Player burnout will be formally tackled by the GAA in the coming months after the establishment yesterday of a special task force to deal with the issue, although according to its chairman, Dr Pat O'Neill, they are dealing not with a "pandemic" but instead with "more sporadic outbreaks".
The task force was set up by GAA president Nickey Brennan, one of several initiatives designed in collaboration with the GAA's new player welfare manager, Paraic Duffy.
O'Neill, a former All-Ireland-winning player and manager with Dublin, will act as chairman, and there will be representation from a broad range of former and current players and managers.
The full task force is Dr Pat O'Neill (Dublin), Mickey Moran (Derry), Séamus Qualter (Westmeath), Colm O'Rourke (Meath), Davy Fitzgerald (Clare), John Tobin (Galway), Keith Higgins (Mayo), Jack Devanney (chairman, Comhairle Ard-Oideachais), Prof Niall Moyna (DCU), Michael Reynolds (Leinster Council), Pat Daly (director of games) and Paraic Duffy (player welfare manager).
They will be asked for specific proposals to address evidence of the impact of burnout on elite players aged 16 to 21. But O'Neill explained yesterday the task force is unlikely to recommend a major revamp of underage structures and competitions.
"We'll meet first of all to discuss the implications of what's involved," he said. "And maybe burnout is not the best term for it. It's really more about issues of overtraining and overuse injuries. My own personal feeling is that it's not a major problem. Of course issues do come up, but I certainly don't think we're dealing with a pandemic here, but more sporadic outbreaks, which can and need to be prevented.
"But we will be coming at the issue from different angles, the sports and medical side, the management side, and the administration side. There's clearly an issue here, and there's no doubt that something has to improve, but I also feel it has improved in some ways already over the past three or four years. Players have certainly a greater awareness now of certain overuse injuries, such as groin or shin-splint problems."
Some of Duffy's first comments as player welfare manager dealt with burnout, including the suggestion the GAA abolish the under-21 football and hurling championships. O'Neill believes the task-force recommendations will have to deal ultimately with prevention and not cure.
"Paraic Duffy has been very proactive on this issue, whereas in the past it has been more reactive," he said. "This won't be a protracted study; that's the message I've been given. I anticipate the outcome will be a symposium to deliver our findings, where it can be aired at the managers et cetera, and that would be somewhere toward the end of summer.
"But essentially we are dealing with . . . prevention here, because there really isn't any cure for burnout. That means developing a strategy that will target this age group, and ultimately that will involve some sort of modification. It's then up to the administration to implement it.
"There are definite limits to the human machine. One of the reasons we don't see similar problems in other sports at this level is that they are largely professional. But in the . . . GAA you often have players driving long distances to games after a day's work, at six or seven in the evening. So there are also socio-economic or socio-domestic things to be considered.
"And you do have the situation where a player is involved with as many as five teams . . . serving five different masters. And there's no way that can go on.
"Part of the issue there is the player needs to be more self-selective and take more responsibility himself. I know going back to my own time 30 years ago there's no way I would be training with, say, Dublin and UCD at the same time. And in that regard we're really talking about the need for a downtime in the yearly cycle."
