Nealon urges Council to cap inter-county training sessions
Mr Nealon will tell next week's annual convention that the €11m spent by county boards last year on inter-county teams expenses proved that many teams had gone over the top in the amount of time and money spent compared to investment in clubs and club championships.
"To bring back some sanity to the situation, it is now time for Central Council to bite the bullet and put a cap on the number per week of county team training sessions, as happened when collective training was banned over 50 years ago because it, too, was getting out of hand," he says.
The council secretary believes that such a move by Croke Park would help reduce expenditure for county boards on the one hand and, on the other hand, would release county players to train with their clubs.
On the vexed club v county situation, Mr Nealon warned of the growing concern at grassroot level that the inter-county scene, with its ever-increasing number of games plus extra live television coverage, is beginning to overshadow and even, some might say, overwhelm the club scene, which undoubtedly is being fast relegated to a very poor second position. "The inter-county scene may be the shop window of the association's image but we must not forget that the vast majority of our players are ordinary club players and they deserve a properly-structured games programme right throughout the year.
"We are constantly reading of various proposals to further extend the senior inter-county competitions e.g. League Championships on World Cup format etc. but if such are introduced the club players will be the real losers in the long run and if we haven't strong, active, vibrant clubs with a regular games programme, we are on the road to ruination at parish and community level the bedrock of the association. This is a very serious issue for the association and needs careful attention and monitoring." In a thinly veiled reference to the Darragh Ó Sé controversy last season, Mr Nealon addresses "unfortunate incidents" in club games during the past year, where players who had been clearly dismissed by referees on straight red cards didn't subsequently serve the appropriate suspension. But somehow (they) managed to escape scot-free, which certainly didn't do much for the credibility of either the referees or officials involved and indeed, made a laughing stock of the proper application of Official Guide rules."
He added: "Some commentators will be quick to retort that the Munster Council didn't appear to apply the rules properly when Cork used 21 players (five ordinary substitutions and one temporary replacement or blood sub) in the Munster senior football final replay against Tipperary.
"This affords me the opportunity to refute the misguided allegations that our GAC chickened-out on the matter and let Cork off the hook. The GAC correctly ruled that the result of the final should stand as there was no penalty prescribed in the Rule Book for a breach of the Temporary Substitution Rule. Certainly, if Cork had made six ordinary substitutions during the course of the game, then forfeiture of the game would of course apply."
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