Eddie Brennan shouldn’t be as surprised as he is on the Laois hurlers being back training

When you think about it, it's not that bad.

If Eddie Brennan's claims are true, then the Laois hurlers are training for next year's season already. Many will be surprised, others will be disgusted, but when you have a good think about the Laois hurlers as a team and assess their aims for next year, it's no surprise and is acceptable that they would be meeting up as a panel now. On two crucial conditions.

• Players involved in latter stages of club Championship are given time to recharge the batteries.
• Light gym work at this time of the year.

It's now October, it's more than three and a half months since they were knocked out of the 2017 Championship by Dublin. Obviously, many of their players have been hurling away with their clubs in the meantime, but those players who advanced to the latter stages of the county Championship, and are set to play in Leinster, were and will surely, surely be given due time to recuperate ahead of coming back for their part of the winter slog. Laois' aims for next season will revolve around their early season games and competitions. They will be hugely focused on getting a good run in the league, with their division 1B campaign kicking off in 12 weeks. They'll be eager to make a big push for promotion in that, and the momentum they gather there will be crucial in their bid to make a mark in the early rounds of the Leinster Championship in May and July. Let's not forget, unlike the Tipperarys, Galways, Kilkennys and Waterfords of the modern world, Laois' aims aren't focused on peaking in August/September. As well as this, as Roscommon footballer, Enda Smith said to SportsJOE earlier today, most inter-county players are always eager to be kept active. https://twitter.com/SportsJOEdotie/status/921093663240966150 It's not in their nature to be idle. They enjoy the training, they feed off the buzz that training and the camaraderie gives them, and if they didn't, as grown men, they would make the decision not to be involved with an inter-county team. To be an inter-county player, you have to be ambitious, insatiable, you have to be restless. You're hungry to achieve. Not only that, though, because the GAA can be a release to them from their working, everyday life. It's not as if the team are going to be out slogging at this time of the year. They're more than likely just doing some light gym-work and injury prevention measures, as Brennan later went onto presume. Maybe we should be praising them for being ambitious, for trying to break the mould.