Jerry Kiernan has a shot at GAA players/fitness levels

[fearglasmor]

Dont see much wrong with anything Chamney said there. Eoin McDevitt read out a tweet from Chamney later in the show saying

"he couldnt believe Kiernan agreed with something he said but a pity he then went an spoiled it by going off on a useless rant." 

The core point about grant aid is one thats debatable. It was only Kiernan that turned it into a "i hate de gaaahh" rant.

There was a much better responce on the Sunday sports show on Newstalk from Wolly, Cian Ward and Malachy Clerkin. Jamesie O'Connor seemed to be a bit caught on the hop or maybe he was too nice a guy to lay into Kiernan on air.

[Orchardman]

Heard the lads on newstalk yesterday having a good chat about. Wouldn't have thought much of colm parkinson before, but he was one of the guys on and spoke very well, he's actually quite entertaining though he did swear at one stage and they had to quickly apologise to any kids listening in! He had been telling yarns about him and jimmy mcguinness not making the team for their only international rules panel they made, and going on the sauce. He was basically calling kiernan a clown

[theoriginalmup]

How Do GAA Players Compare?

The current blog was motivated by an interview given by Irish Olympian Jerry Kiernan on Newstalk's Off The Ball programme. In the interview he criticised the grants system where €900,000 had been allocated by the Irish Sports Council to GAA players over the next two years as part of the revised Inter-County Player Support Scheme. In particular he called into question the fitness of GAA players.

The interview garnered considerable debate within the Irish media, with the online GAA community strongly critical. Absent from the debate is how the elite amateur GAA players compare in fitness to their elite professional counterpart.  Elite Gaelic games players are amateur; in most cases they work full-time, and they train before and after work, clocking up 5-7 gym and pitch sessions a week. (For the remainder of the blog I will focus on Gaelic footballers as there is considerably more research into Gaelic football than hurling).

The ergonomic model of training described by Reilly (2005) is where the demands of the game and the fitness profiles of players are placed in perspective. Gaelic football places a range of demands on players who must possess the necessary fitness to cope (Reilly and Collins, 2008). The average distance covered during a Gaelic football game was 8815 ± 1287 m, with a range of 6183 – 11104 m (Collins, Solan and Doran, 2013). The distance is less than Australian Rules (AR) (11705 m) and soccer (10720 m) but greater than rugby league backs (7628 m) (Brewer et al., 2009, Randers et al., 2010, Austin and Kelly, 2013).

Gaelic football is a 70 min game compared to 80 min for AR and rugby league, and 90 min for soccer. When the games are compared by distance per min, the relative distance covered was 126 m.min. This compares favourably to professional field sports with Gaelic footballers only slightly lower than AR players  and higher than soccer and rugby league backs (figure 1). The average high-intensity (HI) distance (>17km.hr) covered by Gaelic footballers was 1695 ± 503 m, reflective of a relative HI work-rate of 24 ± 7.2 m.min (Collins, Solan and Doran, 2013). The HI work is not readily comparable as researchers use varying velocity classifications.

Figure 1. The relative distance of Gaelic football, soccer, Australian rules and rugby league backs.



















Fitness training for Gaelic games has to be multifactorial in order to cover the different aspects of physical performance including aerobic, anaerobic and specific muscle training. The Yo-Yo intermittent recovery (IR) tests evaluate an individual's ability to repeatedly perform intense exercise. The fitness of contemporary Gaelic footballers is comparable with Australian Rules (AR) players (Cormack et al., 2012). Recently reported data from 17 elite AR players who undertook a Yo-Yo IR test l2 (1054 ± 209 m) compares well with pre-season data of Gaelic footballers (1164 ± 305 m) (unpublished data). Top-elite soccer players attain marginally higher levels (1260m) (Bangsbo, Iaia & Krustrup, 2008); consideration should however be made for the time of year.  Previous research by Strudwick, Reilly and Doran (2002) concluded that Gaelic footballers were no different in anthropometric and aerobic characteristics from Premier League players with only anaerobic characteristics of the professional players superior to those of Gaelic football players. 

