Shane O’Donnell says injury from playing hurling left him €5,000 out of pocket

Clare All-Ireland winning hurler Shane O’Donnell has spoken out about players being left out of pocket by serious or long-term injury. O’Donnell reckons that a concussion injury, which kept him out of work for seven weeks, left him about €5,000 out of pocket.

This experience prompted him to bring a motion to this weekend’s annual general meeting of the Gaelic Players Association. Motion number one of five calls for the “inadequacy of the current insurance” plan to be addressed.

Speaking about his proposal this week, O’Donnell had this to say.

“I think that’s relatively straightforward but there are probably two aspects to it. One is the direct medical costs that are associated with having an injury and then the indirect follow-on of that, which is the potential loss of wages. So, it would cover both of those.

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“Where I’m coming from? I’m sure some of ye are aware that I had quite a bad concussion a couple of years ago. Essentially, roughly, I ended up being out of work for about six or seven weeks and taking unpaid leave. I had just started work and wasn’t really able to argue for paid leave essentially, so I would have taken unpaid leave for six weeks when you add it all up.

“After all this settled and I was able to interact with the process again, I went through the process of trying to claim it back through the GAA, which I thought would be a matter of filling out the forms and proving that it had happened and then getting to the point of settling the claim for the loss of wages.

“The injury was June 10th 2021 and the payment for the loss of wages was October 14th 2022 – so 16 months or something like that. The process itself can maybe streamlined but obviously that’s not the focus here. The actual amount was capped. Out of the six weeks, you’re allowed to claim €300 a week, which is essentially a social welfare level of payment.

“You can’t claim for the first week either so I end up claiming for €1,500. Obviously, that’s not going to nearly cover what your loss of wages would have been. So, that’s the inspiration for the motion. The idea or the concept is players won’t be in the situation where they’re out of pocket for playing for their county, be that in training or matches essentially. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable ask.”

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Asked to what extent he had been out of pocket, he replied: “I’m not sure the exact figure but it was above €5k, I would say. Yeah, it was that kind of figure.”

O’Donnell also took issue with what he described as a “condescending” replay to an email he sent to Croke Park, taking issue with the small amount of compensatory payment.

“The tone of the email was essentially that I should be happy with what they were willing to give me. That was essentially what the response was.” He added that he felt ashamed not to have responded with an angry email but “I realised that that wasn’t going to get me anywhere”.

Only recently, he revealed, did Clare manager Brian Lohan become aware of his financial loss.

“He said he would look to try and get that covered if the GAA weren’t – he just assumed that the GAA were covering that when I went through the process of looking for the loss of wages.”

He said that he was aware of another player caught in a similar situation, his All-Ireland winning team-mate Darach Honan.

The enforced absence from work was also a major stress for O’Donnell, who was a Fulbright scholar in Harvard and holds a doctorate. He works with Eagle Genomics and was on probation when the concussion happened at training.

“It probably took three or four months to be confident that I might in any way keep my job beyond the probationary period,” he said.

“When I went back after the six weeks, I was almost 100 per cent certain I was going to lose my job. I had blown a six-week hole at the start of the most important point of your job. And I couldn’t give them anything definite.

“When I came back, I was doing half-days, reduced screen time days. Bearing in mind my boss was Swedish, he doesn’t know what hurling is and he doesn’t know why suddenly I was off. Thankfully he was very considered about it and treated me fairly.”

Motion 1 to Saturday’s GPA agm: “Players propose that the GPA call on GAA/LGFA/Camogie Association for improved injury coverage, addressing the inadequacy of the current insurance in safeguarding inter-county players from financial loss.” Submitted by: Shane O’Donnell (Clare)