Clarke punished with touchline ban
Clarke was handed the ban by the Games Administration Committee of the Leinster Council last night after his involvement in an incident with Wexford’s Colm Morris during the teams’ recent O’Byrne Cup clash. However, because the Leinster Council has no jurisdiction over the National Football League, Clarke will not serve his one-match ban until the Leinster Championship opener on June 4.
Meanwhile, Offaly’s Kevin Kilmurray says intercounty managers need to balance the drive for results with the fitness and welfare of their players. As the season kicks into gear, players face a punishing workload with each team contesting seven league matches over the space of just nine weeks and the Offaly manager is expecting such a saturated fixture list to take a heavy toll as the campaign moves on.
“Every game is a massive game now,” said the two-time All-Ireland winner. “County boards and supporters are so eager for success, everything is so well organised that people can forget about the welfare of the players.”
Between challenge matches and subsidiary provincial competitions, most teams have a handful of games in the bank before the NFL begins.
Offaly have already played four competitive matches this year in the O’Byrne Cup, and will have played 11 games by the time the league’s group stages end in early April.
Though delighted with the chance to blood new players and increase the match fitness of his charges, Kilmurray has called for all inter-county managers to resist flogging players in the months to come.
“On average, teams pick up about 1.3 injuries per game and what I would be concerned about is that there isn’t sufficient time for players to recover and recuperate in between matches.
“We’re really relying on the managers to look after their players and make sure that they are being properly looked after.”
The size of county panels has been between 24 and 30 in recent years but the Offaly manager claims that, due to injuries, teams could need up to 40-45 players in any given season.
Like most managers, injuries have already forced him to juggle his resources.
Last week the influential trio of Scott Brady, Neville Coughlan and Colm Quinn were struggling with groin injuries before the O’Byrne Cup final in Navan against Meath.
Kilmurray could have played at least two of them had he wished, but decided against it despite the fact that a trophy would have done wonders for the morale of a side looking to put several disappointing seasons behind them.
“By playing them they would have run the risk of aggravating their injuries and being out for even longer, which wouldn’t have done the team or the players themselves any good.”
The only viable alternative to playing so many league games in such a condensed period is to revert to the old system where the first few rounds were run off in October and November and the rest after a winter break.
GAA President Sean Kelly claimed at the launch of the leagues recently that to do so would be “disastrous” and he was backed by Tyrone’s All-Ireland winning manager Mickey Harte and his Dublin counterpart Paul Caffrey.
Kilmurray admits the latest league format is a far superior model but that players are being asked to do too much week in, week out all the same.
“I have to say I like the league format. I think it works well but, with the amount of games players are playing, what they realistically need is to be able to spend all day Monday in a treatment room recovering from the day before. As we all know, that’s just not possible.”
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