In conclusion the current demands of Gaelic football compare well with professional field sports. Despite the amateur nature of the sport, the fitness required to compete at the elite level in Gaelic football is similar to elite professionals in AR and soccer.

References

Austin, D. and Kelly, S. (2013) Positional differences in professional rugby league match play through the use of global positioning systems. J Strength Cond Res, 27: 9-14.
Bangsbo, J., Iaia, F.M. and Krustrup, P.  (2008) The Yo-Yo intermittent recovery test : a useful tool for evaluation of physical performance in intermittent sports. Sports Med, 38: 37-51.
Brewer, C., Dawson, B., Heasman, J., Stewart, G. and Cormack, S.  (2010) Movement pattern comparisons in elite (AFL) and sub-elite (WAFL) Australian football games using GPS. J Sci Med Sport, 13: 618-623.
Collins, D.K., Solan, B. and Doran, D. (2013) A preliminary investigation into high-intensity activity in Gaelic football. J Sports Ther, 6: 3.
Cormack, S., Money, M., Morgan, W., and McGuigan, M. (2012) Influence of Neuromuscular Fatigue on Accelerometer Load in Elite Australian Football Players. Int J Sports Physiol Perform, [Epub ahead of print]
Randers, M., Mujika, I., Hewitt, A., Santisteban, J., Bischoff, R., Solano, R., Zubillaga, A., Peltola, E., Krustrup, P.  and Mohr, M. (2010) Application of four different football match analysis systems: a comparative study. J Sports Sci, 28:171-182.
Reilly, T. (1995). An ergonomics model of the soccer training process. J of Sports Sci, 23: 561-567.
Reilly, T. and Collins, K. (2008) Science and Gaelic sports: Gaelic football and hurling. European Journal of Sport Science, 8: 231-240.
Strudwick, A., Reilly, T. and Doran, D. (2002) Anthropometric and fitness profiles of elite players in two football codes. J Sports Med Phys Fitness, 42: 239-242.

[theoriginalmup]

http://www.kierancollins.com/Index/Blog/Entries/2013/2/16_How_Do_GAA_Players_Compare.html

[rosnarun]

nothing wrong 

Dont see much wrong with anything Chamney said there. Eoin McDevitt read out a tweet from Chamney later in the show saying

"he couldnt believe Kiernan agreed with something he said but a pity he then went an spoiled it by going off on a useless rant." 

The core point about grant aid is one thats debatable. It was only Kiernan that turned it into a "i hate de gaaahh" rant.

There was a much better responce on the Sunday sports show on Newstalk from Wolly, Cian Ward and Malachy Clerkin. Jamesie O'Connor seemed to be a bit caught on the hop or maybe he was too nice a guy to lay into Kiernan on air.

you see nothing wrong with
There's no GAA in Spain to fill people's head with foolish ideas

which will never happen because the GAA sucks all that up....oh the pipedreams.

he is dismissing the GAA as a serious sporting outlet much as jerry keirnan did  when he insinuated Jamsie could have had a decent athlete career if he has a good PE teacher to get him away from Hurling

this from 2 guys who never won anything of note between them in AA term Keirnan would be longford Footballer , capable of the odd good result but never getting any where where as chamney would be the longford hurlers as in ' do they field a team'?

[the Deel Rover]

Dont see much wrong with anything Chamney said there. Eoin McDevitt read out a tweet from Chamney later in the show saying

"he couldnt believe Kiernan agreed with something he said but a pity he then went an spoiled it by going off on a useless rant." 

The core point about grant aid is one thats debatable. It was only Kiernan that turned it into a "i hate de gaaahh" rant.

There was a much better responce on the Sunday sports show on Newstalk from Wolly, Cian Ward and Malachy Clerkin. Jamesie O'Connor seemed to be a bit caught on the hop or maybe he was too nice a guy to lay into Kiernan on air.

