THE newly-formed Club Player’s Association will hold a meeting in Donegal this week as it seeks to recruit new members in the county.
The CPA are inviting club players and members to the meeting on Friday night in the Villa Rose Hotel, Ballybofey at 8pm.
Kilcar manager and former Donegal star Martin McHugh, who attended the launch of the CPA in Ballyboden St Enda’s on Monday, is asking for clubs to support the new association.
“I have been in contact with a lot of clubs and players already and it would be great to see a good representation of club members and players on Friday night,” McHugh said.
One of the aims of the association is to tighten the inter-county playing season, and to have the All-Ireland Championships wrapped up by the August Bank Holiday weekend.
The CPA says that its main aim is to ‘fix the fixtures’ and to give club players a voice.
“I’ve got back into club management this year and I didn’t realise how bad it was and that’s why I got involved in this,” said McHugh had told Monday’s launch
“It used to be you had senior players being stopped from playing football, now you have U21 players and minor players. Where’s it going to stop? We can’t kill club football because if we kill club football, county football’s gone.
“At the minute, we are actually killing the club – it’s scary. You see it on the ground, it is scary.
“Where it’s gone wrong is the ratio of training to games, that’s where the burnout is coming from. It’s an easy problem to solve.
“If you go into a sixth year class and give them an hour to do it, they’ll sort it out. That’s how it easy it is. But we need to want to do it at the level we’re at.
“We need to make a decision to look after our club players and be passionate about what we’re doing, that’s what our association is about.
“The grassroots is what it’s all about, it’s why we’re all here.”
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