Inside Track with John McIntyre

IT’S long since gone beyond a joke the amount of training GAA inter-county teams are doing. So much for the closed season and the ban on collective sessions during the months of September, October and November. These guidelines continue to be flouted as hurling and Gaelic Football team managers keep pushing the boundaries of preparation to unsustainable levels.

With the GPA taking a strong stand on player welfare, the GAA scrapped all pre-season competitions this spring. It was a noble move for all the right decisions, but it hasn’t made one iota of difference to the top hurlers and footballers in terms of matches during the early weeks of January.

If anything, their predicament is worse. We have lost count of the number of challenge games which have already being played this month, some counties arranged two over a 24-hour period despite the cold weather having an adverse effect on the availability of pitches. The pre-season competitions are gone but teams are far from idle.

This scenario makes nonsense of having no Walsh Cup, FBD League or McKenna Cup. Sure, there is more of an Ad-hoc feel to challenge games and county board officials are hardly obliged to attend, but it still mounts to flogging our best players and, automatically, increasing the risk of injury and burnout.

Unfortunately, it seems GAA officials everywhere are genuflecting to the wishes of team managers. County Boards are supposed to police the ban on training during the winter months and to exert some form of restriction on panel sizes but instead there is an abdication of duty in this regard.

We hear of one county which was conducting regular intensive training sessions during October and with little escaping social media, every inter-county set-up nearly knows what each other are doing, and obviously the last thing that any team wants is to be left behind. We must keep up with the Joneses kind of attitude.

Carrying squads of around 50 players early in the season is nearly par for the course nowadays. I can’t fathom this rationale at all. It’s just a breeding ground for confusion among the backroom team. The more players you have in, the more they must be looked at. And what about the cost of all this?

Pictured: Tynagh/-Abbey-Duniry’s Padraig Breheny is challenged by Aaron Spriggs and Daire O’Leary of Watergrasshill during Sunday’s All-Ireland Club Intermediate Hurling Final at Croke Park. Photo: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile.