Aherlow’s plight puts burnout problem to the fore

OCCASIONALLY I get an e-mail or a letter which should be read by a wider audience, or more pertinently by someone with some real authority. The following is one such e-mail.

“My name is Denis O Shea, I am the PRO of Aherlow GAA Club. I am writing to you to highlight a problem we have with the Tipperary County Board at the moment, you might think it is worth a mention in one of your articles.

“Over the coming weekend we have been fixed to play a county U21 A football final versus Moyle Rovers at 4pm on Saturday and the following day we have been fixed to play the first round of the County Senior Football Championship against Killenaule.

“As you can imagine we have a big problem with these two matches within 24 hours of each other. There has been a lot of talk about player burnout from the GAA and it is a bit much for players to be asked to play two vital matches within 24 hours of each other.

“Seven of the U21 team would be on the senior team and five more would be subs. Both teams have been training and playing matches since January and we also supply five players to the county senior football panel, five players to the county U21 football panel, one player to the county minor football panel and two players to the Abbey CBS team who were Munster SFC B champions.

“One player, Cathal Dillon, is on county senior and U21 football teams, county U21 and intermediate hurling teams and plays handball to a high level. Another problem is that many players are starting third-level exams and heading into the Leaving Cert shortly.

“These matches are very important to the club; the senior match is knockout and if we lose, the only chance [of progress] is by winning our divisional championship.

“Some of the U21 players are reluctant to play the second match and the club does not want to put any pressure on these young players. If the senior championship match was on a league basis we would get around it, but it is not.

“On Sunday, for the senior match, we may be very understrength causing us to use junior footballers, which means their reward for helping out will be one championship match for the year, as they would then be ineligible for the juniors for the rest of the year.

“I hope I have put across our problem to you in a fair manner. The club can appreciate the county board’s problem with fixtures, with exams, county players and the overlap of different grades, but the answer is not to make players suffer.

“We feel this problem needs to be highlighted in relation to the GAA’s own stated policies on player burnout and health and welfare. We have been told we will have to play both these matches at the weekend but hopefully in the future we and other clubs will not be put in this position.

Regards, Denis O’Shea.”

The problem referred to by Denis above isn’t confined to Aherlow or Tipperary, it is endemic in the GAA. The cause? A convoluted inter-county fixtures schedule which is spread across the bulk of the GAA playing season, a system which sees the inter-county teams take precedence over the clubs, a system which see the above scenario repeated in club after club, county after county, club fixtures squeezed into one weekend, then breaks and waits of several weeks, several months in many cases. I can write about it, the heads on radio can discuss it, but when it’s articulated as starkly as it is here, surely people must take heed?

As a matter of interest, I contacted Denis again yesterday, to discuss this; he sent me an update of events over the weekend, as follows:

Diarmuid,

“Just to let you know how we got on at the weekend. We drew the U21 final in a great match with Moyle Rovers on Saturday evening and on Sunday evening we won our first-round match against Killenaule. Even with these good results we feel it has still taken a toll on our players. One U21 player did not play on Sunday due to exam commitments, another could not play because of injury; of the five who did play, three had to be taken off (at half-time and in the second half). As stated before, we understand the pressure of getting games played but hopefully lessons will have been learned from last weekend.

Regards, Denis.”

Ah but Denis, will they? Will they ever?