On Gaelic Games:Given the number of competitive games the GAA has to juggle with, it is likely that dealing with burn-out will be a continuous task for the association, writes SEAN MORAN

IT’S ALL of 11 years since the National League vacated the autumn and winter schedules. The match between Mayo and Kildare in December 1999 brought the curtain down on an, ahem, millennium of football and also the old format. Hurling had already embraced the calendar year three seasons previously and the GAA, then getting ready for the integration of the qualifiers into the football championship, was stepping into the modern age with a radically-evolving calendar.

The league experience had been very encouraging. In the inaugural season of the calendar year, a competitive Division One coincided with some fine late spring weather and the introduction of Saturday evening matches, which brought big crowds out.

One novel aspect of that 1997 season that wasn’t retained was the running of the semi-finals in the summer – the arrival of the championship wiping the GAA’s hard drive clean of any traces of interest in the league – with the final following in early October but aside from that it was a success.

Curiously the GAA chose to dismantle the appeal of the NHL by breaking Division One into two sections and admitting a host of uncompetitive counties so that compelling fixtures became the exception rather than the rule.

Yet overall it made sense, giving the leagues a coherent timetable rather than the cloven schedules of the past, complete with their two-month hiatus. Instead there was a proper pre-season with the secondary provincial competitions providing game time and leading into the start of the season proper.

So why has the whole arrangement entered some sort of existential crisis, leading to someone as eminent as Dr Pat O’Neill expressing a preference for a reversion to the old order, at least in football?

There have been two developments that have created a strain on the system: the entry of third-level colleges into the pre-season competitions, in order to help them prepare for the various CAO competitions, and the introduction of the close season on foot of recommendations by the task force to address burn-out, which was chaired by O’Neill.

These have created difficulties largely because they clash with the controlling tendencies of the modern, intercounty manager but the real serpent in the garden is the besetting problem of multi-eligibility.

Elite footballers and hurlers are subject to the most ridiculous demands. Most other sports involve a club or primary team plus representative outlets. There is usually no question of having to play for underage as well as senior teams; if you’re good enough in other disciplines to play senior at an early age the tendency is not to allow you line out for youth teams as well.

In Gaelic games a top young player can find himself playing for an absurd number of teams. As a teenager Brian Corcoran, burdened with the additional virtuosity of being a dual player, was appearing at senior and underage with club and county in football and hurling as well as in third-level games, up to the point where the number of teams he played for in a given year ran into double figures.

The GAA have tried to remedy this but whatever ideas are introduced always appear to end up cutting across someone’s turf.

By insisting that third-level players be allowed line out for their colleges in January, the authorities drew the fire of county managers who wanted to play them in experimental teams before the season got serious.

When the close season was introduced it gave the same colleges a pass so that they could continue to train their teams in November and December, triggering further resentment.

This year has seen a growing hubbub about the problems for managers newly appointed coming into a county and effectively not being allowed to conduct collective training sessions until January, as club fixtures are in full swing until September and October.

It’s not hard to sympathise with these difficulties but is a reversion to the past the best way to accommodate the above grievances?

Pat O’Neill’s idea was based on the fact that pre-Christmas league matches were always leisurely affairs and that there was no need for manic training. In other words intercounty get-togethers in October and November wouldn’t dramatically intensify the physical pressure on players.

But it would have to be said that it wouldn’t do a lot for the NFL either by scattering its completion over seven months. It is interesting that the GAA has just decided to reintroduce league semi-finals in order to spice up the competitions when the better option would have been to scrap the finals and award the various titles to whoever tops the four divisions.

Nonetheless the notion that players could get together in November and execute some panel training as well as run unrestricted trial matches would address some of the difficulties cited by managers.

O’Neill also believed that there should be pay-back with the first two weeks in January declared out of bounds, leaving a couple of weeks lead-in to the league and the secondary provincial competitions scrapped. It would have to be said that his view of these events from his time in charge of Dublin was unsympathetic (a view partly explained by the infamous occasion that he picked up a few suspensions after what he regarded as an edited video of a ‘lively’ O’Byrne Cup fixture was handed over to the Leinster Council).

Another factor that supports the view is recent weather trends – accepting that in meteorological terms a couple of years is less than the blink of an eye – that have seen particularly hostile conditions in the early new year, leading to problems securing pitches for training and matches.

O’Neill’s suggestion would result in a net loss to the close season of two weeks, which isn’t ideal but a less hectic January would presumably have additional benefits.

The provisions of the burn-out report haven’t been anything like universally honoured and in particular the radical initiative to reduce the amount of underage intercounty competition was tossed aside for reasons that had little to do with player welfare.

But given the number of competitive games that the GAA has to juggle with, it is likely that dealing with burn-out will be a continuous task and all suggestions should be welcome, as perhaps might be a standing committee to review anti-burn-out measures in the light of emerging evidence and on an ongoing basis.