Manager ‘paranoia’ is stifling promotion of Gaelic Games - Eamon McGee 

Eamon McGee says paranoid inter-county set-ups are holding GAA players and our games back when it comes to promotion and attracting more eyes on the product. 

McGee says attempts at one-upmanship and the so-called mind games in relation to dummy teams and programmes are pointless. 

But the biggest roadblock to Gaelic players being put up as genuine sporting superstars alongside their rugby and soccer counterparts is the gagging of them before and after games. 

Another current gripe is that managers haven’t been forthcoming with their GPS data as the Football Review Committee attempts to gauge the rise in aerobic output that managers insist has significantly spiked. 

"I just think it's a mentality that's in county managers,” said McGee whose Laochra Gael programme will be shown on TG4 this Thursday at 9.30pm. 

“For some reason there's a paranoia out there. It's alright for Premier League teams to name their team, and their information is out there, their KMs, their stats are out there. But for some reason GAA managers aren't as forthcoming with information.

"I don't know in terms of video analysis, team analysis, how many KMs or how much high intensity running a player does; what's that going to affect, where you look at it. 

“So I don't understand the logic of it. I think it's a whole deeper argument in terms of it's so self-defeating. Maybe in five years, if I do ever want to, I'll be at the same crack too now, so you can quote me on this thing now. 

“But I just think from a marketing perspective, this whole paranoia, it's just not helping the game at all.

"I think the GAA is terrible at marketing, I think the county managers feed into that. You’d like to hear from the players in the lead-up and just build that buzz. 

“It doesn’t help the game at all so I think it's an attitude that just bugs me at the minute. But I'm outside the bubble now, so it's easy for me to say that."