Cathal Cregg and Niall Moyna are in agreement that intercounty footballers should be blocked from participating in the Sigerson Cup.

The pair feel that the workload on intercounty players has become unsustainable and that something has to give.

Roscommon attacker and Connacht GAA strength and conditioning officer Cregg told The Irish Times:

"My belief is that whatever way you do it, the training load has to be taken off that age group. Whatever way you do it is open for debate, but there's no other way of achieving that apart from removing the players or some of the competitions.

"There are three competitions there for elite players: the U21 championship, the national league and the Sigerson, which are all happening at the one time, so they're all trying to prepare for that and do their best. Re-scheduling the fixtures or stopping players from playing in competitions is the most obvious option for alleviating that.

"If I were a coach or a player in that category, I'd want to play in all of those competitions, but I think the decision should simply be taken away from him and his coach - within reason - and that's the only way forward for the game and the player's welfare."

DCU boss Moyna concurs: "I think Cathal's view makes sense. We're running competitions concurrently and all of them are training at different stages of the preparation cycle.

"Ideally, I'd like to revisit the proposals of the Burnout Task Force, which replaces the intercounty U21 and minor grades with one U19 level. Anything that restricts the number of teams one player can play for would help

"There are two ways of looking at it though, in that the Sigerson and Fitzgibbon Cups have been running for longer than the minor or U21 championships or even the national leagues, so there's a legacy issue there. But the world has changed since 1911.

"Managers in colleges would still have a good selection of players to choose from."

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