John Maughan calls for end to player abuse

[Give and Go]

Given the demands being placed on young players at this time of year John Maughan's call for a halt to this carry on should be heeded.
The top brass in the GAA love to talk about their concern for player welfare and on burn out but only add to the problems with their ridiculous closed season and training ban...

These College players are being abused left right and centre.
We have a glut of competitions, competing managers all demanding their pound of flesh...

We have an organisation prisoner to tradition and unwilling to take simple steps that would eliminate so many of the factors placing these demands on young lads....

At a stroke of a pen, the pressure can be released - unhitch the provincial championships from the All Ireland competitions and immediately a proper games programme can be implemented. Imagine knowing for sure when you are due to play games, imagine freeing up weekends so clubs can play too!
Delete rules on training bans and slot the Leagues and College competitions into a defined playing calendar.

If player welfare truly is a priority these things would be done over night, but it's all lip service..

Again going back to what pressure these young lads are under - some of our colleges call players back in for training during the holiday period - regardless of where they live and without consideration for the expense involved for players. It's no joke for players to have to drive or get buses from home merely to attend college to train for a team where maybe some players are on substantial scholarships (different story for them). It's very much a  two tier system. The guys on scholarship wouldn't be worth tuppence if the ord guys were'nt playing ball.
Then you have these county managers looking for these chaps to commute home for county training - regardless of the distance. I know of a few lads who have to travel over 100 miles for county U21 training! In fairness they are compensated financially but can anyone justify the time demand involved and the impact travel has on their lives.
Would they not be better players if they could skip mid week training at home and train with the college?
Young lads being young lads want to do it all and don't realise that their performance levels are affected by such workloads - and in many cases the quality of training doesn't justify the journey!

I give the GAA 5 years max before it runs into a serious drop off in interest levels.
Clubs are sickened by the exclusion of County players from playing with them; club coaches are, contrary to media reports, mostly voluntary and fed up investing so much time developing players only to be prevented from accessing them in the playing season. Players are gonna walk away as they become disllusioned and burnt out, fed up with self serving officials on power trips (best described to me as 'failed politicians').

The GAA has lost touch with grass roots, the primacy of the Club has been ignored despite all the clap trap from Croke Park, Provincial Councils and County Boards. We have a plethora of full time staff in Croker to run the organisation, (that used by run by Paddy O Keeffe and a secretary) jumping up and down to people in the Sports Council and elsewhere; rolling out programmes that Clubs couldn't possibly have the expertise or personnel to delve - ASAP etc......I thought we were about the games....

[ballinaman]

Great article.




GAA injuries: The Tipping Point
By Conor McCarthy

Saturday, January 28, 2012

The massive pressures placed on inter-county GAA players could have serious repercussions in the years ahead

The 'professional amateur predicament'. This is a term coined by the leading Irish physiotherapist, John Murphy. Murphy, a member of the GAA Medical Scientific and Player Welfare Committee, believes no player can expect to train to extreme intensity for a prolonged period of time within the constrains of a second professional life, ie your day job.

Cork footballers John Miskella and Anthony Lynch both retired from inter-county GAA last month. Even though they were amateurs in the strictest sense, they would have been the two of the most professional athletes I would have trained or played with.

They would also have been the most difficult opponents I've faced. Even at 33 and 34 years of age respectively, fitness levels and pace were not actually the reasons for hanging up the boots. In the case of both players, recurring injuries caused by years of wear and tear to the joints finished them. Currently, neither player is sure of even being able to play club football going forward.

Frankie Sheahan retired from professional rugby two years ago, having played more than 200 professional games for both Ireland and Munster during a 16-year adult career. Having started his playing career as an amateur, he saw how the fitness and training intensity between the amateur and professional era were broadly similar. It was the recovery and rest period afforded to the professional athlete that was the key difference.

"As professionals, the morning after a game, we would have a later-than-usual start and would always do a recovery session, just to get the blood flowing back into the muscles," he said. "We'd have always got in an hour's sleep in the middle of the day too and the evenings were our down time."

