Burnout

[forkinknife]

Scrap U21s is correct. It's a younger man's game this generation and too many U21s are used on senior teams (even the odd minor).

[theskull1]

I agree.....scrap the U21's

[Tubberman]

Scrapping U-21's leaves a lot of players without football from once they are overage for minors, to the time they are good enough to make the step up to seniors.
How about scrapping U-21s but changing minors to U19 or U20?

[youbetterbelieveit]

i agree change either the minor or u21 to a in between level, fellas nowadays at 20-21 are really up to junior/senior age then.

however a u19 level i think could be useful

[never kickt a ball]

See Ronan Clarke has missed out on the all star trip to Dubai because of his injury. Noticed discussion on the Armagh thread which was on a similar vein to this thread. Ronan has played an almighty number of games and competitions for someone who is still young.

[AbbeySider]

In my opinion one of the major things wrong with Mayo football lies in the underage structure and the whole idea of
"Development Squads"

There is an U-14/15/16 "school of excellence" / "development squads" in Hurling and Gaelic which is crazy and here is why;

I heard a statistic that only one player made it through from U-16 school of excellence to the Mayo U-21 team that won the AIF.

What happens is that players get a county jersey at the age of 16 and they think they have achieved it all and lose the hunger which in effect is a burnout at a very young age.

Ive seen it myself in my own club when lads got a senior jersey at 17 or 18 and then they were nowhere to be seen only 2 years later.

[tayto]

Unless the panel onthe dev squad is kept fresh every year then you're right, i thi you have to do thinks not just to keep lads in their feet but also because youngfellas develop differently, a brilliant minor dosent always make a great senior, thats even more true of 13-14-15 years olds, so you need to keep an eye on fellas off the dev squads and chaop and change if someone have lost their drive or someone else not on  he panel improves more then you expected.

[ONeill]

A Chairde

Please see below event for your perusal at the earliest convenience, and you are welcome to attend this event.

Wednesday 24th January 2007,  7.30pm
"Managing Players, Avoiding Burnout - the evidence".
Venue: Glenavon House Hotel, Cookstown

It is anticipated that coaches of various levels, from all counties within the province will attend.

Please see agenda below:
7.00pm     Tea / Coffee and Biscuits

7.30pm     Introduction – Dr Eugene Young

7.45pm     The SINI Experience – Roger Keenan

8.15pm     The Evidence – Dr Phil Glasgow

8.45pm     Burnout in the Young GAA player – Lynette Hughes

9.15pm     Conclusion – Dr Eugene Young


All clubs within the province are invited to send one coach to this seminar.

[Maximus Marillius]

One way to avoid burn out for the talented player who goes to Uni, is to not play third level football. The vast majority of matches nobody has even heard of.

[Dinny Breen]

With increasing strain on young GAA stars to fulfil commitments to numerous teams and managers, Cliona Foley examines the alarming trend of acute injuries that are decimating careers prematurely.

IF THE GAA really wants to protect its underage talent from developing acute injuries that will decimate their careers prematurely, it should look at introducing a 'cap' on the number of games they can play in a season, according to Ulster Council's Director of Coaching Eugene Young.

Young has witnessed first-hand the sorts of extreme over-use injuries that are becoming far too widespread amongst the GAA's best youngsters.

"Walking wrecks" is his damning description of some of the young stars who come before him, many of them in their late teens and in the early stages of potentially rewarding inter-county careers.

Just this week he was one of a group of experts who stood up in the Glenavon Hotel in Cookstown and warned over 100 mentors from local schools, clubs and county teams about burning out their players.

The recent McKenna Cup tussle between Tyrone and UUJ demonstrated just how college players can get caught trying desperately to serve more than one team manager and demonstrated the huge demands on their time, bodies and loyalties.

The National League doesn't kick off for another week and yet the country's best young footballers and hurlers are already in the thick of action for their clubs, colleges and counties.

Immediately

Senior county training only formally started in January, but this only seems to be the case in counties who were involved in the late stages of the All-Irelands. For many, training begins almost immediately after the All-Ireland final.

