Donegal’s most decorated footballer and Electric Ireland Minor Star Awards judging panellist Karl Lacey speaks on minors making the right choices, Oisin Gallen trying his luck at Aussie Rules and the lessons that Donegal learned this year.

Currently a key member in Declan Bonner's backroom team, the 2012 'Footballer of the Year' was speaking at the 2019 Electric Ireland Minor Star Awards which took place in Croke Park on Saturday night...

On Minors making the right choices:

“You can’t put all your eggs in the one basket at that age. You don’t want to specialise too early, try out a few different things. Luckily for our association, the GAA, we’ve such talent joining clubs and playing but it’s important that they’re mixing, trying out what soccer is like, athletics and not just sport, you know, dancing or playing music. It keeps them with a nice balance in their lives that they’re not full on focused on Gaelic football. That can’t go on forever so they’re 16, 17 years of age the game starts to get every demanding for them. They’ll go into colleges after their Leaving Cert, they’ll start getting pulled and dragged in all sorts of different directions and that’s when the challenges come then. That’s when they face choices.

“I think the enjoyment and the fun has to be a big part of it, because if you don’t enjoy what you’ve picked to do then you’re not going to be passionate about it and when it comes to time when the manager puts on training at 6 o'clock in the morning you’re going to struggle. Even though you might be better in terms of talent, if you’re not enjoying it that talent will run out. If you don’t have enjoyment you’re not going to push yourself.

“You’ve got to use the good people around you, in terms of your family. These are the guys that want the best for you, these are the guys that are going to be positive around you. Your friends that like to see you do well. You’ve got to pick and choose who you’re support network is and who are the right people to keep close to that are positive around you in terms of that you’re trying to achieve.”

On Oisin Gallen potentially going to Australia:

“It’s great to be asked from a professional game to come over for a trial. Unfortunately, it’s not great for the GAA, not great for us when we’ve a talented young 19 year old who stepped into the senior squad this year and did very well for us that he’s being pulled away. I wish him all the best and as I said he’s very talented and I just hope that he goes over and enjoys himself and represents himself well.”

On Donegal learning from last season:

“We know we left it behind us in Castlebar. We didn’t really get going to what we hoped. It was a positive season throughout the summer. We were starting to do things really well, players were starting to peak at the right time for us. Then a few things happened like Eoin Ban broke his ankle just before the Kerry game. We came to Croke Park and got a reasonable result in terms of a draw but we had it all to do still and went down to Mayo hoping we were in a good place but that sport you know.”

Tweet

Most Read Stories