THE INCREASE in cruciate knee ligament injuries among GAA players may be down to their amateur status, according to Kildare’s two-time All Star midfielder Dermot Earley.
The 33-year-old returned to inter-county training on Tuesday night having completed an 18-month rehabilitation schedule.
“I was just unlucky. I talked to Ray Moran specifically about it because when it happens to you , you want answers. What he told me was it was just a one in a thousand case where it just didn’t knit properly, the graft didn’t take, and it really was only a matter of time before it was going to happen. Luckily enough, it happened on a stairs, not on a football field.
“I hadn’t ran at all . . . was just going up the steps at home and felt a little niggle. It didn’t buckle on me but I felt something and when I got it scanned it turned out it wasn’t knitting.”
Earley was then asked why he thought so many footballers and hurlers have suffered this injury in recent years.
“I often wondered about the strength and conditioning that has come an awful lot into GAA in the last couple of years. There’s a difference between professional and amateur . . . you don’t always have someone looking over your back to say you’re doing that squat right or you’re doing that curl right on your hamstring. Maybe there was an imbalance there where our quads might have been strong but our hamstrings weren’t, and when you have an imbalance like that something’s going to go.”
He said it was a personal theory; but that he had not heard it anywhere else.
“As much as we have Julie Davis , who has been brilliant for myself and Hughie , she can’t be there all the time, so that might be something.”
Also speaking at yesterday’s launch of the Cadbury’s under-21 football championship in Croke Park was Donegal’s rising star Paddy McBrearty and Tipperary’s Michael Quinlivan. Both attended Tadhg Kennelly’s Aussie Rules football camp in Tallaght last week. However, neither has been offered an AFL rookie contract.
“It was an eye opener,” said Quinlivan. “I enjoyed it but the GAA is . . . going to come first.”
McBrearty has already been seen as a serious target for AFL clubs but his focus remains the Leaving Certificate, along with the Donegal seniors and under-21s.