That is especially the case for U-21s, many of whom are in the thick of college action while also preparing for provincial U21 championships that start in late March (Leinster and Connacht) and early April (Munster and Ulster).

Many of them already are, or are aspire to become, senior county panellists and even if they did not have regular squad sessions before Christmas most senior inter-county panellists were doing weights programmes twice or three times a-week.

Young is one of a growing group of fitness and coaching specialists within the GAA finally crying: Stop!

That influential group includes Croke Park's own recently appointed Player Welfare Manager Paraic Duffy, who recently went as far as calling for the abolition of the U21 championships to stem the tide of burnout.

The GAA own's Medical and Scientific Committee, headed by Dr Pat Duggan and including former Dublin All-Ireland-winning manager Dr Pat O'Neill, has already commissioned a pilot study of 240 players to try to discover what is causing their injuries and whether particular training styles are compounding them.

This came in the wake of a University of Glasgow study which found that the injury-rate was 64 for 1000 player hours in GAA - almost twice those reported for soccer. This study of 511 gaelic players also found that more injuries were suffered in training than in games, an extremely alarming statistic.

But Young says it is not just over-training that is causing the problem but playing too many games and trying to serve too many teams and managers. This is especially prevalent at underage level, if players already carry undiagnosed postural and biomechanical problems.

"Some of them are walking wrecks when we see them first," is his frightening comment on the first-year UUJ students that are invited to join the Sports Institute of Northern Ireland's (NIIS) support scheme for talented athletes across a range of sports.

"We screen them for core stability, running technique, biomechanical problems, the sort of stuff that really should be done when they are nine to 10.

"We'd find 90 per cent of them suffer from things like repetitive groin injuries, bad posture, curvature of the spine, things that all contribute to serious injury problems."

One of the support services that the NIIS offers athletes is muscular-skeletal screening, to identify and correct their physical weaknesses that might be exacerbated by heavy training and competition and Dublin City University (DCU) is another institution pushing for such screening. Two years ago Young made a serious attempt to address the GAA's injury worries. He called all of Ulster's senior and U21 and college managers to a summit in Ballygawley where county managers agreed to "keep their hands off" panellists who were involved in Higher Education competitions during the months of October to February.

But the recent Tyrone/UUJ debacle showed the sort of opposition this notion still engenders.

Inter-county managers, Young points out, are often the worst culprits, demanding that players travel home mid-week or at weekends for county action while they still have heavy training and playing commitments elsewhere.

Understandable

"It is the nature of a lot of team managers, it is understandable because they want to win at all costs. Each of them wants his pound of flesh," Young said.

But they are not alone and it is the demands of serving multiple teams at an even younger age, at county and club level, that most alarms Young.

Teenagers who are talented at sport, inevitably, play more than one code before the demands force them to specialise.

"We have an Ulster Development U16 squad and there was one youngster on that who had 12 different coaches in one season because he played gaelic, soccer and basketball at several levels." Young revealed. "And it is fair to imagine that every one of those coaches expected a lot from him."

Young's is not a lone voice in an increasing plea to stop the treadmill that threatens to chew up and spit out some of the best of the GAA'S next generation but, as a new inter-county season begins, it remains an ongoing problem.

Closed season

"You could say we haven't completely cracked it but the process has been started," Young said. "But still, if you looked around before Christmas, there were club U21 league and championships starting and that was meant to be the 'the closed season'.

"And the introduction of college teams into competitions like the McKenna Cup have actually made it more high-profile and competitive, even though it was designed just to give college players more games ahead of the Sigerson Cup."

Player welfare manager Duffy recently added his voice to this argument by revealing his controversial views about the axing of the U-21 competition: "My own view is, and this is not widely accepted, I would get rid of all inter-county competitions outside minor and senior. We've got to give the club players a better deal. The more inter-county competition you have, the more difficult it is to play club games. We have to do something radical. U21, junior and intermediate - they will have to go," he insisted.

