GAA stars ‘risk health’ for glory
Players losing sleep for training regime
INTER-COUNTY hurlers and footballers are spending up to 31 hours a week on team commitments – and are cutting sleep and spending less time with their partners and families.
Travel, coaching and preparation means players spend over six hours each weekday on training during the championship according to an Economic and Social Research Institute report.
Despite the massive time constraints, players still work an average of nearly eight hours a day in their day jobs, it revealed.
The report’s head researcher, Elish Kelly, said this commitment for senior players was like ‘undertaking a second consecutive shift of work’.
Younger players also played for several teams while trying to juggle club, county and college. Although efforts have been made to create an off season, 40% said that they had no break at all from GAA sports during the year.
The ESRI survey was commissioned by the Gaelic Players Association and the GAA.
The majority of respondents (61%) spent fewer than two hours relaxing or with loved ones each day while in training during the championship.
Although the recommended amount of sleep for athletes is eight to ten hours to allow for recovery, the report revealed that inter-county players on average slept just seven hours and 36 minutes a night.
The report also revealed that county players’ mental wellbeing was poorer than that of the general population and was especially poorer when compared to their peers.
Former Cork footballer Niall Cahalane said the commitment to the sport had ‘gone to another level’ and said the sport had become ‘a vocation’. The two-times All-Ireland winner said: ‘In my time, we played an amateur sport and we were amateurs.’
But he said the game was unlikely to return to its roots as an amateur sport in both name and nature.
Seamus Hickey, CEO of the Gaelic Players Association, said his organisation had been calling for this research for a long time.
‘The findings validate the GPA’s long-held view that while it’s an enormous privilege and honour to play at senior inter-county level, the demands on players… are enormous and growing,’ he said.
GAA president John Horan stressed the report ‘illustrates the sacrifices’ made by players at high level of inter-county sport and he said that in 2017 a sum of €6.4 million had been invested in player welfare and on injured athletes.
‘Struggle to juggle club and county’