Was listening to that myself on Sunday. Is wolly Parkinson ? Jesus he went off on a rant allright , called Kiernan an numpty , was on about micko dwyer  don't know what that had to do with Kiernan either.

[camanchero]

Am trying to find an online version of last sundays (english) Sunday times - Irish edition.
in it , the article demonstrates how Gaelic football and hurling is catching fire all over europe - especially in Galicia (4 or 5 clubs there!).

here is one articel though that shows the ascertion that Spain doesnt have to worry about that GAA rubbish is wrong- or soon will be !!


http://www.oocities.org/paris_gael/Sunday_Times.htm
Global warming to GAA

'WE'RE the Young Europeans', went the IDA's slogan back in the 1980s, putting a new spin on the old emigrant's lament: the young are still pouring out of the country, said the subtext, but at least they're not all navvies now.
Last weekend Joe McDonagh held a sort of a summit in Amsterdam for the GAA's European diaspora, where he met representatives from the latest generation of young Irish Europeans.

And if the first wave of the so-called Ryanair Generation was often anxious to distance itself from the old sod - lest its cosmopolitan credentials be compromised - there is a growing sense that this generation has a different take on the experience: comfortable with one foot in the global village - and another in the native village from whence they came.

It helps, of course, that it's good to be Irish these days - and having made Irish dancing sexy, then even the GAA could eventually come in from the cold. Which may help to explain why GAA clubs are mushrooming in Europe, not to mention the far east, alongside the traditional territories in England, the UK and Australia.

In April '97 McDonagh announced his ambition to see a European board formed - a kind of county board for the continent - and he moved one step closer to that objective in Amsterdam on Sunday when a list of officers was appointed to a provisional board.

That board will now put a formal request in writing to the GAA's management committee, seeking affiliation to the association, and ultimate ratification at Congress next year.

The chairman of the European Board is Mark Scanlon, a 28-year-old Clareman who has been based in France since 1993. A financial broker based in the capital, he plays with Paris Gaels, perhaps the strongest GAA unit on the continent.

"I used to play a lot of hurling back home in Clarecastle and I missed it when I came over here," says Scanlon. "It'd be nice to get games here on a regular basis, maybe a league eventually. But we're looking to take hurling and football forward in Europe, build on what's there already."

There are six other active GAA groupings on the continent: Luxembourg, Brussels, The Hague, Dusseldorf, Brest and Lyon. The GAA has also received enquiries from Berlin, Munich, Dresden and Madrid.

"Because we haven't a regular league or championship," explains Scanlon, "we depend on each club to run a tournament. We also get games against visiting teams so it works out at about a match a month, which isn't bad."

Paris Gaels beat The Hague in a tournament cup match in Amsterdam last Saturday. They have also travelled to Brest, Guernsey, Luxembourg, Brussels and The Hague this season for tournaments. These are normally seven-a-side games or 11-a-side when they can manage it.

"It's growing and growing," says Barney Winston, chairman of Croke Park's International Dimension Workgroup, " this is not county championship standard, but I don't think it has to be. They are probably getting more enjoyment out of the games than anybody else because they're playing them for the love of playing them."

The social dimension to these tournaments is, by all accounts, huge.

"Monstrous," says Ray Tully, chairman and founder of Guernsey Gaels, "absolutely monstrous".

A county player with Sligo for four years in the late 80s, Tully missed the football when he arrived in Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands, in 1996. He tried playing with Jersey Gaels (who compete in the London championship) on the neighbouring island but the travelling made it impossible.

"So I decided to set up a club here. I put an advertisement in the paper and lo and behold, 10 or 12 lads turned up. The whole thing blossomed from there."

Guernsey held their tournament on the bank holiday weekend in May - it is set to become a permanent fixture in the calendar. A British dependency situated off the coast of Brittany, the Irish expatriate community is about 900 in a population of 60,000. They've pressganged a few Scots and second generation Irish, more used to rugby and soccer, to take up the code.

