The GAA remains “fairly confident” their so-called winter training ban is not being breached or flaunted despite some anecdotal evidence to the contrary.

Most counties – in both football and hurling – are by now allowed return to collective training, with the exception of the teams that exited the championship in August (who can’t return until December 8th), or those that exited in September/All-Ireland finals (who can’t return until December 9th).

There is also a mandatory training ban period from December 21st-28th inclusive, also part of the closed season rule introduced in 2009 aimed at tackling the issue of player burnout.

“We would certainly believe that within the parameters of what the rule means that it’s being well adhered to,” says Feargal McGill, the GAA’s head of games administration and player welfare.

“We wouldn’t be aware of breaches, in that nothing has been brought to our attention. The key to this is ‘collective’ training, because there is a difference with other types of training. To be fair, anecdotally you do hear some stuff, but the old notion of teams running up and down hills in November has disappeared.

“I can’t say hand on heart that no one has broken the exact parameters of the training ban, because we just don’t know, or have that information, but nothing has been presented to us, other than anecdotally. And I think if it was being breached on a regular basis we’d be made aware of it.”

Also included in the closed season is a ban on challenge games, and again McGill is confident this is being adhered to: “Some counties look for permission for challenge matches or whatever and we don’t permit them unless it comes within the period when they’re allowed back in training. And we wouldn’t give permission for any game for which a county is not allowed to be back in training for.

“And in my experience nobody in the last year or two has applied for permission to play a game within the period they’re not allowed to.

Closed season

“The thinking behind the closed season to avoid players travelling to training and all that goes with that, but there’s no doubt players are doing personalised training, or personal programmes, and we’d have no difficultly that. Every sport has their different periods and phases of training like that.

“So I certainly don’t believe there is a major problem. There’s no suggestion it will be amended, but again ‘collective’ training is key here. This is actually the time of year when players need to be doing the gym work and individual-style training which is often key to preventing injury later in the season. So again I’d be fairly confident we don’t have a problem.

“It closes down again for a week, over Christmas, again to ensure that time is kept for the players.”

Tyrone footballer Seán Cavanagh, speaking to The Irish Times last month about his decision to return to what will be his 16th consecutive season as a senior intercounty footballer, suggested the commitment has gone "completely mental", and that he was already hard at it – although presumably not flouting the training ban, with Tyrone not due back until December 8th.

“Everybody keeps telling me we’re in the off-season,” he said.

“Last week I was training with Tyrone Tuesday and Thursday, I was in the gym with Tyrone on Wednesday, in the gym with the Moy on Friday and doing my own stuff.

“And I did a couple of things at the weekend as well, forest park runs and things. That’s the off-season. you compare it with the soccer guys or rugby guys or whatever, I’d say it compares right and favourably. I’m trying to work out how [Wayne] Rooney has the time to go on the rip because you don’t really have that many days to recover from a hangover.”

According to Chapter 6 of the GAA Official Guide Part 1 (Article 6.44), which deals with the closed months, the collective training ban is defined as follows:

“Collective training is where one or more player(s) is/are required to be at a specific place at a specific time on a specific date. Senior Inter-County panels may return to collective training and/or games for the following year on a timetable determined by their time of exit from the All-Ireland Championship in a current year as follows:

Winter training

Exit June: Commence Training November 15th.

Exit July/All-Ireland Quarter-Finals: Commence Training December 1st.

Exit August/All-Ireland Semi-Finals: Commence Training December 8th. Exit September (excluding All-Ireland Semi-Finals): Commence Training December 9th.