MONAGHAN captain Ryan Wylie believes the GAA and GPA both could have shown “more leadership” around the debate over whether inter-county football would take place.
Wylie revealed that he “got on to” the GPA amid the debate over whether the Championship should happen.
The players’ body put out a survey a day before the resumption of the Allianz Leagues, to which 52 per cent of players responded saying they were happy to play as things were.
A total of 24 per cent said they weren’t happy to play, while another 24 per cent said they wanted better Covid protocols, a situation that has since seen changes made by the GAA.
While the Ballybay man declined to go into detail, he did feel the GAA could have handled the situation better.
“I am not getting into that argument. I got on to them [the GPA] separately and told them what I thought. I don’t think it needs to be shared.
“I just thought the GAA could have come out with a statement when the numbers were rising, but I am happy enough to play.”
Happy he is. A radiographer in the Mater Hospital in Dublin, he’s at pains to stress that he’s not a public health doctor and that all of the decision-making is beyond his grade: “At the minute everything seems stable in the hospital, but manageable, if that makes sense.
“To be honest, I feel very safe coming to training every week.
''We are checking in every night before we come to training that we have a team doctor here. I am glad we are able to do something.
“There was probably a lot of confusion as to whether it was going on or not. I thought maybe the GAA or GPA could have shown more leadership.
“In that sense, I suppose, it was nearly left up to us and we knew this date was coming over the last couple of months.
''I thought it was a bit late for them to be saying we should be testing players.
“They wanted to get their act in order, they could have done a lot of this in the meantime.
''Just for ourselves personally, and I can’t speak for other teams, there are temperature checks the whole time, hand sanitisers, masks, the whole lot so personally I feel very safe coming to training. It is nice to get out in the fresh air.
“I am delighted it is going ahead. I have no problems.
“I suppose I see a lot of people giving out about it, about why a lot of things have closed down, and business are not opening and they are looking at 30 lads running around after each other on a field.
“I can see both sides of the argument.
“As I said, I think it could all have been handled better throughout from the higher authorities who could have come out with statements sooner instead of leaving county boards in the lurch.
“It was obvious the cases were getting higher as the weeks were going on.
''That is just my opinion on it but I am happy that I am able to come down the road and get out and train, because at the start of lockdown, for the first week or two, we were not happy, but the break was good but after that it was a case of ‘what are we going to do now?’
“It would have made for a long winter personally if we had nothing to do in the last couple of weeks.”
An immensely proud county captain, Wylie said that the day Seamus McEnaney had asked him was “a great day for me personally and a great day for my family.
“There have been certain difficulties as you know growing up. I wasn’t always the biggest and I wasn’t always the best, so for my parents I was just happy to make them proud.”
Monaghan are favourites to emerge from their side of the Ulster draw to reach the final, but form genuinely seems to offer very little guidance when it comes to games with Cavan down the years.
Since 1987, there have been 11 championship meetings and there’s not been a single one-sided game among them.
Cavan got the better of it last year in a deserved four-point victory but the shoe seems to be back on the other foot after a weekend that saw Monaghan stay up in Division One and their neighbours drop to Division Three.
“I would not say we want to prove anything. I think that is the wrong term. We have done a lot of good things as well having bad days, but I would not say that one game would make or break you.
“We have had a lot of disappointments over the years so we are trying to bounce back just like every other year.”