Corkman Damien Delaney spent the last 10 years as a professional footballer in England in both the Championship and the Premier League. He is

currently with Ipswich Town, having been bought by Roy Keane. He played minor Gaelic football for Cork in 1999, winning a Munster Championship and believes the average inter-county GAA session is equal if not more intense than professional football sessions in England.

"Given that you may only be together three times a week on average, it seems as if you try to fit as much as possible into the sessions."

During his summer break, Delaney was in gyms in Cork and gasped at GAA players, whose main requirements for the game are ball skill, squatting huge weights on bar bells. As a professional, he is never allowed to compromise technique for weight. The squats he will do are multidirectional and more often than not weightless.

For the amateur GAA player, the journey from injury or niggle to fully recovered stage is a process they fumble their way through. In the first instance, the majority of players will be unable to pinpoint any reason for the injury. Training logs and their analysis for spikes and troughs that may have caused the injury is a relatively new phenomenon being implemented by some of the more pioneering inter-county coaches, like Aiden O'Connell in Cork and Liam Moffat with Mayo.

For the majority of players however, cause and effect is seldom studied. The GAA player will then set about the rehab of the injury without clearly defined structures. The professional will have access to and be treated by a sequential series of rehab experts and with every occurrence of the injury, they will not return to action until they are 100% fit.

Many GAA players have a different approach. The short-term solution is the priority with a "can you get me right for Sunday" approach. Even at inter-county level with a good physio on board, there will be over 30 players to look after. A root and branch assessment is impossible with each player and if the problem is not straightforward, it can be almost impossible to find the right path in sufficient time.

The pattern is a familiar one. A niggle is followed by pain or a tear. Physiotherapist A is followed by Physiotherapist B.

A consultation with a specialist results in you being sent for a scan. Physical therapists, osteopaths, chiropractors, orthotics, etc.

In April 2009, I noticed my right hamstring getting unusually tight high up my leg.

Massage and stretching gave immediate relief but it got worse over time. As part of an inter-county panel in mid-season chasing an All-Ireland, you do what you can to get right.

From June to September, the maintenance schedule became almost round the clock. Hot water bottles, tiger balm, massage and stretching before sessions, followed by ice packs after each session with heavy massage, pool work, and endless further stretching before the next one. Sometimes an injection was chosen. You will tell management you are getting it sorted but you won't let them think it's a major problem, for obvious reasons. Just go away and get it right in your own time, somehow. By the time the season ended in September, scans confirmed the tendon to be severely damaged by playing through.

Despite an intense four-month rehab, I still couldn't take the field the following March without the pain and tightening of the hamstring. At 29 and a now peripheral member of the Cork squad, I was in no position to continue even at club level.

To be fair, the physio team with Cork were excellent but playing at the top level and rehabbing at the same time was impossible. Injuries will linger and bigger problems will follow.

Derek Kavanagh experienced the same torturous regime in 2010. His was a hip problem: "From the start of the year, I adopted a strict recovery regime [particularly aqua jogging/pool sessions] to counteract my symptoms.

"I did two pool sessions for every one pitch session and limited impact by missing club sessions when I could. I also got three cortisone injections in hospital throughout the year... the schedule just wasn't sustainable for more than a few months. At 31, I am now retired from everything."

At 28, Diarmuid Duggan was man of the match in the Munster final for Cork against Kerry in 2008. By the time he was 30, his club and county career was also finished, again due to restricted hip mobility. Between them, Kavanagh and Duggan explored all the available rehab solutions both in Ireland and Britain. Injections, operations, specialist followed by specialist. All said the same thing. It was too late. Years of doing too much and doing the wrong thing. The damage was done. Kavanagh looks back and sees two distinct periods in his career.

"It seems as if I spent the first half of my career pushing my body's limits on the pitch and in the gym, without fully understanding all the exercises and the effects they would have on my body, while the second half was spent mostly on treatment tables and gym mats trying to stretch out and undo much of the damage done."

