I have been following and playing football in Cavan for many years, seen alot of very young good players come and go very good players. Over the past few years I have been involved in the training of teams at all levels.

Seeing what i have seen I am really concerned for the well being of your young players and the further of these young people.

Take a young boy age 16 for example that is a very good footballer and I know there are alot of them around. This young lad is playing Club U-16 he will also be playing u-16 for his county, next up is the club minor and in cases of the very good footballer and i have seen it county minor, this young lad is also playing with his school. And maybe playing other sports.

in the above example you have a young man playing with 5/6 different teams all looking to win and all training around the same time of the year. you have 6 different mangers maybe some of these mangers using these teams as a steping stone to bigger jobs and rightly so. My point is each manger is trying to get the most out of this young player. He has 5/6 mangers each with their own program and different stages of their season doing pre season, speed work etc. Non of the mangers are talking to one another ( in most cases )to see what this young lad is doing.

( as more boys and girls are participating in organized and recreational sports, there seems to be an increasing number of young athletes who specialize
in just one sport EG. GAA starting at an early age or compete for multiple teams year-round without adequate time for recovery between sport seasons.
According to some observers, this type of intense training and competition can result in injuries, illness, or burnout, which may have a detrimental effect on
the young athlete's ability or desire to participate in sports as an ongoing lifestyle choice) (Not my words)

if you ask any young player to play a game of course he/she will but I think the time has come were we the mentors have to all get together to see who is doing what. So what your culb might not win the u-14, u-16 and so on this year, but we have a duty od care to these young boys/ girls a duty that we took on when we take a job with a club.

Over training has many effects on these young people if the intensity, volume, or frequency of training exceed the capacity of an athlete, extreme fatigue, injury, or illness can result . On a short-term basis, excessive training is called overreaching. For example, if a Gaa player participates in several days of intense and high-volume training (without adequate rest and recovery between workouts), it is likely that performance will begin to decrease. The rationale
behind this type of training is to overwork an athlete to build up tolerance and then taper to allow time for recovery and rejuvenation.

This maybe not what people want to hear as a new season is near but look at the injuriers and retirments in the last while Declan O'sullivan kerry, Shane Walsh waterford none of them 31 years old yet. Injuries to Michael Meehan Galway, Dermot Earley kildare, all should have been able to play alot more football,not to mention club men of your own that can not carry out any more.

we need to teach young players about the best ways to prevent injuries like ACL, shoulder, back etc. look more at Flexibility also to help them play for as long as they can, not just take as much out of them as early as we can get it.

Hope i didnt go on to much.

I would love a little feed back on this to see if its just me or can other people see it to.

The further is Blue

mick211 (Cavan) - Posts: 8 - 28/11/2014 11:59:55    1675312

Its absolutely true and coming from a duel code club it seems like everyone wants a piece of the better players. The better the player the worse the abuse. If a coach doesn't know what else their players are doing they shouldn't be a coach because basically they couldn't give a rats and that is the worst type to be coaching. The most important thing a young player can learn to do, is to say NO, to coaches, parents, teachers and to stand up for themselves. The promises these people make are easily forgotten/broken when the young player gets injured. But be also wary of the coach who pretends to be looking after their welfare - they only want them for themselves. Make no mistake few have their interests at heart.
The only thing any coach is responsible for is the team and their own behavior, they don't "own" the players. They have no right to speak on their behalf or tell them what to do, if that is their style then they will never achieve anything, they are bullies. You offer them advise and they make the decisions about their choices, if you do it right you will produce fine honest players. Thankfully the majority of modern coaches have a team approach and the very best have the best players interests at heart.

arock (Dublin) - Posts: 4896 - 28/11/2014 12:45:18    1675323

Good post and a topic that needs to be aired more. From what I have seen very few coaches are willing to take a long term view and flog some young lads to the point where they just give it up.This time of year should be a natural close season but schools are now training harder than most clubs and even some counties at under age. The answer is always more difficult than the question and while guidlines are issued they are ignored by most. Parents need to be more aware of what's going on as it's very difficult for a young lad to say know to his coach/teacher.

lillyboy (Kildare) - Posts: 429 - 28/11/2014 13:17:16    1675331

Its a difficult situation but theres not a whole lot you can do. Your're not going to turn around to a player and tell him your playing too much we are dropping you.

Take player A from Cavan and player B from Monaghan. Both are almost identical wing forwards. Both are stars at 16 playing at all levels. Player A is suddenly told to only play at minor level and no other level but player B is still playing at all levels. 5 years later Monaghan are winning All-Irelands galore with B winning player of the year and player A is still playing with the club but only gets a look in now and again with the senior set up. Now if you were a manager would you tell the next up and coming star to stop playing at all levels? Not a hope.

