Liam Kearns believes that the GAA should stop players who intend to travel to the US from representing their counties.
In Dubai for the GAA-GPA All Stars exhibition, the Tipperary manager was speaking from harsh experience.
A number of his players departed for America earlier this year and missed the county's historic advance to an All-Ireland football semi-final for the first time in 81 years.
“They tried to address it in so far as you had to go by a certain time” but the only effect was “that you have them for the league and then they’re gone for the championship”, he said.
“I’ll be honest, I think the only way they can stop it fully is you have to declare if you’re going to America, you can’t play football for your county. And I don’t know are they willing to do that.”
He said, however, that he had secured an undertaking this year that anyone participating in the panel would have to commit for the whole of the year, something on which he was insistent.
“ Yeah I was, because I’m not hiding behind that, that was a huge blow to us – to find that four players who had been key performers, who were in our 21, to see them heading off to America was a huge blow. It definitely knocked us sideways for a couple of weeks.
Hurling county
“So we’ve definitely said anybody that’s going to America or can’t give the commitment, we need to know now so that we can make a decision on it. And more or less our decision is that we won’t use them.”
There was also competition with the county’s hurlers, now All-Ireland champions, for players with Séamus Kennedy winning a place at wing back on Michael Ryan’s team and former under-21 star Steven O’Brien joining the wider training panel.
Kearns said that it was his understanding that O’Brien’s hurling venture would be for a two-year duration and that the player would get greater opportunities in the coming year.
“And then, I presume, they’ll make a decision on whether he’s good enough. But from our point of view we know he’s more than good enough. He’s one of the best young midfielders in the country … but it’s a hurling county, there’s not a lot we can do about it. We’re just going to have to suck it up, and if he makes it in hurling well he makes it in hurling. And there’s no point in us dwelling on it.”
