention of the new guideline.
Only a week before, John Horan and Tom Ryan played down the threat of sanctions but there has been a distinct change in mood over the course of a turbulent week.
First, Offaly chairman and Irish Mail on Sunday columnist Michael
Duignan called out the hypocrisy of what is going on and the open secret of counties flouting the September 14 guideline.
Laois hurling manager and eighttime Kilkenny All-Ireland winner Eddie Brennan added his damning verdict, calling for strong sanctions. The subsequent statement by the Gaelic Players Association didn’t really address any of the substantive issues, particularly regarding the concerns members on the ground clearly have.
The Club Players Association was the first to call for strong leadership and strong sanctions from Croke Park on this issue, including expulsion from the All-Ireland championship.