I think its a huge problem and the only real way of stopping burnout is for the GAA to make it a rule as to how many levels one can play at. I would say 4. E.g County under 21, club under 21 and club adult level and maybe colleges.

deadybai (Kilkenny) - Posts: 63 - 28/11/2014 15:19:18    1675354

There should by a simple solution to this.....PARENTS! They should be monitoring their child's activity with the club and not allowing the club to take advantage. The child is after all under 18 and their responsibility. No different to being responsible for the childs other health issues. After all, something like this has an effect on the childs physical and mental well being. PARENTS RESPONSIBILITY to monitor.

Dubfan Abroad (Dublin) - Posts: 282 - 28/11/2014 15:29:17    1675359

My club is a big dual club. I have coached juvenile teams for many years (have been on a break for a few years recently) and in my experience, in my club, there was good communication between team managers to ensure players aren't overtrained and still get training in with both teams. But then you would have lads who were on the 2 county panels and playing both in schools. that's 6 teams. Communication is essential. It becomes far harder to control, however, when there are other teams outside the club with their own agendas.
It was an issue that I was always very conscious of, even as a 17 year old coaching younger teams. If lads were doing a lot of training, they would be in good enough nick not to do any of the more physical parts of training, and we would just have them doing drills that concentrated on skill. It was also important that they would sit out some training sessions altogether. As the OP said, it is vital that the children, their parents and their coaches learn that rest is vital. I think most coaches are not aware of this and also not aware of the damage they could do to the young person.
An extremely good dual player of say 19 could play and train at the top level for 9 teams in a single year - club 21(x2), county 21(x2), Sigerson, Fitzgibbon, club senior(x2) and maybe even inter county. Now that's a lot of directions to be pulled at that age, not to mention the amount of training and matches this teenager could be put through.
But at the end of the day the GAA itself needs to address this issue. It needs to be seriously looked at by the top brass and a system set in place to cater for the welfare of our future stars.

Plasticman (Dublin) - Posts: 26 - 28/11/2014 16:34:56    1675375

Hi lads. I recently asked 12 lads who are on development panels down here from 14 to 16 about their gaa schedule for the year gone. All are dual players for their clubs and because they are the best of whats in the county are also playing an age over their own. So thats 4 club teams, a county dev squad or maybe 2, and prob 2 or more school teams. The average turned out to be 52 games. Not training, not soccer etc but gaa games. Crazy.

old yellar (None) - Posts: 2625 - 28/11/2014 21:34:10    1675427

I think there is call for a system to be put in place to be fair this does not go on in any other sport...as some one said to me if you have a great race horse do you give it to 4 trainers at the as time and let them do what they want with it...,if the answer is no the question is why....Young lads/girls are the same there will come a point when they can not or do not want any more...and the manger that got his all out of them is on to the next team being called a great lad..the system should be along the lines that players are registered, reg being with a body set in place. This group should be aware of what the youths are doing and how often...maybe they can be limited to playing with 2 teams in any give time frame e.g over 3 months....this means the the player is not being over worked and as one competition is over they will be available to the next group....so at any time they are only playing with two teams

