In recent weeks there have been high profile breaches of Covid-19 guidelines with evidence surfacing of the Dublin and Monaghan senior football teams holding training sessions.
Before this, Cork and Down had also breached guidelines. In all four instances, their team managers have been hit with lengthy suspensions from their own county boards and from the hierarchy of the GAA. These suspensions are a farce. None of the managers of the teams above should be suspended for any length of time.
It's fine for large groups of people to assemble in parks and play football amongst themselves but when a group of eight inter-county players gather and play some football, then it becomes national headlines.
I can guarantee you that each county team at senior level, both in football and in hurling have been doing some level of collective training, and I agree that they should be too.
This has all come about when the GAA were happy enough to let slide their "elite status".
If they had put up a fight to hold onto this status, then all counties would have been allowed to train away as normal and a return to National Leagues would have been close to the final stages at this point.
This would also have allowed a championship to be played out with the backdoor system in place. Because the GAA are an amateur organisation that does not qualify them to the elite bracket, but in truth everyone knows that inter-county players train as much as, if not more than a lot of other sports.
If I was still an inter-county player, I would take great offence to this considering the level of training and commitment that is required to participate at that level now.
On top of this, the amount of time that you spend away from your family to carry out these sessions as well as team meetings and weekends spent away for training camps, yet you aren't seen as an elite athlete.
This is a joke and it contributed to the breaches that have happened in the past few weeks.
The inter-county game has moved away from the times when you trained twice a week and played a game at the weekend.
It has moved away from the times when a player could have a couple of pints the evening before a big championship match. Imagine what it would be like now, if a county player was seen out socialising and enjoying a drink the evening before a big match.
There would be an outcry and the individual would be crucified across social media networks, given the importance that is placed on the inter-county stage currently.
There are sacrifices you must make as an inter-county player and I've always respected that end of things but if you are going to take away the social life of an individual and expect them to train in normal circumstances five to six times a week, then don't embarrass them and say that they aren't elite enough to train away.
They regularly play in front of four to five thousand people in National League games. This is a hell of a lot more that attends an Irish League match, so treat them the same way.
Thankfully though, we have a return to GAA training this week in the six counties in groups of 15, so county and club teams can collectively get together knowing that they are not going to be breaking any Covid guidelines, but isn't it ironic that Kieran McGeeney can decide to take his team to train in Crossmaglen or Cullaville but less than a mile down the road, if Mickey Harte decided to train his Louth team in Sheelagh and got found out, he would then face an equivalent ban that both Dessie Farrell and Seamus McEnaney have received.
That is of course for this week only as intercounty training is permitted in the 26 counties from next Monday onwards.
As we are back training from this week, it would be great to see the fixtures committees from each county announce a plan to the return of games competitively.
I appreciate that they will have a lot of headaches in putting these in place but I don't think a club player should be restricted from playing games, because inter-county action resumes first. In an ideal world, you would love to have your county players available to you for all games but in the world that we now live in, I am in favour of playing part of the leagues without the county players involved.
This obviously provides a manager with the opportunity to look at more players in competitive action and to weigh up his options before the cut throat nature of championship football.
Before a return to games though, I am sure all our players are looking forward to a few weeks of hell with plenty of endurance runs scheduled into sessions the length and breadth of the country. This is the one and only thing that I don't miss about playing.