"We've had a number of studies undertaken on the issue of player burnout. There's absolutely no doubt that our players need a rest, and a proper pre-season.

"I would hope that towards the end of the year to work with inter-county managers on the issue of burnout. We don't have to start training as early as we do, some teams are back as early as September. This issue is near the top of my agenda." Duffy added that raising the age of minor players from U-18 to U-19 has also been discussed by the GAA. But the former GAC chairman is not in favour of such a move.

"At U-18 level, players are generally in their last year in school and living at home. If you go to U19, you're bringing in players probably in third level and living away from home. You're bringing them home from college to train and that poses its own set of difficulties."


CASE STUDY 1
NAME: Liam Moffatt
AGE: 31
CLUB: Deel Rovers, Crossmolina (Mayo)

WHENEVER Enda Whyte, a lecturer on DCU'S 'Athletic Therapy and Training' degree course expands on a new injury topic, there's a fair chance that one of his second-year students has actually suffered it.

It was actually his litany of GAA-related injuries that got Liam Moffatt so fascinated with physiology and the science of training that the NUIG economics graduate decided to pursue it as his second career.

Close examination of his horrific medical history reveals exactly why the former All-Ireland club winner with Crossmolina in 2001 threatened to retire after this year's provincial club final defeat.

Only one of the three main tendons holding his right ankle is still intact. By the time he was 24 he had arthritis in it and was advised to quit.

You name it Moffatt has suffered it: cruciate surgery on one knee, cartilage surgery on the other, cracked ribs, back problems, lost teeth and gum surgery, broken fingers, an eye socket injury that saw him hospitalised for three days, three serious concussions and too many hamstring and calf tears to remember. But he refuses to give up.

He actually only spent one season with the Mayo seniors and admits that he "was never athletic enough" to make it as a county senior footballer.

He did represent his club, college and county at all other levels and admittedly his star-studded club, arguably, competed to an inter-county standard, contesting two All-Ireland club finals in three years.

But Moffatt insists the demands on his body were, by GAA standards, usual, not exceptional.

And, having been through the wringer, he wonders if there is not a better way to do it; particularly to prevent GAA players suffering injuries that could be avoided with better screening, training expertise and fixtures planning.

Take 1992.

That season Moffatt, who would captain the Mayo minor footballers a year later, played at U16, U17, U18, U21, junior and senior level with his club.

He also played minor and senior hurling with Ballina that year and county minor with Mayo. In addition, he also played U16 and senior football with the school and also with the Mayo vocational schools team. That's 12 teams and he was just 16.

Three years later it had hardly abated. He was out of minor grade and in college but in 1995 he played in two All-Ireland colleges' finals (Freshers and Sigerson) and won a county senior title with Crossmolina.

Apart from all the training, league and challenge games; he recalls playing a whopping 27 championship games that summer.

"Yet I was only an average player," he stressed. "There are people like me in every county."

He accepts that, in a contact game, sudden impact injuries are inevitable but he points out that his most problematic, recurring ones were biomechanical.

If the weakness in his right ankle been spotted and corrected in his teens through equipment like 'orthotic insoles' and specific training techniques, things could have been very different.

Moffatt believes he was actually lucky that John Maughan was in charge when he got called into the Mayo senor panel in 2003.

Maughan was intelligent enough to heed the team medics' advice and modify his training.

So three times a week, when his team-mates were doing their fitness work, Moffatt - whose ankle could not take heavy impact - would be doing a 24-mile cycle.

His experience and insight makes him questions many GAA practices: the regular fixtures pile-ups, the lack of rest periods, the dragging of top players half-way across the country for mid-week training sessions, all of which contribute to fatigue and, ultimately, injury.

He believes, especially, that the GAA should be screening youngsters early to identify and correct their physical weaknesses.

In a desperate effort to make a vital club game he once visited Ger Hartmann who gave him a regime of quadricep extensions and hamstring curls. "I did it three days a week for three months and then once a week and I've never had a problem since" he revealed.

"That experience alone showed how you can prevent injury if you have the expertise."

