Donegal have ‘let down’ club players

A Donegal club manager has blasted the county board for delaying the senior football championship until after the All-Ireland final.

Eamon O’Boyle, who co-manages St Eunan’s, Letterkenny, claims club players are hugely frustrated by the lack of games.

The board plan to run the senior championship off from September 29 to November 4. The Donegal champions face the Armagh representatives in the Ulster club championship on November 11.

O’Boyle blasted: “It’s extremely frustrating for club players. We, as a senior team, haven’t played a competitive game of football since the second week of July and we started training in the first week of March. It’s so frustrating trying to plan holidays. Yes, it’s good to have success at inter-county level but without the club player, inter-county is nothing. I feel players have been let down by the county board in the sense that there were contingency plans in place to allow club games go ahead but for one reason or the other games have been called off. I don’t think it’s fair on club players.

“They put their holidays on hold. They put their lives on hold. We’re always on about player burnout and welfare and that’s not fair to players. The other side of that is, if a player in the first round of the championship gets a red card, because they’re going to run this championship over a month, it means he misses the entire championship.”

O’Boyle, a former Mayo minor, could be accused of gamesmanship ahead of the All-Ireland but he claimed most club managers in Donegal feel the same way.

“There are others saying the same thing but they may not say it as publicly as me. Win, lose or draw it’s great to see Donegal in it.”