AN IRISH SPORTS Council app that enables player to check if any medications they intend to use are banned, is helping to provide peace of mind for GAA players.
Tipperary captain Brendan Maher admitted this week that concern amongst players can lead to them being ‘conscious of taking a Lemsip the way things have gone’.
Limerick hurler Paudie O’Brien believes the MedCheck app has helped ease those concerns.
“All you have to do is whip out your phone and type something into it. It couldn’t be easier than that. That’s not a problem.
“We actually had it put up on our players’ WhatsApp group but I had heard of it before. It’s just if someone has a cold and they mistakenly take whatever for it. That’s what is going to be the issue.
I can only speak from a Limerick perspective and we are very good in-house here. Our doctor and our medical team are very good.
“Whether you agree with it or you don’t is probably irrelevant. You deal with it or you will face the repurcussions. It will be interesting next year to see what happens with blood testing.
“That is something I possibly wouldn’t agree with but as of now I’d have no problem with the system.”
O’Brien is confident that performance-enhancing drugs will never become an ‘epidemic’ in the GAA but can see there being isolated incidents.
It has happened in every other sport so I don’t see why it would never happen in GAA.
“As standards go up and the demands on players’ bodies keep increasing, I have no doubt but that in isolated incidents fellas will make the wrong decision and take something which they shouldn’t.
“I just hope people can separate someone who makes a genuine mistake from someone who intentionally takes something.
“As regards steroids and performance-enhancing drugs and all that I don’t see that ever becoming an epidemic. Touch wood.”