He once had a weekend where he played a minor club game on the Friday night, a minor challenge game for Mayo the next day, a junior championship match that evening and a club senior league game on the Sunday.

"Don't get me wrong, I loved it. I was very appreciative and delighted with my playing career but, given the field I'm studying now, it is becoming clear to me that the body can't take it.

"With all the sports science we have now, there is surely a better way of doing things in the future, if we want to keep players fit and minimise their injuries?"


CASE STUDY 2
NAME: Ross Glavin
AGE: 21
CLUB: Moorefield (Kildare)

BACK in 2002, when he was just 17, Ross Glavin was corner-forward on the Moorefield senior team that won the Kildare title.

This summer he was their midfield-sweeper when they repeated that feat and went one further when the club became only the second Kildare team to win the Leinster club title, lining them up for the All-Ireland semi-finals in the coming weeks.

In between, Glavin spent two years in the army cadet school, followed by a year in the Cathal Brugha Barracks in Dublin before starting a four-year degree course in the Dublin Institute of Technology this autumn.

Yet the second lieutenant openly admits that his football workload today, and combining it with his daily life, is much easier now than it was two years ago, when he was just 19.

In the 2004 and 2005 seasons Glavin was a teenager feeling the strain.

Just out of the minor ranks, he was playing U-21 and senior for Moorefield, third-level league and Trench Cup for the army, and U21 and senior for Kildare.

It is a common problem for many talented teens and his problem was compounded by his army career.

Fitness is a key part of their 'work' and cadets train physically once-a-day. Add in county and club training, on top of a hectic match schedule and he admits it was exhausting.

His load was actually lessened because Pádraig Nolan trained both county teams and largely concentrated them in senior training until about 10 days before an U-21 game.

Yet Glavin admits to days when "you'd just show your face at county (senior) training" and hope for understanding.

The army's Trench Cup team were successful, reaching the semi-finals two years in-a-row. They actually played in the FBD League for pre-season experience which meant trips to Connacht for matches.

And it was then that he understood the massive demands on other cadets like Galway's Seán Armstrong or class-mate Andrew O'Shaughnessy, the brilliant schoolboy hurler so heavily tipped to be Limerick's new superstar.

Born and reared on the Curragh, he only had to go down the road for county or club. "But Andrew was trying to get up and down to Limerick and keep everything going which was really hard," Glavin remembers. He was lucky with injuries until damaging ankle ligaments in 2005.

Glavin helped Kildare defeat Dublin to win that year's Leinster U21 title but lost all of the subsequent summer, even at club level, to the injury.

And when a new manager - John Crofton - took over the county seniors last year he could not get back into the panel.

Moorefield's recent success has earned him a recall but his club's commitments means their contingent will not rejoin Kildare training until their AIB odyssey is over. Yet at this level club training is as demanding as county.

Coached by former county star Sos Dowling, Moorefield train Wednesday, Friday and Sunday and at one stage included Monday as well.

Leinster glory earned a restful December but they actually trained on St Stephen's Day and the following Friday before resuming their full schedule in January.

Yet Glavin still finds this a lot easier than his 2004-2005 seasons.

"For a start I'm not playing U-21, which is a big factor, and the second thing is that I'm a student now.

"We have to do 24-hour duty on Saturdays every few weeks but as a student you'd still have way more energy than lads who are working jobs nie-to-five and then coming to training."

If Moorefield were not still flying high he would be training and playing league and championship not only with Kildare now but with DIT, who compete in the college's premier Sigerson Cup level.

That will eventually happen but for the moment Glavin, who turns 22 in April, has the 'luxury' of concentrating all his energies on Moorefield's bid for All-Ireland glory and his vigour appears renewed by the eventual prospect of re-establishing himself as a county senior.

He also detects one encouraging change in training patterns.

"In the last 18 months it definitely seems as if coaches are not pushing people as hard either, they seem to be realising the importance of rest, that's my experience anyway," he said.

"And not having been involved with Kildare last year I'm really dying to get back training with them," Glavin admitted. "I'm a lot more motivated after being out of it last year."