Ronan Sweeney: ‘It will be the death of the GAA if we don’t sort it’

Ronan Sweeney will be entering a 19th consecutive year of inter-county involvement when linking up as coach and selector with Kildare for 2017, but it speaks volumes that he is acknowledged countywide as the epitome of a clubman.

It isn’t that he was necessarily more available than anyone else from the time Mick O’Dwyer called him up to the Lilywhite squad for the League in 1999 until reluctantly handing in his All White jersey at the end of the 2013 season.

He was under even more pressure when joining up with Niall Carew in Waterford in 2014 and then moving on to Sligo for the past two seasons.