Burke admits that intercounty managers need to be ‘lunatics’ to survive

Roscommon senior football manager, Davy Burke, has admitted that intercounty managers at the top level need to be “lunatics” and “selfish” to survive in the modern game.

Burke told The OurGame GAA podcast that the life of an intercounty manager had become too intense and that an extra couple of weeks needed to be found in the season for games to take place.

“I'm enjoying the break now after a few weeks in the doldrums. It really is a roller-coaster, it's too intense. It's unbelievably intense and you don't get time to breathe at all.

“Particularly when you're like us (Roscommon) and you have a few hairy weeks mid-year and it doesn't help things either and things get tough and tougher. There's no let-up. There's no breathing space at all. You come out of a Division One campaign and then you're straight into a Mayo and a Dublin and then back to Mayo.

“It's unforgiving, and literally for a couple of weeks after, your body just breaks down and you're literally shattered. Whatever adrenaline you've been working on kind of works the opposite way and it gives your body a bit of a kicking,” he revealed.

“We're all the same really. I'd say the vast, vast majority of these managers in Division One or at that level of football are lunatics because you can't do it any other way, you have to be full-on. You have to be all-in and you have to be pretty selfish, which isn't a nice word but that's how it is.

“You have to give it everything for the seven, eight or nine months and take a month off to sort yourself out again, but yeah, the intensity is unbelievable. They need to look at it because Jesus the shelf life in this gig is getting shorter and shorter, I'd say.”