Most of them come back.
Who’d begrudge any young footballer the opportunity to try his hand at professional sport in Australia? The reality is though, the vast majority of them don’t make it.
Then what happens? Their new career is over after like two years, they’re on the other side of the world, and they have to come home and start all over again.
This current Down team has seen three real talents leave for Australia to link up with AFL teams but, for one reason or another, they never pushed on out there and only one of them is in the current county panel now when they’d all be at prime age.
The turnover of players in Down is generally staggering but when that question was put to Kevin McKernan on The GAA Hour, he offered a dose of reality.
There’s more to life than a bit of football.
“Listen, a lot is made of that and I think there’s something going to be done this year in terms of a survey on the commitments of inter-county football,” McKernan said.
“I think we can be very narrow-minded and look at it saying, ‘playing county football is the be all and end all’.
It’s a great thing, I’ve done it for 10 years now, it’s fantastic – but other boys have other things that they want to do in terms of their career and whatever else.”
The Down star knows better than most people because he himself is back to study being a teacher now at St. Mary’s – he admits himself that winning a Hogan Cup in 2006 probably got in the way of his A Levels back at school.
But he’s most concerned about the culture shock for young men who firstly leave Ireland with big dreams and then no sooner have to return to Ireland with no real plan.
“Caolan [Mooney] came back from Australia last year – he had to get himself a full time job, he had to get back into things, into real life which was masked by what happened over in Australia when you’re a professional athlete,” McKernan explained.
“Then suddenly, you come back here… it’s something that probably the GAA need to look at in terms of the capacity of support that’s in place.
“In Down, we’ve had Martin Clarke, Jamie O’Reilly and Caolan Mooney come back from Australia and, really, on Saturday night, we should’ve have Marty and Jamie involved but unfortunately we didn’t. You look at Tommy Walsh down in Kerry – other players have come back and I think it’s something that needs to be looked at.
“People just think, ‘ah, he’ll put his football boots on…’ – it’s not as easy going out and performing when you’re dealing with that exposure and that pressure, never mind with club but with county.
“Coming back here and filtering back into society, it’s a totally different lifestyle than what it is in Australia and I think it can be looked at definitely.”
Listen to the full interview with McKernan below from 17:50.
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