Mike McGurn uses the term 'periodisation'. This is an important point. How many college or U21 players are required to merge the end of their championship seasons into the start of another one at senior level for two if not three years in a row? Of course, many conscientious coaches will make allowances but many just do not realise that, unlike professional sport where the physical limits can be pushed further, an amateur sport has to have a tipping point and if you pass it, you are left with diminishing returns over time.

The injuries resulting from the load factor — in layman's terms, doing too much — are one side of the coin. Of equal concern, are doing the wrong things.

McGurn makes the point that many GAA players are all too willing to do what is prescribed, but when that's incorrectly shown to the players on day one, or incorrectly monitored for execution in the training regime thereafter, it can be just as dangerous.

"Squat, power clean, dead lift are all exercises being prescribed to players who are executing them wrongly," says McGurn. "I feel anybody prescribing any type of training programme has a duty of care to ensure the work being done in the gym and on the training pitch is suitable, appropriate and properly periodised and includes proper warm ups and recovery strategies."

McGurn's duty of care sentiments are admirable but the tragic upshot of this is that, for as long as success is measured by progress within a given season or two, the long-term problems will always be second priority on an organisation-wide basis. Absolving responsibility to individual coaches and managers is a fool's errand (one friend of mine played with 13 different teams in one season when in first year of college).

Real change is always more effective when it is accepted and implemented from a top down structural point of view.

In a redeveloped Páirc Uí Chaoimh with its Centre of Excellence, would it be beneficial to have a fully staffed 8am to 10pm gym where every member of any Cork panel from minor upwards would be afforded the flexibility to swipe in/swipe out and go about programmes under watchful eye of fully qualified staff?

Then again, this is a cost and worse still, could be perceived as stepping too close to the dark side of professionalism, as opposed to protecting players!

From my own experience, I travelled to what seemed like the entire country in 2010 trying to find a solution to my hamstring issue (including 16 trips to another 'specialist' in Galway).

Eventually, I was referred by a friend to John Murphy at the Carysfort Clinic in Dublin. Unlike the physiotherapist attached to every GAA team up and down the country, Murphy is not answerable to any coach or trainer with a matchday deadline. He was able to take time and explain to me the basics of free movement and sequence of movement through the joints. He tasked me with taking a step back and opening up all the major joints down through the body.

Once these were freed up, the muscles followed suit and began firing in sequence once more. When a therapist is able to spend time diagnosing a problem and later explaining that solution, it becomes very easy to buy into, especially when it makes sense to the player himself.

Having worked as physio to the Dublin footballers, Murphy is convinced that damage is nearly always just the symptom in non-contact injuries such as strains and tears. The cause is inevitably mobility and range of movement being restricted by years of overly heavy and incorrect training. This is cumulative. What's worse is the reason is far more obvious.

"Take the 24-hour or 48-hour period between training sessions for the amateur GAA player. Most sessions end with an inadequate (cool down). A token lap of the field with a few half-hearted stretches. The player will drive home, likely sit on the couch for an hour and then go to bed. The following morning, that player will get up, drive to work and sit at a desk [hips locked] for the majority of the day.

"Over time, range of motion is eroded and resultant stiffness, soreness and tears emerge.

"Compare that to the life of a professional athlete. The professional will be disciplined into the warm-down phase after a session but more importantly, he will be able to get up the next morning and do his mobility work and rest appropriately. Range of motion is retained."

Murphy explained that as we all age, our lumbar spine and hip joints begin to wear, stiffen, work incorrectly and become less functional. High-intensity exercise will accelerate this process so it is vital that training regimes are changed for players as they age. With chronic injuries, Murphy stresses that only corrective/preventative exercises addressing the entire Kinetic Chain (and more rest) of the body can lead to longer and safer careers.

So what are the solutions that can be rolled out on a macro level?

