Louth boss will respect the decision of any player who doesn’t want to take risk

LOUTH football manager Wayne Kierans insists that any player who doesn’t feel comfortable returning to competitive action will have the full backing of his management team.

It’s still unclear if the inter-county season will resume at all, but if it does get the green light Kierans won’t be putting any pressure on his players.

‘We would be 100 per cent guided by the player and what they want to do,’ he said this week. ‘If a guy doesn’t feel comfortable coming back, or if it doesn’t suit his personal situation, then we certainly wouldn’t be putting any pressure on anyone.

‘But I would hope that when the decision is made to return that all the right guidelines and protocols will be in place and everything will be done right - that can be the only starting point.

‘I really only see it happening when the number of [COVID-19] cases has dropped off dramatically or there have been no new cases for some time and when social-distancing rules have been relaxed. I’d expect it wouldn’t be until life is back to some kind of normality, when people go back to work and shops and restaurants and bars are back open again.

‘I can’t see how we could contemplate bringing football or hurling back before any of that stuff. It’s obviously going to be very hard to maintain and practise social distancing in a game.

‘I have to say I agreed wholeheartedly with what John Horan said: if we make a hasty return to action and it costs even one volunteer to get the disease, then it isn’t worth it. You cannot argue with that.’

All that said, Kierans is still hopeful that Leinster and/or All-Ireland Championships of some description can be played in the Autumn.

County Board chairman Peter Fitzpatrick last week called on the GAA to scrap the inter-county season, but while he understands the former Louth manager’s logic, and that he wants to do the right thing by clubs, Kierans still wants the opportunity to make amends for a poor National League campaign.

Louth had lost all five of their Division 3 outings and were all bar mathematically relegated to the bottom tier when the pandemic struck.

It now seems unlikely that the league can be resumed, but Kierans is still hopeful that county teams might be able to return to championship action in October.

‘In terms of my thoughts and that of the management team and players, we would still really like to compete in a championship of some description and we haven’t given up hope on that,’ he said this week.

‘I appreciate the club game has to be brought back first, but that suits us too because it would lead players back into the inter-county season, if we get that far.

‘Obviously there are a lot of obstacles to Gaelic football resuming, either club or county, but we’re still hopeful.’

During the initial lockdown, Kierans and his backroom team were sending players a training schedule and monitoring their sessions with GPS trackers, but that all came to an abrupt halt when John Horan revealed that the season wouldn’t resume until October at the earliest.

‘When John Horan announced that, we officially stood the players down. We were pretty much instructed to do that. We still send them bits and pieces and advice on the premise that it will also help when they go back to their clubs. But most of these guys are self-motivated and