Dick Clerkin, Alan O'Mara and Ruaidhrí O'Connor joined Nathan Murphy on Off the Ball for this week's Saturday Panel.

An article in the Irish Times about the amount of players based in Dublin who have to travel to training camps further afield came up for discussion. 

"Looking at some of the numbers here, Donegal: 14 players, 10 from Tipperary, you've got 16 from Cavan travelling up and down, Monaghan: 25, Louth: 22 and that for an awful lot of the counties - they're coming to the players," Nathan opened up with, asking Alan O'Mara if split training camps were becoming the norm?

"Yeah, it would vary depending on different times of the year. We would have done combinations of both where, when I was involved, sometimes you would have trained at Abbotstown. In fairness, for a large amount of the time, we were going home."

The logistics became an issue when, in O'Mara's case, only one of the squad was based in Cavan - with the rest scattered around the country. 

"In fariness, Abbotstown has been a great addition for that (training). In fairness I don't think many of us appreciated it at the start when it came in. It has taken a load off but I always remember there was one training, going back a couple of years ago, I was part of the under-21 squad in Cavan and the manager asked: 'Who is about during the week because we want to do a session in Cavan?'

"In the entire panel, there was one that was based in Cavan during the week because we were all either at work or in college. 

"So, you were carting all those lads - lads from Galway, lads from Sligo, lads from Dublin, lads from Dundlak - one was actually at home and it always sticks with me," he added.

The full discussion is available here: