Glennon and brolly comments shine light on amateur sport pressures

Combining GAA with professional commitments is an "awful disadvantage" at times, leaving some players at the end of their tether, according to Westmeath footballer Denis Glennon.

Speaking to the Irish Daily Star yesterday, the Tyrrellspass clubman - who is a serving member of An Garda Síochána - said that he worked a night shift until 7am before last Sunday's O'Byrne Cup clash with Meath.

Glennon limped off after a half an hour after picking up a knock, but his performance prior to that was criticised by Westmeath manager Tom Cribbin after Sunday's game.

However, Glennon insisted it was an example of the intensifying crisis facing amateur sportsmen.

"Before the Meath match, I was working until seven in the morning. I had about three hours' sleep that day," he said.

"I was gone off after 20 minutes with an injury, whether that was a lack of sleep or just unfortunate, but these are commitments we have to do now to compete, because it is so competitive.

"I'd be on night shifts a lot and it's an awful disadvantage for me."

Glennon's comments came as former Derry footballer and RTÉ pundit Joe Brolly described GAA players as "indentured slaves" in an interview with Newstalk's Off the Ball programme last night.

Brolly railed against the pressures being put on modern Gaelic football and hurling players at the expense of their professional and family lives.

"When I played, it was positive. We trained twice a week, played a match at the weekend and if you got further in the Championship, you stepped up the training a bit," said Brolly, calling for the GPA to lead the way in a radical overhaul of the system.

“Everybody in the Derry team had a trade or a profession. Some of them had wives and children. We had time to socialise. The important thing was that we were developing as people and building a career. The problem now is that we’ve imported professional practices into an amateur sport. The boards are complicit in this.

“We’ve a real problem on our hands because we’ve got all these young lads between 20 and 30 drifting between scholarship to scholarship. They’re not able to work full-time, they’re not able to build careers.

“Managers are coming in and wringing every last drop out of them. The ethos we’ve allowed to develop is win at all cost."