Sligo boss is looking for clarity
Sligo Senior team boss Tony McEntee wants greater clarity from the GAA as inter-county season is paused after government revoke ‘elite’ status of county teams
THE GOVERNMENT’S unforeseen decision to no longer consider inter-county GAA players as ‘elite’ in the current Covid-19 restrictions stunned Sligo Senior Gaelic football team manager Tony McEntee. County players must continue to train on their own, within 5km limits, as it now appears that it will be the beginning of April before collective, outdoor training sessions will get the go-ahead.
It had been widely assumed that county team panels, including those of Sligo, would be allowed to get their pre-season preparations underway at the end of this month, with competitions to commence in early April. Now it will be May before the season will begin and even then the national leagues may be further altered to accommodate what could be a drastically tweaked fixtures’ calendar. McEntee is frustrated that this fresh layer of the unknown came out of left field.
But the government looked at a variety of issues when making the call to remove the exemption for GAA county players that previously allowed them to compete along with the county’s professional soccer and rugby teams. The fact that county players are unable to ‘bubble’ was another major factor in a decision that has ruined recent plans of inter-county managers throughout the
country.
“I wasn’t expecting it at all. I was very angry because we’ve been led along so hard – from January 15 it was a return to play, because we were part of that ‘elite’ status,” said McEntee, who was speaking to ex-Laois star turned pundit Colm Parkinson on The GAA Hour podcast on www.sportsjoe. ie.
“I accept that now – something which I didn’t understand at that stage – was that this was an exemption rather than the GAA being an elite sport. So there was an exemption given under that bracket.”
“Nobody told us that we were no longer under that exemption on January 15. Then we were told that we would be back on March 5. Obviously we’re now in February and we’re being told it will be at least April or possibly even longer than that.” “There are a whole lot of issues in that for me. The players – not just me – are living in expectation.”
McEntee, who is in his first year in charge of Sligo, reckons that the GAA should have found out a lot sooner than last week that the status of county teams had changed in the present Level 5 guidelines.
“Some clarity and some direction from the GAA would be very helpful. When did they know that we were no longer part of the exemption under Level 5? If it was in January then why didn’t they say it in January rather than waiting until now?”
“It is now a government issue because we are awaiting on them to clarify before we decide our own road map.”
He continued: “We need somebody in the GAA to say ‘listen guys, this
isn’t going to work for us here. There is too much uncertainty and we want to push it out until the latter half of the year or there should be more clarity in terms of who we live with it’.”
“They [the GAA] are supposed to be in close dialogue [with the government]. There is still responsibility on the GAA to have clarity.”
“You just can’t plan as an intercounty management with this uncertainty and the way things are being handled.”
Armagh native McEntee, an All-Ireland winner both at club and county level, said he “has more questions than answers”.
“If they [the GAA] didn’t know about this [exemption], then why didn’t they know? Either way there is a game being played here and we’re not being told the entire truth.”
“There is a bigger picture here and it is not just the inter-county scene. I’m talking about sport in general.”
MCENTEE said that a campaign of upheaval, between a shortened timeframe to prepare and then truncated competitions, will make it more difficult for him to impose his imprint on a Sligo team that was managed for the past two years by Paul Taylor.
He met the extended panel twice in person last December but since then he and the players had have to make do with weekly Zoom calls.
The players are training on their own, running and with a diet of gymtype exercises at home.
“As a new manager coming in you hope to get a boost of some description – that initial honeymoon type period. This situation has well and truly shattered all that.”
“You are trying to build a rapport with people from a distance.”
Another issue for McEntee is that he presently has a group of 44 players – and he wants to cut this by 10 before the Allianz Football League starts (if this is, in fact, the first competition of 2021).
“More importantly, once we do get to play – whether it is soon or later in the year – we’ll have a very small window to work with, whatever that is.”
“If you want to implement your own style … they say that most teams should reflect their manager or their backroom team.”
“If you want to adopt that then it is very hard to do in a four-week window as well as getting them conditioned and everything else to play football,” he stated.
“Myself, Enda Ginley [Antrim’s new manager] and Mickey Harte [the new Louth manager] are in a similar position – it is going to be a very haphazard year for us. If results mean everything then clearly there could be a lot of losses this year.”
The manager revealed that several Sligo players have sought assistance in terms of their mental health and having to cope with changes to their normal routines.
“We also have three, maybe four people in the squad who are looking for advisory support and counselling because of difficulties they are having throughout the pandemic, not just with sport but with life in general.” He added: “While we can be fairly flippant about the mental effects of sport – and the mental effects of not playing sport – these issues are very real in the group that I am working with.”
“How long can you keep asking players to work on their conditioning at home without some clarity? The GAA needs to give us some sort of a picture that we can work towards.”