Oct 16,2024
Fermanagh football boss Kieran Donnelly believes there is "merit" in the idea of having inter-county managers in full-time roles in order to help deal with the increasing load on players and set-ups.
"I think there will be a debate on whether we should put managers on contract. Because it is nearly a full-time job, the amount of accountability that is there," Burns said on Sunday.
Speaking at Monday's launch of the Allianz Inter-Provincial Football Series, which will see a myriad of proposed new Gaelic football rule changes trialled, Donnelly shared his view on the issue of contracts potentially being introduced for inter-county managers.
"The level of training, especially you'll find with this new game going forward with the new rules, there will be an even fitter athlete required due to the high-speed running and the demands on them.
"So this is probably something the GAA will have to discuss. Within us (managers) at the minute, we do realise the time load on it but we do it because we enjoy it. There's no doubt about it.
"When you're managing your own county, there's a massive reward to that, so it probably will be something that will need to be looked at down the line due to the actual time that is afforded to running a team, especially at this level."
Donnelly, who will manage Ulster during the inter-provincial series this weekend, added that a full-time role could benefit the health of players down the line.
"I think the benefit of a manager being full-time would be the managing of players' load across the board, because it's got so professional that the whole S&C side of things and the training and professionalism of how you present your team on matchdays, (it would be) somebody to oversee all of that," he said.
"And there does be a knock-down effect then on player welfare. If you have one or two people managing those players and their load, with universities, and how they're playing with their senior county team as well, there's a lot of merit in that I suppose for the health of the game and for the health of the player."
Also speaking at the launch in Croke Park, former Westmeath manager Dessie Dolan said full-time contracts could be a remedy to the time constraints on managers.
"If that's the way Jarlath Burns sees it, that's his view from the GAA. I don't know in terms of the managers, what (way) they see it but certainly it does appear the role, the demands are 40 hours a week at the very least in championship football," he said.
"All I can say from my experience is inter-county management is pretty much a full-time job in terms of the hours that you put into it.
"But after that, I don't know what the GAA president is going to do. But certainly, the role is probably 30, 40, 50 hours (a week) in the championship season.
"When it's hot and heavy in that championship, you're doing an awful lot of analysis, an awful lot of calls. There's a lot of stakeholders as well to keep happy.
"So certainly, that time of the year and the demands on a manager have increased dramatically in the last couple of years."
Dolan continued: "If you look at all the stakeholders that's involved, if you've got county boards, supporters, clubs, you have sponsors, you have players themselves, you deal with medical people, you're dealing with all these people all the time.
"You're on the phone, constantly in communication, the most important guys then - the players - as well, so the role and the demands have increased dramatically, so therefore maybe that's a possible solution that they might look into."
Galway manager Pádraic Joyce said that for his own role, his commitment was fuelled by love of county, and adopted a wait-and-see approach in regard to any future movement on the managerial contracts debate.
"Managers will take contracts depending on what's in the contract," he said.
"But again, I can only speak for myself, I'm involved with my own county for the love of it. I played for the county, I love the county.
"(Inter-county management) is time consuming and most managers would tell you it probably costs them money to do their own counties and that kind of stuff.
"Jarlath has a comment about the contracts, so I think he's setting a committee up to look at that, so we'll see what comes off that."