mick211 (Cavan) - Posts: 8 - 29/11/2014 11:24:04    1675444

Young players being put at risk 28/11/2014 11:59:55 mick211
I have been following and playing football in Cavan for many years, seen a lot of very young good players come and go very good players. Over the past few years I have been involved in the training of teams at all levels.
Seeing what i have seen I am really concerned for the well being of your young players and the further of these young people.
Take a young boy age 16 for example that is a very good footballer and I know there are a lot of them around. This young lad is playing Club U-16 he will also be playing u-16 for his county, next up is the club minor and in cases of the very good footballer and i have seen it county minor, this young lad is also playing with his school. And maybe playing other sports.
in the above example you have a young man playing with 5/6 different teams all looking to win and all training around the same time of the year. you have 6 different mangers maybe some of these mangers using these teams as a stepping stone to bigger jobs and rightly so. My point is each manger is trying to get the most out of this young player. He has 5/6 mangers each with their own program and different stages of their season doing pre season, speed work etc. Non of the mangers are talking to one another ( in most cases )to see what this young lad is doing.
(as more boys and girls are participating in organised and recreational sports, there seems to be an increasing number of young athletes who specialise in just one sport EG. GAA starting at an early age or compete for multiple teams year-round without adequate time for recovery between sport seasons.
According to some observers, this type of intense training and competition can result in injuries, illness, or burnout, which may have a detrimental effect on the young athlete's ability or desire to participate in sports as an ongoing lifestyle choice) (Not my words) if you ask any young player to play a game of course he/she will but I think the time has come were we the mentors have to all get together to see who is doing what. So what your culb might not win the u-14, u-16 and so on this year, but we have a duty od care to these young boys/ girls a duty that we took on when we take a job with a club.
Over training has many effects on these young people if the intensity, volume, or frequency of training exceed the capacity of an athlete, extreme fatigue, injury, or illness can result . On a short-term basis, excessive training is called overreaching. For example, if a Gaa player participates in several days of intense and high-volume training (without adequate rest and recovery between workouts), it is likely that performance will begin to decrease. The rationale
behind this type of training is to overwork an athlete to build up tolerance and then taper to allow time for recovery and rejuvenation.
This maybe not what people want to hear as a new season is near but look at the injuriers and retirments in the last while Declan O'sullivan kerry, Shane Walsh waterford none of them 31 years old yet. Injuries to Michael Meehan Galway, Dermot Earley kildare, all should have been able to play alot more football,not to mention club men of your own that can not carry out any more.
we need to teach young players about the best ways to prevent injuries like ACL, shoulder, back etc. look more at Flexibility also to help them play for as long as they can, not just take as much out of them as early as we can get it.
Hope i didnt go on to much.
I would love a little feed back on this to see if its just me or can other people see it to.Very simple things. Stop players from playing up a grade if involved in so many teams. If playing several sports the coaches of each team have to discuss issues together. Give player allowances for taking training sessions off and limiting the number of matches in a certain time frame.

ormondbannerman (Clare) - Posts: 13473 - 29/11/2014 12:53:00    1675453

28/11/2014 12:45:18 arock
Its absolutely true and coming from a duel code club it seems like everyone wants a piece of the better players. The better the player the worse the abuse. If a coach doesn't know what else their players are doing they shouldn't be a coach because basically they couldn't give a rats and that is the worst type to be coaching. The most important thing a young player can learn to do, is to say NO, to coaches, parents, teachers and to stand up for themselves. The promises these people make are easily forgotten/broken when the young player gets injured. But be also wary of the coach who pretends to be looking after their welfare - they only want them for themselves. Make no mistake few have their interests at heart.
The only thing any coach is responsible for is the team and their own behavior, they don't "own" the players. They have no right to speak on their behalf or tell them what to do, if that is their style then they will never achieve anything, they are bullies. You offer them advise and they make the decisions about their choices, if you do it right you will produce fine honest players. Thankfully the majority of modern coaches have a team approach and the very best have the best players interests at heart. Lots of fighting from your club then arock....
Very hard for a player to say no when in most cases there is nobody around to help advise them on what is best to do
28/11/2014 15:19:18 deadybai
Its a difficult situation but theres not a whole lot you can do. Your're not going to turn around to a player and tell him your playing too much we are dropping you.
Take player A from Cavan and player B from Monaghan. Both are almost identical wing forwards. Both are stars at 16 playing at all levels. Player A is suddenly told to only play at minor level and no other level but player B is still playing at all levels. 5 years later Monaghan are winning All-Irelands galore with B winning player of the year and player A is still playing with the club but only gets a look in now and again with the senior set up. Now if you were a manager would you tell the next up and coming star to stop playing at all levels? Not a hope.
I think its a huge problem and the only real way of stopping burnout is for the GAA to make it a rule as to how many levels one can play at. I would say 4. E.g County under 21, club under 21 and club adult level and maybe colleges.By stopping a kid from playing the odd game or two you wouldn't be dropping them you would be resting them to ensure they can play to the best of their abilities
Playing for 4 teams is even too much. Prblem isn't so much the number of games its the number of training sessions a player playing on a large number of teams is involved in
28/11/2014 15:29:17 Dubfan Abroad
There should by a simple solution to this.....PARENTS! They should be monitoring their child's activity with the club and not allowing the club to take advantage. The child is after all under 18 and their responsibility. No different to being responsible for the childs other health issues. After all, something like this has an effect on the childs physical and mental well being. PARENTS RESPONSIBILITY to monitor. You have a point but its not that simple. Coaches have a very big role as they're the one's who decide how much a youngster plays in a game, if they play at all etc

