The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
All managers are failing their players in latest ‘dual player’ issue in the GAA
YOU just know that after this week the whole thing will melt away like the snow that carpeted Paric Grattan in Inniskeen last Sunday and be forgotten about. Four Sigerson Cup semi-finalists will become two by Wednesday evening (don’t even think about the D and R words!) and by Saturday evening a new Sigerson Cup champion will be crowded and all the hue and cry will drain away. Third-Level team managers will privately gripe and moan for a few days after that until no one listens anymore, and inter-county team managers will survey the fall-out and simply hope their student players have come through a few weeks of tough examinations. By April no one will even know who the Sigerson Cup champions are and more of us will have to Google the word to be sure how to spell the damned competition.
But lessons - or learnings, as more and more GAA folk are inclined to say - still need to be learned. Suffice to say, the new ‘dual player’ phenomenon reared its head in Kerry this year more than we might have expected, with an outbreak of what we shall diplomatically call disgruntlement on the part if IT Tralee and how they did or didn’t get best use of their students for said Sigerson Cup.
The crux of the issue revolved around David Clifford and his unavailability for IT Tralee’s Sigerson Cup quarter-final last week after injuring his hamstring the previous weekend while on Kerry duty in the National League. Needless to say the ITT management weren’t best pleased that their star player - who is on a sports scholarship at the Kerry college - wasn’t able to play for them against DIT.
Maybe it was because it was Clifford who was at the centre of the problem, or maybe it was because it was the local Third-Level college involved - or both - that this county versus college issue seemed more heightened around these parts this year then in previous years, but it’s a nationwide issue and should be dealt with as such.
Today (Wednesday) three, maybe four, Kerry senior panellists will play Sigerson Cup semi-finals, with the final fixed for Saturday, 24 hours before all four would be in contention to play for Kerry against Monaghan in the National League. Of course, next weekend was scheduled to be free of inter-county football, clearing the way for the final two rounds of the Sigerson Cup, and it’s just unfortunate that Kerry’s trip to Inniskeen for their rescheduled game has to happen next Sunday.
One can only assume that should UCD players Jack Barry and Barry O’Sullivan, for example, be involved in a Sigerson Cup final on Saturday that they will be nowhere near Inniskeen on Sunday. But what if they play a tough semi-final against UUJ on Wednesday and lose? Will they be asked to return to Inniskeen (the venue for their Sigerson semi-final) four days later and tog out for Kerry?
You’d imagine not, but they were being asked to play against Monaghan last Sunday (had the game gone ahead) just three days before they’d be naturally expected to tog out for the college.
Speaking last Friday, ahead of the scheduled Monaghan game, Kerry manager Eamonnn Fitzmaurice addressed the issue with regard to Clifford and the Sigerson Cup.
“David Clifford and Sean O’Shea will miss out injured but it was the plan all along that they would play two of our three opening league games,” he said about those two players, who weren’t down to travel to Monaghan last weekend. “We intended to rest them and give them a weekend off, so we figured they might still be involved in Sigerson and that would equate to games next week. We stuck to that plan.
“In fairness we have this debate every year with regard to the scheduling of the National League and the Sigerson Cup on at the same time,” he continued. “It places big demands on young players. From our point of view it was one of the reasons we did not play in the McGrath Cup this year because we wanted to reduce the amount of games in that period of the year.
“We monitor the lads very closely and player welfare would be top of our list of concerns always. For example, all the lads who played Sigerson Cup this week would have worn GPS units from us to monitor their load, so we are on top of where they are at. But unfortunately you do get situations where David tweaked his hamstring last weekend and it was disappointing for everyone. Sometimes depending on the profile of the player these things can be flagged, sometimes they can happen and not get headlines.”
If the plan was to only play Clifford and Sean O’Shea for two of the first three National League games, notwithstanding any injury issues, and the Kerry management stuck to that plan, then kudos to them. But with respect to IT Tralee, Clifford didn’t look like he would have too much Sigerson Cup football to play this spring. When they upset the odds to beat Queens in their first game, the next day against DIT was almost certain to be his second and last college game.
BUT what of Jack Barry and Barry O’Sullivan, who are the midfield partnership for Sigerson Cup powerhouse UCD? When Jack Barry was selected to start against Donegal on January 28 but was a late withdrawal due to injury, it was O’Sullivan who took his Kerry jersey at midfield. The Dingle man played 54 minutes before being withdrawn. Six days later the pair partnered each other in Castlebar, with both on the field for every one of the 76 minutes played.
Five days before the Donegal game both men played for UCD against Maynooth; Barry playing 59 minutes and O’Sullivan completing the full game. The Wednesday after their exertions in Castlebar the pair played every minute of UCD’s quarter-final win over DCU. Four days later they were being asked to travel to Inniskeen and shape up against a Monaghan team that is never less than unforgiving, and that just three days before they’d be back in action for DCU, again in Inniskeen.
Had Jack Barry and Barry O’Sullivan played even one half of football against Monaghan last weekend (and it’s improbable both would have been withdrawn at half time) then Barry O’Sullivan was facing the prospect of having played (at least) five and a quarter games of football - hard football on yielding pitches - in 22 days (assuming he’d have soldiered through the entirety of today’s Sigerson semi-final against UUJ).
That’s a full game against Maynooth on January 23, 54 minutes against Donegal five days later, then another full game against Mayo on February 3, a full Sigerson game versus DCU on February 7, whatever he would have been asked to played against Monaghan last Sunday and as much as UCD manager John Divily could wring out of him in Inniskeen today.
Player welfare? Someone’s having a laugh.
The solution is simple: Croke Park needs to take the decision out of managers’ hands. In a results driven business it’s understandable, if not acceptable, that each and every manager will do the necessary to get the right result for his team.
Moving or scraping the Sigerson Cup isn’t really an option so the only other way is to preclude any student who plays a Sigerson Cup game from playing an inter-county game (the same goes for Fitzgibbon Cup in hurling) within, say, seven days of each other.