Condensed Calendar forcing counties to choose league or provincial championship

Enda McGinley says that playing week to week can be an emotional drain on players, and not just a physical one.

On a weekend that saw Waterford and Wickow cause upsets and celebrate their surprise victories with gusto, other counties naturally missed out.

While Tipperary, who lost to the Déise, had come through a disappointing Allianz League campaign, Westmeath - beaten by the Garden County - and Leitrim - who put in a flat performance in defeat to Sligo - had off days after both gaining league promotion in the last few weeks.

McGinley told the RTÉ GAA Podcast that while the results would have been disappointing for those involved, he can understand why both counties didn't produce the kind of football they're capable of on Sunday.

For the three-time All-Ireland winner, some of the perceived lack of oomph can be put down to the condensed GAA calendar.

"There's a couple of components to this," he said.

"One is the physicality of it. In terms of playing week in, week out, that's tough. It's certainly attritional in terms of wee injuries; you always pick up an injury or two in each game. Sometimes you'll pick up the bigger injuries and that'll be several weeks [of recovery].

"That does take its toll but we've seen numerous teams able to play on a week-on-week basis and gain a huge momentum from it. You could be coming in cold into a game and get caught cold by a team that's got loads of momentum.

"So I'm not sure it's just the nature of the game on game thing.

"For me, the bigger factor is the emotional load. I don't mean that in a soft sense, but there's only so many times in a year that a group of players can really hit that peak. That special sense in training coming into a game, that special sense in the dressing room before a