Liam O'Neill has come and said it is 'impossible' to legislate for players overtraining.
The GAA introduced a winter training ban a number of years ago. This is generally derided and often ignored. After 2011, the GAA decided to 'relax' it.
Legislating for overtraining is not something the GAA can plausibly do, according to O'Neill.
Whenever I’ve spoken about the excessive powers that managers have, people have criticised me for that. What we have at the moment is not a GAA central problem, it’s not something the GAA President can solve, it’s something the trainer and the manager of each individual team can sort.
I think we have to look at training smarter, rather than longer. There’s only so much people can put in. I think we need to find methods that will achieve the same results in the shorter space of time.
But I don’t decide the length of time the Laois hurlers train. That’s decided by the management team in conjunction with the county board.
O'Neill faulted Brolly for 'making a laugh' of the winter training ban and claimed it was a worthy attempt to put the focus on burnout and player welfare. That it wasn't adhered to was not the GAA's fault.
It wasn’t our fault it wasn’t supported. It’s the fault of whoever decided to train players. You can’t legislate for that.
It wouldn’t be possible for us to dictate you can only train at a certain level for championships because people want to win and everybody wants to get the edge on someone else.
[Irish Examiner]
