Off the Ball's interview with DCU manager and Down coach Dr Niall Moyna about the effect of overtraining and overplaying amongst GAA players is both fascinating and alarming.
Dr Moyna, Professor in the School of Health and Human Performance at DCU, claims that young players are at risk of kidney failure and predicts someone will soon sue the GAA over abuse.
'The loads and demands we're imposing, particularly on young, developing bodies and even on developed players - because of their amateur status and lack of recovery - is leading to an epidemic of chronic injuries and resulting in a lot players retiring from the game much earlier than they would in previous generations.'
Moyna gave an example of a test they carried out with their DCU team in the O'Byrne Cup a couple of years ago, where they had to play one game on a Thursday and a second on the following Sunday.
'When you undertake strenuous exercise, you damage your muscles and there are certain little proteins in your muscles that leak into the blood. We can measure them in the blood. The average values for that protein in a person should be between 38 and 174. We had two guys in that study who were above 2,000. This is before the game even started. The average before we even started was above the upper limits of normal.'
Come the end of the second match, the DCU players were a ridiculous 182% above average. This can cause kidney failure or worse.
'There's something called Rhabdomyolysis that can cause death if it's very serious. It happens to troops who march for long periods and two players [were at risk]. If you took the average blood level of the average U21, Sigerson and inter-county, instead of the upper range being about 174, I would expect it to be about 800.'
Moyna pointed out that one player he knows will have 38 training sessions in January this year alone, not counting the matches he'll play. The professor added 'What may happen very soon is that someone will sue for abuse.'
You can listen to the full interview below:
