GAA Director General Paraic Duffy has has dismissed criticism from Joe Brolly by saying he'd "not pay too much attention to" what the Derryman had to say.
In his Irish Mail On Sunday column yesterday, Brolly ridiculed Duffy's record on player welfare, likening his fellow Ulsterman to Sir Humphrey Aplleby, the high ranking civil servant in Yes, Minister who thwarts every attempt to actually get anything done by commissioning a report.
The 1993 All-Ireland winner listed off several instances of widespread injury within the inter-county GAA scene and quoted Kildare boss Jason Ryan to back up concerns over what road the GAA is going down
When asked for his response to Brolly's column, Duffy told Ivan Yates on Newstalk's Breakfast: “That’s typical Joe, so I’d not pay too much attention to that.
“Many of the recommendations around burnout and around club fixtures have come from me and I’ve driven them very hard.
“They haven’t all been accepted. What I said in report is we’ll bring together the best ideas from the last six or seven years - going back to Pat O’Neill’s committee - put them in one document and put them before Central Council at Congress and see if we can get them accepted.
“This is a very intractable problem, and it’s easy for Joe to throw those type of comments.”
Duffy added: "We’ve so many players playing on multiple teams. That’s out biggest single difficulty. You’ve players of the age 20, 21 playing under-21 competitions, playing colleges competitions, playing football, playing hurley. There are no easy solutions.”
So Pauric Duffy v dismissive of @JoeBrolly1993 concerns about the demise ofclub football and health and welfare of players on Radio this am
— Dr Austin O'Kennedy (@DrOKennedy) February 2, 2015
Duffy, who started a new contract with the GAA yesterday having completed his original seven-year remit, revisited the Garth Brooks concerts fiasco with Ivan, and also elaborated on awarding Sky Sports broadcasting rights to Gaelic games.
He said he was "in favour” of club championships being played in one calendar year and explained how €40m had been allocated by the GAA towards the redevelopment of Pairc Ui Chaoimh and Casement Park.
“We’ve addressed this problem over the past seven or eight years," added Duffy on the hot topic of player welfare. "This year for the first time, we’re piloting ... player welfare mentors, who’ll work with [college-going students].
“We’re going to work with them and see if that’s a help."
He added: “The problem period is that January-February-March period when you’ve got colleges, Sigerson, Fitzgibbon, under-21. I think we need to impose limits on players. Personally I’ve never been in favour of the under-21 football competition.
“I think it puts too many demands on players. Getting a consensus around what we should do has proven very difficult."
