Eamonn O’Hara thinks Joe Brolly has gone over the top in his depiction of the modern Gaelic footballers’ plight, but the Sligo man reckons there’s still a lot of merit in his Derry colleague's overall argument.
Brolly likened the life of today’s GAA players to being like ”indentured slaves” on Off The Ball last night, and while new Ballaghaderreen boss O’Hara agrees with the general message he reckons the sacrifice is “manageable”.
“Joe has a great way with words – he has a beautiful way with words - and he makes it sound probably an awful lot worse than it actually is, but I have to agree with a lot of the things that he says,” O’Hara, who retired from inter-county football in 2013 after almost two decades with Sligo, told Newstalk’s Oisin Langan today.
“The time (required) was a huge demand on players. For me, that became more of a chore than anything else.”
O’Hara added that he thinks the heavy sacrifices GAA stars endure are “choices that players make”.
However, the 2007 Connacht SFC winner says he totally agrees with Brolly’s concerns about the GAA calendar. O’Hara continued: “The traditionalist will probably be pulling their hair out ... (but) we have to start examining this. We have to start rethinking this."
The fixture and competition congestion at present is “madness” according to the 2002 All Star, who added: “I hope that a personality like Joe saying it and drawing attention to it ... maybe people will react.”
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