Liam O’Neill: Impossible for GAA to legislate for overtraining

GAA President Liam O’Neill admits it’s impossible to prevent inter-county managers training players excessively.

Joe Brolly suggested players are akin to ‘indentured slaves’ because of the demands being placed upon them by ambitious bosses.

O’Neill responded the GAA has already partly addressed the player welfare issue in three specific ways. He pointed to the pro-player findings of the Hurling 2020 committee, the suggestion a calendar year be implemented to streamline fixtures and the recent minor review committee report.

But the Association head accepted when it comes to placing restrictions on how often teams train during the season, it is simply not possible.

Brolly described the approach from some managers as a ‘victory at all costs mentality’ though O’Neill said it’s a tough one to curb.

“Whenever I’ve spoken about the excessive powers that managers have, people have criticised me for that,” said O’Neill. “What we have at the moment is not a GAA central problem, it’s not something the GAA President can solve, it’s something the trainer and the manager of each individual team can sort.

“I think we have to look at training smarter, rather than longer. There’s only so much people can put in. I think we need to find methods that will achieve the same results in the shorter space of time.

“But I don’t decide the length of time the Laois hurlers train. That’s decided by the management team in conjunction with the county board.

“You see, years ago a team climbed up hills and won the All-Ireland — then everyone decides they’re going to climb up hills. I think people just have to cut their cloth to measure. An ideal situation would be where the players are put first. I’ve always said that.”

O’Neill said there is still merit in the closed season rule to protect players from collective training though Brolly appeared to belittle the idea.

“He contradicted himself in that,” claimed O’Neill. “We agreed between the counties and the central authority to a training ban, a rest period and he made a laugh of that. But if that had been supported we’d be already down the road to looking at player welfare. It wasn’t our fault it wasn’t supported. It’s the fault of whoever decided to train players. You can’t legislate for that.

“It wouldn’t be possible for us to dictate you can only train at a certain level for championships because people want to win and everybody wants to get the edge on someone else.

“And other sports are doing it, swimmers are getting up at five in the morning and getting their training in, cyclists are doing it, people in athletics do huge training. So you can’t stop it. It’s not for us to legislate for that.”

O’Neill was speaking at the announcement Irish Life will invest €1m in the GAA’s Healthy Club Initiative.

The Laois man also paid tribute to former Irish Handball Council President Tom Wall who has passed away.