If anything, intensity appears to be actually increasing. Dublin's well publicised twice a day regime (before and after work) took things to a new level. The fact they were successful will inevitably lead to copy-cat regimes amongst many inter-county panels in 2012. After all, the evidence suggests that clocking up the man hours is the easiest and fastest way to further injuries (79.3 injuries on average per thousand hours).

Accepting fate and turning inter-county teams semi or fully professional across the board is not viable without jeopardising the club and many of the structures that are so important to the GAA. On the other hand, placing a leash on teams and trying to police training levels in such a fiercely competitive environment is practically impossible, especially when one considers that the closed season is now a pseudonym for boxing, basketball, circuits and gym work.

To be fair to the GAA hierarchy, an ambitious project was established in 2006 to put a system in place to understand GAA field sport injuries. Its aim is to initially measure the incidence and nature of injuries sustained in GAA field sports. This information is essential as it provides a baseline of injury data, from which the GAA and its Medical Scientific and Player Welfare Committee can strategically plan and place player welfare at a premium. The next stage is to begin testing the intervention training methods.

All this needs to take place before they can try to implement a more focused training schedule, where less injury is the focus. One of these is currently at the pilot stage. Needless to say, this will all take time.

The uneasy feeling is that intensity levels will continue towards their tipping point for some years yet. Those in charge of inter-county panels will be judged on games won and not avoidance of hip replacements 10 years down the line.

One thing is clear: the players themselves are in no position to row back. Even with the prospect of a hip replacement before the age of 40, would they swap their sporting careers for a body less wrecked?

Derek Kavanagh, Bernard Flynn, Diarmuid Duggan, John Miskella, Anthony Lynch all had a one word response — no.

* The author is a former Cork inter-county footballer

EXPERT EXPERIENCE

"My quality of life at 39 years of age, before I had my hip replaced, was truly appalling."

Bernard Flynn, Meath inter-county footballer 1986 to 1995.

"I played in an the All-Ireland final just over 12 months ago. Now I can't go for a light jog without suffering extreme inhibited movement and substantial pain."

Derek Kavanagh, Cork inter-county panel 2002 to 2010.

"A lot of GAA training prescription does not follow any sensible periodisation of loading and unloading. Not every training session can be done at 100% intensity especially when the player has to get up and go to work for the next two days before the next flogging session."

Mike McGurn, former strength and conditioning coach to the Ireland rugby team, and Compromise Rules squad. Current Performance Director with Armagh.

"I often hear retired players saying that hamstrings were not around in their day. Well, I remember those days and it often involved meeting up three weeks before championship to see what the team might be! There was no training in the league. There was no load factor!"

* Picture: Conor McCarthy in action for Cork against Fermanagh in 2009. McCarthy did major damage to his tendon playing through injuries that year.

[Lone Shark]

The sentiment here is undoubtedly correct and this is a huge issue - however I've yet to see a plan that would adequately deal with it. The problem is that for there to be less pressure on players, somebody, somewhere, has to take the hit and do without guys for key fixtures. Nobody wants to be the martyr here, it's like the tax situation all over again. Everyone's in favour of taxes that hurt people other than themselves.

Let's not also forget here either that players want to excel, so if you force teams not to train as often, the most dedicated ones will do it by themselves anyway. It's unenforceable. From what I can see, the only way to do it is to restrict the number of matches that any one player is allowed play over the course of a season. For example, if you were to say that a player could only play a maximum of:

50 competitive games in any one twelve month period
12 games in any two month period
2 games in any 6 day period.

That is enforceable. Put it in place for all league and championship matches, and make it compulsory for challenge matches that are subject to the rules of the association and covered by insurance that team sheets must be submitted to the referee. That way players themselves have to prioritise competitions and you won't end up with the annual farce where certain talented 20/21 year olds are training for ten different teams in February.

The tradeoff is that while players won't be flogged to death as much, you have to get a lot more active about policing "behind closed doors" games, and somewhere along the line, teams are going to cry and moan about how lads aren't available to them despite being fit and ready to go.