ormondbannerman (Clare) - Posts: 13473 - 29/11/2014 12:58:32    1675454

28/11/2014 21:34:10
old yellar
Hi lads. I recently asked 12 lads who are on development panels down here from 14 to 16 about their gaa schedule for the year gone. All are dual players for their clubs and because they are the best of whats in the county are also playing an age over their own. So thats 4 club teams, a county dev squad or maybe 2, and prob 2 or more school teams. The average turned out to be 52 games. Not training, not soccer etc but gaa games. Crazy. That's ridiculous and almost dangerous. And if that's just the number of games how many training sessions did they have on top of that?
We in rugby are lucky. At underage you cant play for the main team if in a big rugby school and also play club underage rugby. You cant play adult or u20 rugby if not 18. Players generally only play 1 maybe 2 games a weekend and cant play more than around 240 minutes per week(3 matches).
When I was in 5th/6th year I was training 3/4 times a week for rugby. Once or twice in my school, once for a regional development squad and once/twice for my club under 18/20 side and I would play between 2 and 3 games a week depending on if I had a schools game and my school didn't play a huge amount of rugby but that was all. I had 2 teams at most to play for apart from a few odd games and that was it
29/11/2014 11:24:04 mick211
I think there is call for a system to be put in place to be fair this does not go on in any other sport...as some one said to me if you have a great race horse do you give it to 4 trainers at the as time and let them do what they want with it...,if the answer is no the question is why....Young lads/girls are the same there will come a point when they can not or do not want any more...and the manger that got his all out of them is on to the next team being called a great lad..the system should be along the lines that players are registered, reg being with a body set in place. This group should be aware of what the youths are doing and how often...maybe they can be limited to playing with 2 teams in any give time frame e.g over 3 months....this means the the player is not being over worked and as one competition is over they will be available to the next group....so at any time they are only playing with two teams What system would you put in place?
Playing with just 2 teams in any period is quite difficult to manage. How do you determine what teams get priority. It still doesn't stop players from being over trained.

ormondbannerman (Clare) - Posts: 13473 - 29/11/2014 13:06:07    1675456

4 training sessions /games per week is max for young players. makes sense really. Half of mayo minor all Ireland minor winners 2013 out injured at the moment as a result of overtraining, paying the price now, probably the same in other counties.

Miler (Mayo) - Posts: 1015 - 29/11/2014 13:16:56    1675457

29/11/2014 13:16:56
Miler
4 training sessions /games per week is max for young players. makes sense really. Half of mayo minor all Ireland minor winners 2013 out injured at the moment as a result of overtraining, paying the price now, probably the same in other counties. Where do you get 4 from? Im not sure 4 is a max that anyone can see without medical proof backing their point up
In rugby which is much more physically intensive we have guys at u20 level training 3 times a week. Tuesdays, Thursdays with senior squad, on a Friday Night with the u20s and then a u20s match Saturday and a seconds match sunday. They don't have both 20s and 2nds matches every week but have on 4 or 5 occasions this season and this would be the same across most rugby clubs..

ormondbannerman (Clare) - Posts: 13473 - 29/11/2014 13:27:37    1675459

Just because rugby people do it doesnt make it right Ormo.
Those training sessions and matches you mention could come back to haunt them youngsters later in life, as its putting their bodies (many of which are still growing naturally) under huge pressure.
I think that even 4 sessions is too much.

joncarter (Galway) - Posts: 2692 - 29/11/2014 15:35:30    1675468

At a Dublin development session for young lads recently , each lad was given a questioaire to fill out , one question posed was how many teams do you play for , every age group counted as one , every code counted as one , all games to be included rugby , gaa , basketball etc
One lad who missed alot of games last year listed nine team all included surprise surprise , in the last year Ive fallen out with coaches , teachers as Ive pulled my two lads out of training sessions and matches , theyd play till they drop and dont know how to say No . R and R Rest and Recovery is what its about if your looking down the long road , broken hips , dodgy knees if you take the short term view . A parent if he has his eye on the ball will have a good idea if his lad is doing too much and how much rest he gets , an individual coach will not , Last year I insisted my boys keept a sports journal from the first of Jan were we could track over a period of months how much was been done and when there was rest periods , when your in the height of a season and going for honours everybody looks forward and rarely back hence the journal is a good tool .

Damothedub (Dublin) - Posts: 5193 - 29/11/2014 18:20:40    1675497

Last year I insisted my boys keept a sports journal from the first of Jan were we could track over a period of months how much was been done and when there was rest periods , when your in the height of a season and going for honours everybody looks forward and rarely back hence the journal is a good tool .

This is an excellent idea - I'll definitely be nicking it for my nephews.

You'd think the association could easily use this to highlight and help tackle the issue, especially for the better players who are likely to be pulled between multiple different teams (and especially different sports) It wouldn't take all that much in the way of cost or effort.

