*Clare senior football manager, Colm Collins. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
CLARE FOOTBALL MANAGER, Colm Collins has warned that the current workload on inter-county players is not sustainable.
Multiple members of Collins’ Clare panel are also currently involved with their respective colleges in the Sigerson Cup.
With the National Football League now underway, the burden particularly on players currently in third-level and lining out with their college is very high.
Lissycasey’s Aaron Griffin is among the players in that bracket and on Friday, he strained his hamstring which ruled him out of the matchday panel for Clare’s one point win over Louth on Sunday.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Collins said the workload on such players was “terrible”. He revealed that they were forced not to start Sigerson Cup players for fear that they would pick up injuries had they been given a full game. “When it came to a close call between two players we didn’t go with the Sigerson players, to have the likes of Ciaran Downes, Daniel Walsh and Ikem Ugwueru on the pitch is incredible”.
“Aaron tweaked something on Friday night but it’s back to the old ridiculous situation where your matchday twenty six is set in stone and that’s ridiculous, you should be able to change at the last minute if you want to”.
Coming off the back of the split season, players such as Emmet McMahon when their adult club campaign finished were straight into U21 club action before switching their attention to colleges action and now senior inter-county, leaving little recess.
This along with Glen players on the Derry panel returning straight to inter-county action from the All-Ireland club final is not sustainable in the long-term, Collins warned. “The better players are playing full-time so it is hard on them, I think they need to look at some sort of a four week break for players at Christmas, it needs to be for all players because this is not sustainable, it is the top players. You see that some of them went straight from the club final straight into the National League, that is not sustainable”.
