Wicklow senior football manager Davy Burke believes that GAA players and coaches should be trusted to self-police and be allowed to return to training in small groups.
The date for club gates to be re-opened to a maximum of four players is 20 July, but there are growing calls for that deadline to be reviewed again.
Athletics Ireland has received clearance from both Sport Ireland and the Government to resume limited club and other athletic activity from next Monday.
As part of phase one of the Government roadmap in reopening from Covid-19, club athletes can next week engage in outdoor sporting and fitness activities, either individually or in very small groups (maximum of four people).
This has been welcomed by Athletics Ireland who point out that the huge increases in people walking and running over the last two months illustrated the necessity to open club outdoor facilities.
"I would love to see the same status being granted to the GAA very soon," Burke siad.
"At this stage why can't we come back and train in small groups? You wouldn't even want to see a football, just have a chance to do some conditioning work where players could still social distance whilst being part of small groups."
Burke refusing to buy into the belief that this would be almost impossible to regulate.
"If someone can’t adhere to those restrictions and they throw a ball into the session, I actually feel that players wouldn’t accept it.
"People take players for granted and just assume that behind closed doors training would eventually resume again.
"Those people who state that underestimate the intelligence of players. The players simply would not stand for it, in my view. They would say, 'Hang on, if my mam can’t come and watch me play a game then it is not safe for me to be here playing with a ball and then going back to her'.
"I would hope that Athletics Ireland resume and show how it can be done. Within the Wicklow set-up we have four or five coaches that we could split across the county and help lads get out near their homes.
"And I’m actually saying this now for the benefit of players’ mental health," he said. "I just really feel we need to start looking again at why this is being pushed out to 20 July.
"I fully understand that public health has to be number one, it simply has to be, but where does the trade-off with someone’s mental health come into it? We’re close to that point now, I feel. If runners can go out, surely we can be responsible and self-police ourselves?"
Burke added that if he was with a group and saw anyone breaking protocols or going into contact, he would pull them aside and call them out, tell them that they were ruining it for everyone.
In coaching terms, the 31-year-old is a young man in a hurry.
He has spent the past two and a half years immersed in guiding and managing successful teams.
In 2018, Burke led Kildare to the All-Ireland under-20 title, and from there he took the Maynooth Sigerson Cup team. In 2019 he led Sarsfields to the Kildare senior football title and then took the Wicklow job last winter.
As things stand, Wicklow lie in third place in Division 4, just behind the top two, Limerick and Antrim. With two games left Burke had promotion firmly in his eyes.
"That was our main target all along," he revealed.
"Our lads know that until we get the physicality and conditioning built up, we won’t be able to challenge in the championship, so for this year the League was everything to us.
"Obviously, it’s hugely frustrating that we won’t get to finish that competition, but again public health comes first."
Wicklow were due to face Wexford in the Leinster Championship last Saturday evening. The sun was basking, it was 17 degrees by the time the game would have thrown-in, and Burke found it hard to contain his frustration while on the phone and WhatsApp to his players.
The general consensus was that there would have been no better place to be. The warmth of Wexford Park, the ground hard and a 50-50 game with the next-door neighbours.
"[They're] the days you live for," he said. "We have all gone through the various stages, I think. At first, we said, 'This break is not too bad actually!’
"But from last month onwards, from talking regularly to the lads, it was more like. ‘Jesus, we are badly missing it.
"I can see lads really starting to struggle now," Burke cautions. "They don’t get away from the phone, or the house. Even myself, I haven’t been anywhere except home after work in the last 10 weeks and that has been an incredible adjustment because I was hardly home in the previous two years with the involvement in so many teams.
"It was good to get time off, but we all miss it massively now and that’s why I feel we could look again at getting guys out into the open in small groups."
Burke had played for Kildare at underage level but tore his cruciate aged 14 and the following year tore it again. Second time around he cracked his kneecap too and upon recovering from that, he wore a cast from his hip to his ankle. When he tried to return to play once more, the break had fixed but the cruciate hadn’t and when he turned to fetch a ball, he knew there was trouble.
A plastic kneecap was inserted as a replacement but while those chronic knee injuries ended his playing days, they helped to set him on the road to a coaching career.
After years in the Confey GAA nursery, Burke took their women’s football teams before graduating to assist Dublin ladies’ manager Greg McGonigle in 2014 and 2015 where he admits that he learned a huge amount.
From there the 31-year-old simply hasn’t stopped. Along the way he formulated his own style too. After using the past 10 weeks to refresh and recharge, Burke admits his high-energy and full octane approach is now starting to test his patience.
"I was sitting at home with my wife looking at a picture from the Kildare win of two years ago and we could see that my hairline is strong as it should be for someone of my age," he laughs. "Probably the stress of managing!
"But seriously it’s been hugely enjoyable all the way through and definitely with Wicklow since I went over.
"Well ahead of the season starting, I met all the lads outside of football for a cup of tea, as I do with any team I am with and I asked them what they were looking for. They loved training and playing games, but some had been on the road for a while, wouldn’t get home ‘til after midnight, and they weren’t enjoying it. ‘Just keep it to the point’ was a key message that came back from guys.
"I made a promise to the lads then that I would."
On Burke’s watch, the players arrive at training between 6 and 6.30pm. After prehab excercises they are on the field for 7.15 and finished, fed and watered by 9pm. The latest most guys get back home is 10pm.
"If they are not putting it in, which is rare, I would step in and ask them did they want to be off the field by 9pm or 10pm and they’d lift it immediately.
"We run a good ship and I would take it very personally if we didn’t. These players crave information, stuff on tactics, presses, transition play and my backroom team, Mike Hassett, Dan Moore and Gary Jameson are astute football men.
"Promotion was and is the aim but every day we go out is a dogfight in the League. I see the talk about the GAA turning into a runaway train but that’s certainly not the case in Division 4," Burke argues.
"Firstly, there needs to be a level of backing otherwise how do Wicklow improve if we don’t give it everything? Secondly, we work on the basics - give players facilities, gear, expenses, food and look after their travel needs.
"There are 50 of us in the set-up, 35 players and maybe 10-15 in the backroom but I would have had 10-12 in a club backroom so there’s not a major step-up in that regard.
"To feed 50 people four nights a week and look after their travel is a huge expense and that’s why you need to fill Croke Park every summer to get it back that way.
"But if lads are putting in everything and we give them a dinner after training and a few cents per mile, that is hardly too much to ask for? So, there’s no runaway train that I can see."
Burke admits, however, that there is a level of wastage in the GAA at inter-county level.
"I ask players to be on time, wear the right gear, give it their all, video analysis is kept to 20 minutes maximum otherwise I’ve lost the room. They get fed after games and training.
"But that’s just me. A lot of what is going on is a sideshow, there is lots of fluff in the GAA too so I can see why some people want to strip it back."
