‘THREE OUT OF EVERY FOUR WOULD SPEND LESS TIME WITH THEIR OWN CLUBS’ OUTRAGE

In the week that started with controversy in Tyrone, the ongoing saga with Mayo’s women and the ESRI report detailing excessive demands on players, uproar abounds as everyone looks for the next ...

THEY don’t tell you this in column school, but feigning outrage is an exhausting business. Oh, what should we vent our spleen on this week. The mass brawl between Stewartstown and Strabane followed with Polaroid speed by that Seán Cavanagh photograph should provoke, but somehow we can’t stir ourselves to get up to the pulpit and scream ‘down with this sort of thing’.

Let’s be honest, on the basis of what has gone before, like in 2011 when a supporter had to be rushed to hospital to get a severed ear reattached – after an on-field brawl spread to the stand in a county league final, what happened last weekend was only in the ha’penny place.

If anything, not least after it was revealed that all six red cards shown in the Edendork/Moy game were for double-yellow cautions, you might suggest the standard of acts deemed to bring the game into disrepute in Tyrone is falling through the floor. They need to get their game face on.

Then there was mass hysteria in Mayo, where the disaffected 12 ladies players and two selectors held a latenight press conference, which was such an intimate affair that only a chosen few were invited.

The hope was expressed on this page last week that if they did eventually find their voice, they might drop vague and loaded language such as ‘unsafe environment’, ‘player welfare’ and ‘sensitive and personal issues’, but instead they went and added another by claiming they were forced to leave on ‘mental health’ grounds.

They appear to be trying too hard to push trigger words to catch our attention while trying far too little to front up to the actual specifics for their exit.

Anyhow, hysteria levels have been maintained at usual levels in the West now that James Horan gets to sit down with the county board (who wouldn’t want to be a fly on the wall at that summit).

And then there was then a mass of numbers showered upon us from on high in Croke Park as the ESRI published a report which, among other things, revealed that on average intercounty players are committing 31 hours a week to what is their hobby.

If you are shocked by that, then you must still be living in 1975. We get to hear about how that ceiling gets pushed higher and higher every year and now, just because they have put a number on it, are we supposed to be outraged?

Anyhow, we are not really sure if that number plays for real. After all, if one of those clipboard-armed folks from the ESRI deem you to be sufficiently interesting to come knocking at your door and ask if you are (a) a bone idle parasite sucking energy out of your workplace, (b) a nine-to-five guy/gal in it to make ends meet or (c) a driving force in your company who is being worked to the bone, which box do you tell them to tick?

And why do you think inter-county players would be any different? That is not to say that the ESRI report is an inaccurate reflection of the excessive demands being placed on players, but we have known this for an age, so we are not quite sure of its value.

The GAA is not shy of data on all sorts of areas, with surveys on burn-out, overuse injuries and drop-out rates back in 2013, so this is familiar territory. The glib line to throw out here is that this is a time for action not numbers, but when it comes down to it, the genie is out of the bottle and there is no putting it back in.

Can you seriously put a cap on the time that is demanded of players? A mockery was made out of efforts to introduce a closed season in the recent past, and if anything it was used to squeeze more effort from players while not having to pay them expenses.

True, it was policed with the same limp-wristed authority that the rule on hot-weather training camps was this year, when the Dublin footballers went on battlefield tours and Wexford hurlers all just happened to turn up in the same karaoke bar. But the reality is ambition, and preparations to realise that ambition can never be contained by legislation.

However, there were a couple of other numbers outside that headline figure of 31 hours, which grabbed the eye and which might illuminate a pathway ahead.

Four in every 10 players in 2016 – the year the survey was conducted – revealed that they got no break between, county, club and college. That should be of huge concern. It may well be that they were not physically on that treadmill for the full 12 months but, mentally, they always had to be ready because when you have a fixture schedule that feels like it is being spewed out of a bingo machine, there is no down time.

The other is that almost three in every four players admitted they would rather spend less time with their clubs if it facilitated greater success in their inter-county careers.

There is nothing wrong in that, because for all that one-life, one-club mantra we ask players to sing on request, the truth is that county comes before club for most. That is human nature, elite sports people are drawn to elite competition.

That should also educate fixture planners and there is much merit to the Club Players Association’s call for a committee, made up of those within and outside the GAA, to construct a new fixture schedule from a blank canvas.

That canvas may be blank, but any new plan that seeks to provide a defined, regular and workable schedule for the GAA’s club membership may have to accept the reality that for it to truly work, it can no longer wait for its intercounty membership at the station.

After all, county players are clear which way they want to go. Their club colleagues are entitled to the same sense of clarity.

Mind you, there will be outrage.