Mayo rift looms on new plans for closed season
The GAA Task Force report on player burn-out has caused a rift among the Mayo administration
Mayo senior football manager John O'Mahony and county board Secretary Sean Feeney are at odds over the proposed closed season suggested in the report published last week by the GAA Task Force on player burn-out.
O'Mahony, who intends to run trial games for the Mayo senior team in the coming weeks, feels that such a closed season will be difficult to police and won't necessarily benefit players.
"How do you monitor it?" asked O'Mahony. "Is the idea that you stop training altogether? There are some players who will work well in their own time but others who need collective training. At the moment Mayo players are doing weights, mostly on their own but we arrange that once a week lads can meet up and do this collectively. Will this have to stop?" continued O'Mahony.
However, County Board Secretary Feeney feels that the idea of a close season is a "good idea.''
"You see a lot of inter-county managers starting collective training in late October and that's ridiculous. The season will run until July and that's way too long for players. Then there is the cost element,'' said Feeney.
Feeney also praised proposals to restrict the number of days on which club championship games can be played before an inter-county championship match to 13. This, he says, was a bone of contention in Mayo in 2006 under the Mickey Moran regime.
"It means that you only have to miss one Sunday before a county match for club games. Prior to that we had no games for three Sundays in a row.''
