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Lockdown Has Niall Morgan Rethinking Inter-County Time Dedication

Lockdown Has Niall Morgan Rethinking Inter-County Time Dedication
Balls Team
By Balls Team
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The time away from football which the Covid-19 lockdown has forced has lead Niall Morgan to rethink how much commitment he's willing to give the inter-county game in the future.

The Tyrone goalkeeper, who is also a teacher, has a newborn son and had loved the increased family time over the past three months.

"It's been great for me to have so much family time and realise what the really important things are rather than always chasing after other things," Morgan told Tomás Moore's Inside The White Line podcast.

Morgan continued to train hard at the beginning of the lockdown but after a few weeks, he turned it down a notch when he realised that sport wasn't going to restart anytime soon.

"I don't know what it's going to be like going back, are lads going to put in the same level of commitment ever again," said Morgan regarding inter-county football.

Tyrone, to be fair, they don't expect too much of you but come Championship time you'll have your video work on Saturdays and stuff as well which can be a bit time consuming.

That's one of the things that I don't know whether people are going to be willing to go back to the likes of that, when this is all over will they pursue that or will it be, 'We'll do it for half an hour after training on the Thursday night or before training on the Thursday night or something'.

Now that we've had so much time at home, it's going to be hard to give up five or six days a week again. I don't know whether I personally will be willing to do it and there's a right few in the same boat that I've been talking to.

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Morgan's ideal football championship would be a 32-county open draw. Though, he'd still like to see the provincial championships played earlier in the year.

He recently read a report regarding a possible structure for the 2020 football championship and believes that an All-Ireland final played a week before Christmas would be "crazy".

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"That would be crazy stuff, not only in terms of for the players but how many pitches are going to be able to hold it?je said.

"You're going to end up playing every game in Croke Park to get enough light and a surface that's good enough to play on.

"Then are we going to play the pre-season tournaments, are we going to be straight into the McKenna Cup which starts the week before the new year now? It would be crazy to expect players to start training in October and only have a week off maybe at Christmas and go straight into another season.

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"I think it would, to reiterate my point from earlier, there's a lot of players that aren't going to be willing to put in the same level of commitment and it would only put players off."

See Also: Ó Sé And Cavanagh Picked Their Combined Kerry/Tyrone 2000s XVs

 

 

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