It’s exam time but GAA pitches should not be emptying… get to bloody training

Youth, eh?

The best days of your life. Endless sunshine, timeless tomfoolery... studying, tutors, and practice papers. Those were the days. We were all running around wildly like right rapscallions at one stage of our lives, bouncing from text book to text book. We were all young after all. Remember those days? The glory days. When traffic stopped, when the world was shut out, and life came to an abrupt standstill so we could bury our heads with no relent. Remember the madness? Too crazy to even consider kicking a football or to give a fleeting thought to sport of any kind. The idea of physical activity is only an insult when you have a month of exams to get through. Ah, good old youth. I don't remember any of that. I don’t remember coming home from school and locking myself in a room for another seven hours to stare at a cycle of books. I don’t remember anyone suggesting that was even possible, let alone healthy. I don’t remember six and a half hours of school being so inept that going home was just the start of a whole new day of private tutors and practice tests. What’s worse is that I don’t think any other adult remembers those days either.  They didn’t exist. For some reason though, kids nowadays are subjected to a relentless avalanche of study that none of the high fliers of our generation or generations before would even have pondered. What are schools doing wrong that their best pupils have to go home and only double their work load? That their finest student athletes can't unwind for an hour in the evening? That everything else - after-hour activities even - has to be blocked out until this seemingly unscalable mountain they call Exams is out of the way? The answer is that they're doing nothing wrong. The problem is an overreaction. An overreaction to something that men and women lucky enough to do so have all gone through before. There's nothing new here. Nothing revolutionary. Nothing to pent yourself up about in a blind panic as if no-one has ever before experienced exam pressure. Okay, who doesn't want the best for their children? Who doesn't want them to gain the best possible qualifications or to have the best possible opportunities? We all need to get our heads down at some stage and we all know that, no matter how much it's preached that exams aren't a case of life and death, they're still damn important actually. But there needs to be an element of let's get real somewhere along the way as well. There needs to be some form of cop on when the summer starts and playing fields empty. When managers are entertaining six brave souls for an hour of training. When teams are forfeiting matches and sport, as we know it, is turned on its head because people are preparing for a set of questions and answers. There are 24 hours in the day - claimed with the conviction of a man who has done his studies. Say you're sleeping for a generous, excessive nine of those, you have 15 hours left to work with. Yes, 15. How on earth are two miserly hours of playing football, going out running, doing whatever it is you were doing back when you had a life really going to affect your ability to prepare for an exam? Two hours tops. But this pseudo-academic culture nowadays calls for everything else outside of a text book to be dropped like a bad habit to maximise your study time. You can no longer go to an hour-long training session because, by the time you get back and showered, it might only leave you with 13 hours to work with. Heaven forbid. If you take dinner and breakfast out of that, maybe travelling to and from school, who knows, having a sneaky peek at Facebook even, how in under God would 11 hours a day ever be enough to concentrate properly on getting top grades? But pitches are emptying, footballs are gathering dust and teenagers are no longer teenagers. Instead, they're steering a ship through a storm that they're told will either make them or break them. And it's not even anything to poke fun at. Youngsters are under genuine pressure but the panic and scaremongering surrounding them isn't helping an iota. What happened to the studies - conducted by people who've also been through this rigmarole - showing factually why exercise isn't half bad for mental health (I'm pretty sure those were the exact findings anyway)? Whatever happened to the notion that a nice distraction, a bit of physical exertion, even some socialising worked a dream for pent up stress and worry? Whatever happened to fresh air, for God’s sake? Athletes are falling by the wayside every year because we’re told that you have to choose.  We’re told that you can’t possibly be a top sportsman with top grades - even just a sportsman with top grades - when it has been done before and will continue to be done in the future. Why do you think that is? Why do you think taking a break, engaging in the dreaded exam antithesis they call sport isn't affecting some students' grades? Probably because they're not even remotely related. Well, apart from the odd fitness boost and a little physical and mental release - you know, stuff that might actually help. And probably because taking two hours out of your day three times a week to keep up with this second rate interference of sport will have no bearing whatsoever on whether or not Johnny passes everything or he flunks them all. But teenagers aren't allowed to think for themselves anymore. They're not allowed to balance anything. They can't be here or there. Instead, they're expelled to their rooms, sat in front of another book and forced to digest it all. Perhaps we’ve lost sight of what this whole charade is about. I’d like to think that, when I look back on my life when I’m older, there’ll be a collection of memories to smile over. There’ll be a point that I scored – never say never – or a laugh that I shared, maybe even an inspirational team talk that I'll remember. What I wouldn’t want is a gaping hole of nothing but studying, studying, and a bit more studying - especially when it wasn't needed. What I don’t want is for others to stop living for fear of how things might pan out a few years down the line. Sacrifice a day before an exam. Sacrifice plenty of hours surely in the build-up and help a better future. Of course you should. But don’t close off everything in your life for two or three full months just to tee up something you can see a hint of on the horizon. You can study and you can play. Anyone who says you can’t is lying. No-one’s working 14 or 15 hours a day flat out. If they are, it’s pointless. A lot of it will have long since stopped going in. Stop treating an infinitesimally small fraction of your life as the be all and end all.  Relax. Get to bloody training. And sure, if you don't get the job you want, you can always end up writing about it anyway.