For example, we had a couple of lads in Offaly last year who would have played for:

County VEC teams
School teams
County minor teams
Club senior teams
Club minor teams
Club under 21 teams

All in both football and hurling, and I could be missing a few other grades there as well. That's twelve championship teams in total. Who do they say no to? 

[Give and Go]

The GAA fixtures congestion is key to the issue and this problem was compounded with the arrival of the Qualifiers. This structure is not in the best interests of Clubs or players; it's principal aim is to generate money and provide more high profile games for the public. This was tagged on to an inequitable provincial structure.
The bullet has to be bitten and we either return to the knock out provincial championship of yesteryear or we radicalise and provide an equitable system that ensures all counties the same progression path and certainty around fixtures. We can then build a club and college games programme to fit.
The GAA is unique in its approach to competition structures - it always tries to cater for the exception to the rules rather than keeping it simple. If it's not an uneven provincial system, it's a back door system with so many entry points, to losers groups, B championships, to God knows what....

There is enough time in the calendar for club, college and county provided logic is applied to it. KISS. Keep it simple stupid!

[Rossfan]

There is enough time in the calendar for club, college and county provided logic is applied to it. KISS. Keep it simple stupid!

Very true.
Mind you I expect there are a few ironic smiles from some of the players Maughtan ran into the ground over the years 

[TacadoirArdMhacha]

Two very simple and practical steps in my view would be to abolish the League stages of the Second-Level and Third-Level competitions and simply play-off the McRory / Hogan and Sigerson Cups as knockout competitions, perhaps concluding before Christmas. How many matches are played in the McRory to virtually no end pre-Christmas?

[muppet]

Two very simple and practical steps in my view would be to abolish the League stages of the Second-Level and Third-Level competitions and simply play-off the McRory / Hogan and Sigerson Cups as knockout competitions, perhaps concluding before Christmas. How many matches are played in the McRory to virtually no end pre-Christmas?

Why punish the ordinary school and college players by scrapping the majority of their games purely to protect the relatively small number of 'stars'? The obvious solution is game management like the IRFU employ for Internationals with their clubs. Thus any inter-county player should be seriously limited as to the number of games they can play for teams outside their club/county.

[bailestil]

why punish the ordinary school and college players by scrapping the majority of their games purely to protect the relatively small number of 'stars'? The obvious solution is game management like the IRFU employ for Internationals with their clubs. Thus any inter-county player should be seriously limited as to the number of games they can play for teams outside their club/county.

This is the way it will have to go.
In order to preserve participation in our games (rather than just attendances), the club season has to be able to continue without being at the mercy of inter-county games.

at the minute it seems central council is all about getting 60k into croker for a NFL game, and making the Championship as good as the elite side of the game can be, which is fine.

But for the 95% of players who want to play games every weekend but can't, cause of 13 day rules pre championship etc its a mess. If proper structures aren't implemented soon to Increase the participation of gaelic games its going to die a slow death at grass roots level. 

No club wants to cope without their county men, but its unrealistic for them to be available for every league game.

[TacadoirArdMhacha]

why punish the ordinary school and college players by scrapping the majority of their games purely to protect the relatively small number of 'stars'? The obvious solution is game management like the IRFU employ for Internationals with their clubs. Thus any inter-county player should be seriously limited as to the number of games they can play for teams outside their club/county.

This is the way it will have to go.
In order to preserve participation in our games (rather than just attendances), the club season has to be able to continue without being at the mercy of inter-county games.

at the minute it seems central council is all about getting 60k into croker for a NFL game, and making the Championship as good as the elite side of the game can be, which is fine.

But for the 95% of players who want to play games every weekend but can't, cause of 13 day rules pre championship etc its a mess. If proper structures aren't implemented soon to Increase the participation of gaelic games its going to die a slow death at grass roots level. 

No club wants to cope without their county men, but its unrealistic for them to be available for every league game.