As you say parents bear the ultimate responsibility here, and if a parent can point to the fact that their child has played x number of matches and attended y number of training sessions in the last 3/6 months, it makes it much harder for some shortsighted coach/manager to put pressure on young lads.

besidetheditch (Dublin) - Posts: 81 - 30/11/2014 13:56:51    1675558

I think the time has come were the county boards keep a profile of all players to make it easy all players from u-16 up the are playing county, or involved in development squads. With this information they will know who is playing what and when clubs of course have to be involved... This means that the information is at hand if young players are being over worked and something can be done about it...the thing is players will play 3 games a day if they are let. It is up the the mentors to make sure this is not happening.
Mick

mick211 (Cavan) - Posts: 8 - 30/11/2014 18:52:10    1675624

29/11/2014 18:20:40 Damothedub
At a Dublin development session for young lads recently, each lad was given a questioaire to fill out, one question posed was how many teams do you play for, every age group counted as one, every code counted as one, all games to be included rugby, gaa, basketball etc
One lad who missed alot of games last year listed nine team all included surprise surprise, in the last year Ive fallen out with coaches , teachers as Ive pulled my two lads out of training sessions and matches, theyd play till they drop and dont know how to say No. R and R Rest and Recovery is what its about if your looking down the long road, broken hips, dodgy knees if you take the short term view. A parent if he has his eye on the ball will have a good idea if his lad is doing too much and how much rest he gets, an individual coach will not, Last year I insisted my boys keept a sports journal from the first of Jan were we could track over a period of months how much was been done and when there was rest periods, when your in the height of a season and going for honours everybody looks forward and rarely back hence the journal is a good tool. Fair play Damo not many parents/coaches do that enough.
30/11/2014 18:52:10 mick211
I think the time has come were the county boards keep a profile of all players to make it easy all players from u-16 up the are playing county, or involved in development squads. With this information they will know who is playing what and when clubs of course have to be involved... This means that the information is at hand if young players are being over worked and something can be done about it...the thing is players will play 3 games a day if they are let. It is up the the mentors to make sure this is not happening.
Mick It cant be just county boards as there is huge cross sports issues in this topic and it needs to be Irish Sports Council working with all sporting organisations and parents. The use of "mentors" is wrong here especially if they let things like this happen. They are coaches and not mentoring the players to show the best of their abilities

ormondbannerman (Clare) - Posts: 13473 - 30/11/2014 19:06:58    1675628

When I was young all we had was football and the girls played basketball , in football we allways played our own age group and some of us were asked to play in the next age group up as well ,it was all grand till we discovered alcohol and women and then it all went south fairly quick.

KingdomBoy1 (Kerry) - Posts: 14092 - 30/11/2014 21:39:53    1675687

There are two main issues in the GAA.
Overuse of good underage players and underuse of average players.

Both result in player drop off. Particularly between the ages of 18-21.
Here is my solution.

School/colleges football confined to Spring. No training before 1st January. All competitions finished by End of April.
No player trains for more than 1 grade. No one plays for more than 2 teams (two grades of football or one grade of football and hurling)

Club underage starts in June and runs through to October. November and December off season.

No player plays for more than two teams. 1 county and 1 club or 2 club teams.

At the moment a good minor can be playing club and county minor, club senior, club and county U21, sigerson and freshers.
An average 20 year old might get 1 or 2 U21 games and some junior football.

The goal of an amateur organisation should be to promote the game and give people the opportunity to play. Not a win at all costs mentality we currently have. Good young players are fast tracked through and get over played and lose interest. Average young players are not given the opportunity to play.

When I was 20, I didn't play colleges football, couldn't make the intermediate team. Played 2 U21 matches in spring and 8 junior matches all summer, started 1 intermediate match and was pulled from the Junior team 3 times (in case I was needed for the intermediates). Trained from January for 11 matches all year and got dropped from the Junior team for going on holidays when there was a intermediate championship match on. The club got rid of the Junior team the following year because half the team were not taking it seriously. I switched to a club in Dublin after that.

There was a good 17 year old lad at the time in the club. He played minor, U21, Junior, Intermediate, County minor, soccer and basketball.
When he was 20 he played U21, Intermediate, County U21, sigerson, soccer and basketball.
I run the odd marathon now, do a few triathlons. He does a bit of cycling as his knees are gone. I'm 32 and he is 29 and neither of us have played football for our home club in 5 years. Club is now fully Junior and struggling to field a team all down to short term thinking.

Player welfare is a nice word but means nothing in the GAA.

tirawleybaron (Mayo) - Posts: 1106 - 01/12/2014 08:50:24    1675699