Intercounty collective training set to resume under new winter rule

So the first window of senior intercounty training officially reopens at midnight on Friday, affording several counties the opportunity to resume collective weight sessions, trial matches, or those punishing hill runs, possibly even first thing Saturday morning.

That’s assuming they haven’t resumed.

Under the revised GAA guidelines on the so-called winter training ban, eight football counties (Offaly, Louth, Westmeath, Waterford, Leitrim, Fermanagh, Derry, and London), plus two in hurling (Antrim and Laois) are now permitted to resume collective training, starting November 15th, under rule 6.43 of the Official Guide.

These are the counties that exited their respective championships in June, and can be followed, on December 1st, by another 14 football panels that exited the championship in July, plus five in hurling: they are followed by the counties that exited in August, who can resume training on December 8th, then the All-Ireland finalists in football and hurling, who can’t return to collective training until December 29th.

Advantage

Given the increasingly competitive nature of the intercounty season no county likes to surrender any advantage, or indeed miss the chance to get a head start on the 2015 season: especially the football counties allowed to resume collective training on Saturday (Offaly, Louth, Westmeath, Waterford, Leitrim) who also have new football managers in place for 2015, including Tom McGlinchey, who was appointed new Waterford manager as recently as Monday night.

McGlinchey, however, views Saturday’s resumption date in more sensible terms: most senior intercounty players, he says, maintain some level of training throughout the year, and as a way of addressing player welfare, the winter training ban may still be more of a cosmetic exercise.

“For me, Saturday is just about meeting the Waterford players as a group for the first time,” says McGlinchey, who previously managed Tipperary from 2000-2003. “I’ve only just been ratified, and still putting together a backroom team. So we certainly won’t be going hell for leather into in on Saturday. It’s more about me getting to know the players, and putting them all on a strength and conditioning programme.

“Plus The Nire (Waterford football champions) are still in the Munster championship (playing on Sunday against Cratloe), and a lot of other players have had a long club championship in Waterford too. So I’m certainly not looking to go flogging players in November or December.”

Burnout

Now based in Newport, and still involved with Tipperary club Cahir, McGlinchey believes the issue of player burn-out hasn’t gone away, even if players are more conscious of the need to balance the demands between club and county. “Most players know what’s needed at intercounty level. Even with the club players, in Cahir, I think most players are so in tune with the need to keep their bodies right, that they’re generally in very good shape anyway, and keep themselves right during the year, with their own gym programmes.

“And of course it’s great for a new manager like me to be able to meet them in November . . . But I also think, looking at the bigger picture, there are still an awful lot of players being pulled and dragged in different directions, even at this time of year.”

Part of the problem with trying to enforce any ban on collective training, says, McGlinchey, is not all managers view it with the same sensible terms. “In fairness to Niall Carew, who was with Waterford before me, and the players last year, too, were all very professional in the way they went about their business. So it’s not a case of them doing nothing since last July. They’ll all have been keeping up some of the strength and conditioning on their own. Still it’s a catch-22 situation at times, a hard one to figure out. I don’t know if we’ll ever have the ideal scenario.