The travelling to play in other cities is the best part of it, says Tully. "The amount of people who will come from all over Europe to get to these tournaments would amaze you," he says.

Like Scanlon, he identifies a strong cultural element driving the network. "When you go abroad, Irish people want to assert their identity, and gaelic games are part of that."

For the Bretons who line out with Brest, says Scanlon, playing gaelic football is another way of connecting with their Celtic heritage. "There are a lot of Bretons in Paris, and all over France, and they're very interested in gaelic and hurling."

Another important factor in the upsurge, says Winston, is the televised games during summer. "They're being seen on hundreds of sites throughout Europe, Sunday after Sunday, and I think that is what is really captivating the imagination of an awful lot of people over there, rejuvenating the interest of many expats who would not have had access to anything like this previously."

It is not only a European phenomenon. A hardy bunch of expats are flying the flag in Dubai, where they trade under the rather splendid title, Naomh Abdullah's.

In the far east, a group of young Irishmen founded Cumann Lúthchleas Gael Taipei on New Year's Eve 1995 - or at least said they would. They were true to their word and in May '96 held the first-ever South-East Asia gaelic games festival, in the capital of the Philippines, Manila.

Now operating as CLG Taiwan, the annual festival has got bigger and bigger each year since.

At the Australasian finals, held in Perth in early October, teams from Australia and New Zealand were joined by Taiwan and, for the first time, a side from Singapore. The Singapore caucus has big plans for development while an embryonic organisation is up and running in Tokyo.

"Founded in April 1997," says the website for Japan GAA, "in response to the initiative of the Irish in Taiwan to promote Gaelic games in Asia, the Japan GAA hopes to create an awareness of Gaelic sports in Japan, and organise frequent GAA events."

Now the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean are also about to take their place among the nations. "They have a team there," says Winston, "and they actually fly into the United States to play games."

All pioneers, after a fashion, but not the first global exponents of the game of the gael -- not by a long shot. In 1747, an Irish Brigade at the Battle of Lafelt, near Maastricht, played hurling matches among themselves during breaks in the fighting.

In Melbourne, on July 12 1844, a hurling match between the men of Clare and Tipperary took place. It was arranged, writes the hurling historian Seamus J King, "as a counterblast to an Orange procession in the same place to which all good men who hated 'Pope and Popery, brass money and wooden shoes', were expected to give their assistance. The match attracted 500 stalwart Irishmen armed with hurleys, staves and shillelaghs. A contemporary bard described the scene.

"And first in the field were the gallant old Tips,
With strength in their arms and smiles on their lips;
While famed Garryowen poured its tribute along,
And Clare's sturdy peasants were thick in the throng."

Indeed - and not a young European among them.

[camanchero]

cant find it , and am not subscribing to the online version of the sunday times !

kiernan is talking through his hole.
not only do intercounty players generally all have to be super fit these days, for many years not, a majority of clubs first teamers (not always senior grade teams) have a fitness regieme that is practically professional in practice, only that the GAA players have to incorporate skills into the mix also.

ok so kiernan wants all the money for Irish athletes.
individual as opposed to collective sports.
if Ireland were producing winners right left and centre, then maybe so - but there is no amount of money or coaching going to produce anything more than the odd hero.
We have a predispositin for fighting, so maybe all the money should go into boxing.

As for the GAA grants. I dont know how they are divied up, but I'd like if each county board had some money so they could pay for unemployed players to stay and coach schools etc instead of having to emigrate.
that obv will have a certain bias, but there will always be a bias when people have to be selected.
Money only makes it easier for fights and rows to start.

still jerry kiernan while maybe a top level Irish athlete in his day, was still only second rate at best internationally.
maybe he didnt train hard enough...

[johnneycool]

I wonder does David Rudisha get much of a grant from the Kenyan Government to aid his formative years!!

