GAA PUNDIT JOE Brolly feels there is too much pressure being put on modern players, labelling the current state of the sport “depressing”.
Brolly has compared current players to “indentured slaves” and feels there should be a radical overhaul of the system.
“I was at Owenbeg on Sunday with my father,” he told Off the Ball. “We call it our weekly punishment. We were there to see Derry and Donegal. There were 3,000 people there and hope springs eternal.
“After 25 minutes it was 2-0 to Donegal and my father said this is worse than Lough Derg. There was a lot of heavy impact and all that — all those features of the modern game. That rugby league style. And it’s becoming very depressing, I have to say.”
He continued: “The players are little more than indentured slaves. When I played, it was positive. We trained twice a week, played a match at the weekend and if you got further in the Championship, you stepped up the training a bit.
“Everybody in [my] Derry team had a trade or a profession. Some of them had wives and children. We had time to socialise. The important thing was that we were developing as people and building a career. The problem now is that we’ve imported professional practices into an amateur sport. The boards are complicit in this.
“The winter training ban, which is the hierarchy’s only attempt to deal with the problem, is just laughable. It’s lip service.”
Brolly also believes the pressure put on players to train and compete extensively is hampering their employment prospects.
“We’ve a real problem on our hands because we’ve got all these young lads between 20 and 30 drifting between scholarship to scholarship.
“They’re not able to work full-time, they’re not able to build careers. Managers are coming in and wringing every last drop out of them. The ethos we’ve allowed to develop is win at all cost.
“We went through the Derry team, the Donegal team, the Armagh team and almost 90% of the lads are students — most of lads do not have careers. They drift from a wee coaching job here to a wee coaching job there. Their life has to be put on hold.
“You look at Aaron Kernan, he has a wife and a child and he’s trying to build a career now. One of the great footballers in Ulster has walked away. A lot of the big stars of Ulster football are unemployed.”
The controversial pundit added that the GPA should take more responsibility in addressing the issue.
“The GPA are a big part of the problem now. The GPA trumpet the welfare work that it does and to an extent that is good, any highlighting of mental health issues are important, but in terms of real welfare, the playing game at county level in unhealthy.
“Players are spending a lot of time doing very little between training sessions and wasting valuable years of their lives. That’s the real concern.”
Consequently, the ex-Derry player says a radical restructuring of the fixture schedule needs to be implemented.
“The urgent thing that needs to be done is to re-balance the fixtures. The National League should start in January and finish in March, the Championship should start in April and finish at the end of June.
“Then you have got June to December for the clubs. That would be a bold statement but it’s what we need.”
– First published 09.56