Are intercounty players available for every League game, or even most League games, in many counties? Genuine question, the experience in Armagh, particularly when we were doing well, is that they are seldom available.

[Lone Shark]

But this isn't even about the fact that county players don't play league games - except in counties where the league is tied into the championship, they rarely play them now. Anyway, very few managers risk playing an injured player in a league game, and if they do, they're bonkers and should be fired straight away. The problem is that too many footballers now play up to 60/70 CHAMPIONSHIP games every season, where they get strapped up and told to do their best, even if they badly need rest.

Equally, it's demeaning to the club players of Ireland to give them an endless cycle of meaningless league matches and then to run off their championship really quickly.

By rights players should be playing for no more than five championship teams, maybe six or seven if they are a dual player.

Of course changing the provincial structures would help too, and this should be done as well, but it's time to change minor to U-19, and to turn the Under-21 into a stepping stone grade again. Increase the age a bit, but if you're good enough to play senior, you don't need it. i.e. make it U-23 and once you've made your senior championship debut at club level, you can no longer play club U-23. Once you've played senior championship at county, you can no longer play county U-23. Leave those championships for players who need them.

[Zulu]

I wouldn't favour limiting the number of games players play as it would be very difficult to track and what would happen if a mistake was made and a player played an important game that turned out to be over his limit, would the game be awarded to the opposition?

Instead, I'd focus on player eligibility at county level. If you're on the senior panel then that's it regardless of age. We also have to look at university level competition, I'm not sure what's the best direction here but either competition structure or player eligibility needs to be addressed. Finally, we need tolook at our season, and we should start with senior IC, give us more real games and have a defined playing season. Then build the rest around this where player over lap is kept toa minimum.

[armaghniac]

This type of thread apperars regularly on GAABoard.

A few observations.

The state of the club scene is a county is not tied with inter-county success. Successful counties have good local competition (Kerry perhaps) while unsuccessful counties are no better. Postponements and fragmented seasons occur even where the county team is crap.

Most clubs do not have a county player. Their participation is often seen a less valuable than the senior clubs who "need" their county players to beat the senior club next door. Inter county success can benefit these clubs. Do the majority of Dublin teams benefit if the Dubs win an AI and there is more interest in GAA in the county?

Some of the changes are perfectly obvious, it is just a question of doing them. If people are playing minor and senior at the same time then simply don't allow this.

I don't think postponements for dual players are tenable. An entire programme of games can be delayed for one or two players.

[Lone Shark]

Not trying to pick a fight with you Zulu, but this debate usually takes the same form. Everybody says that "something must be done", but nobody really knows what that something is. Some people propose things that suit themselves, or alternatively come up with something that is totally unenforceable, but nobody wants to take any hard steps.

I see no reason why this would be difficult to enforce. Yes it would take a little administration, but very little.

For example (and this would have a lot of different uses), I've a membership card here in my wallet with a seven digit number on it. Putting down names and this number on the teamsheet would be no more difficult than putting down names in Irish I'd imagine? Most secretaries/managers now have a squad list anyway that they bring to every game and just give it to the referee with the jersey numbers beside each player. No reason why this wouldn't include the membership number, and the player could then log on, or even have a text service, where they can see their "balances".

Of course the punishments would have to be carefully written in, but if people really wanted to stop burnout, you can't just tell managers to be aware of it and hope they'll do the right thing. They won't - we know that.

[ha ha derry]

Play all provincial champinship matches for each round all on one date. Straight knockout system.
Play all club championships for each round all on one date. Straight knockout system.
End of May 16 teams would have a rest, county boards save money and half the intercounty players wouldn't have to worry about burnout or time off work. Simples. 

[ross4life]

Niall Daly for us is the one player that springs to mind, has to play for his club at senior,U-21 level, he's a starter for UCC played in McGrath cup,Cork club championship & he's currently involved in the Sigerson cup plus Roscommon's U-21,Senior teams.

Mr Maughan is outspoken now but he had no problem playing our young players twice in two days & then running them up hills.