[Asal Mor]

Jerry obviously has huge issues with the GAA but he is not completely wrong. The grants (for sacrifice/cultural blah de blah) or "additional expenses" (we are still amateur - really!!!!) given to intercounty players should never have been considered in the first place. Most senior club footballers train harder and are watched by more people than Sligo hurlers for example. The scheme is a farce and a lie. Intercounty players are well lpooked after. They get fed, gear, medical treatment etc and rightly so. Athletes like Joe Sweeney have no organisation behind them that pays for these things.

Jerry needs to understand in relation to fitness though that elite GAA players physical conditioning is tailored to the game they play. They're not training to run 30k. Joe Sweeney probably wouldn't have the pace or strength for intercounty football.

Good post Seanie and dead right. I actually trained a few times wih the Sligo hurlers when I was living up there 4 or 5 years ago and a few of the lads on the team would never be seen at a training session. This situation is fairly common in a lot of weaker counties from what I've read and heard.

[camanchero]

Jerry has always courted controversy and a bit of limelight. Having a chip on both his shoulders probably prevented him achieving his full potential as a runner.  I always  enjoy his rants. He can be very articulate and insightful.
However when it comes to GAA he hasn't a clue.
There are different types of fitness. I can't think of one top class runner who would survive 70 minutes of Championship football and be fit to play again or prepared to play again after all the knocks, hots, tackles and bruises. I'd wager they would struggle to stay with the intensity of play in most Championship games.
Comparing footballers and runners is like comparing chalk and cheese.
And he knows that too.

theres an idea - how about they allow the 'fair shoulder' in running, that would make the boring sport more interesting.
It worked for rollerball !!

[JHume]

The problem wasn't necessarily what Kiernan said, rather how he said it. He's fond of having a pop at Gaelic games because he's one of that breed of Irish people who craves international validation and acclaim, and thinks that anything we do amongst ourselves is inherently unworthy. Some kind of post colonial inferiority complex.

But his underlying point has some merit – and it would serve the GAA well to examine whether teams are training cleverly and making most of the time (of the players) and the resources (money and expertise) that is being poured into it. At club level as well as county level.

Quantity doesn't mean quality.

I recall Pat Flanagan, who came in to train the Kerry footballers 8-10 years ago, making a not dissimilar point to Kiernan. He said that considering the time they were investing in training, he couldn't believe the poor physical conditioning of the Kerry footballers. He reckoned it was going to take him a couple of years to improve that.

Now, one only has to look at teams like Donegal, Laois, Dublin, Tyrone, Kerry, Cork, Kildare et al to see the benefits of 'smarter training' in the intervening years.

But I would guess that several county squads, and the vast majority of club teams, have people in charge that know little about getting teams into peak physical condition. It's not that they're not putting in the hours, it's that they're not doing it in a coherent, focussed way.

[Declan]

But I would guess that several county squads, and the vast majority of club teams, have people in charge that know little about getting teams into peak physical condition. It's not that they're not putting in the hours, it's that they're not doing it in a coherent, focussed way.

I think there's been a massive improvement in this area in the last few years. We now have tailored training regimes for different players and positions

[Milltown Row2]

Would still say he has it right in terms of certain county teams not being up to the standard (fitness wise).

Fermanagh hurlers, Cavan hurlers, Sligo hurlers, Kilkenny footballers, London footballers. No offence to these counties in these codes but are they getting the same money for county training than the Div 1 and 2 teams?

[camanchero]

But I would guess that several county squads, and the vast majority of club teams, have people in charge that know little about getting teams into peak physical condition. It's not that they're not putting in the hours, it's that they're not doing it in a coherent, focussed way.

I think there's been a massive improvement in this area in the last few years. We now have tailored training regimes for different players and positions

maybe better across the board , but from personal experience, most players in the senior code in clubs across Kildare, Meath and Dublin for instance were all very fit and were not that far off the levels of inter county fitness. Most players looked after themselves or ensured they got fit at the start of each season because they knew this was the requirement.

there is nothing new in all of this.
many players were unfit but uniquely talented (joe mcNally, keaveney, Geoffrey) and got away with carrying more than a few extra pounds, but in the main - most club players were hard trainers and very fit and committed.