Fogarty Forum: Inter-county season a case of too much, too soon
Gaa The Greatest Headache: Short It Period Is Such Anxiety Games League With Piaras Mídheach/sportsfile Officials Of The Causes Which ó A Volume Picture: In
Great weather we’re having, right? Wrong, if you’re a national GAA fixtures planner.
It’s the Irish inclination to believe something good will come at a cost and it’s the Central Competitions Control Committee’s (CCCC) to fear the worst even at the best of times. Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) , who in the last month have had to postpone a meeting in Thurles three times due to a lack of rain, would say a price has already been paid.
As they released their provisional Allianz League fixtures lists to counties last week, the CCCC will be thinking there will be an equal but opposite reaction to this fine spell on the other side of Christmas when they have to fit in what this past year comprised 212 games (116 football, 96 hurling) over 11 weekends.
In 2025, that will decrease to 204 fixtures because of the new seven-team league hurling format. Inversely, an extra weekend will be required to complete the series of hurling round matches.
At the end of every March, the CCCC breathe a collective sigh of relief in completing a minefield of a matrix. There is a craft to shoehorning that amount of games into such a contracted period. The football schedule only allows for two weekends off between the end of January and end of March. The same applies to hurling next year too.
It can be a nerve-wracking period for the fixture-makers. Notwithstanding the hoops they had to jump through to get games played during the pandemic, in 2018 they deemed three Division 4 football games null and void due to poor weather. Two years ago, four football matches were postponed because of an upgraded weather alert.
Counties like Cork, whose club championships were impacted by the recent orange and yellow warnings, three of which coincidentally fell on weekends, know how they can play havoc. Unlike them, the national CCCC don’t have the same wiggle room to get games played.
For 2024, they brought in a backstop in the event some games weren’t staged before the end of the league. If forced postponements meant a division including a final wasn’t completed by the end of March, the positioning of teams in the table following the last full round will determine the final league placings for the Sam Maguire and Tailteann Cups.
“We’ve taken on board what Central Council has told us, twice,” said GAA games administration manager Bernard Smith in reference to counties’ rejecting the CCCC’s proposal to do away with league finals. “We’ve brought in this (postponements) regulation to cover us.”
Seeing as how there is once more a one-week turnaround from the football league finals to the start of the provincial championships, that measure is likely to be in place once more even if the obvious hope is they never have to use it. But it is a possibility when the schedule is so crammed.
In 2025, there is set to be five double football and hurling round weekends; last year there were three. Five times between January 25 and March 23, there will be 28 fixtures over two days. Seeing as how TUS Gaelic Grounds and FBD Semple Stadium were unavailable for games earlier this year, how many pitches will be able to host double-headers?
One of those weekends will be the final round of each competition. Perhaps a Saturday will be given to one code and Sunday the other but promotionally it’s not ideal that the conclusion of each will be vying with each other for attention.
The football league feels a bit heavy. Perhaps one round too heavy. If that was dispensed with, each county would have an extra weekend off but the programme of games would still require the same timeframe.
The Gaelic Players Association (GPA) have developed a form of buyers’ remorse about the number of games now being played in the season. Disbanding the pre-season helps a little to alleviate what GPA chief executive Tom Parsons describes as condensing “10 months of inter-county demands into seven” but those fixtures are simply going to be replaced by challenge games in January.
The difficulties presented by organising them in months not exactly conducive have been made abundantly clear to the GAA. FBD Semple Stadium groundsman Pádhraic Greene explained that in these pages in September: “Unfortunately with the split season the way it is, you’re getting more winter games and a lot of the pitches are probably not designed for so much winter use. It’s definitely becoming harder.”
As well as climate change, the GAA’s former national pitch maintenance chairman Kieran McGann has pointed to the number of club championships that have become round-robin in nature exerting extra pressure on pitches. The additional footfall from group minor and U20 games can’t go unmentioned either.
It’s the volume of league games in such a concentrated period that causes the most heart palpitations in Croke Park, though. A case of too much, too soon.
john.fogarty@examiner.ie
Now would be as good a time as any for the GAA to release their economic and social impact study.
Just over two weeks out from a General Election, the largest volunteer organisation in the country shouldn’t be shy in articulating exactly just how much it contributes to Irish society.
Professor Simon Shibli of Sheffield Hallam University is leading the research commissioned by Croke Park. Speaking earlier this year, he indicated the return on investment in Irish sport was at least three or four times greater than the £3.28 for every £1 invested in England.
Involving Ulster University and Manchester Metropolitan University too, their report should give a strong indication of just how much GAA clubs, county boards and provincial councils give. Putting a price on that is no cynical exercise when often it feels like the association has to justify the community and large scale capital grants it receives.
And then there is the impact the GAA makes beyond its official units. Led by Waterford’s Liam Daniels, the wholly volunteer-organised Circet All-Ireland GAA Golf Challenge raised enough funds last month to provide a modified vehicle for Glenflesk clubman Jerry O’Leary who suffered life-changing injuries last year. As they did for Spa’s Ian O’Connell in 2018 and Raharney youngster Fionn McAnaney who required spinal muscular atrophy surgery in the US in ‘19.
Last year, the Challenge contributed €65,000 to the incredible Dillon Quirke Foundation that has already saved the lives of several young people thanks to its cardiac screening programme. In Dillon’s honour, Dan and Olive Quirke are doing the work of the Government. It’s now time the authorities take up the mantle.
In Dungarvan’s Park Hotel on Wednesday evening, Cork and Waterford hurling players and management will launch a challenge game in aid of former Déise defender Brian Greene who was recently diagnosed with lung cancer.
The game takes place in Fraher Field on January 4 and proceeds from the fixture will go towards assisting the Mount Sion man in his treatment and living expenses. It’s a honourable way of giving back something to someone who offered plenty of himself to the Waterford cause. It’s what the GAA does.
One wonders if Steven Sherlock might have sought advice from James Masters upon taking the decision to sit out next season.
Fourteen years ago and six months out from Cork winning an All-Ireland SFC, Masters, then only 27 and the same age as Sherlock is now, stepped away from the inter-county game citing a lack of first-team action.
In 2015, Masters admitted he may have been too hasty. “There definitely would be regrets. It was a hard enough time because Cork won the All-Ireland with so many players that I played with.” He continued: “There was more to it than meets the eye. I felt I wasn’t getting a run, which was why the decision was made in the end. The lack of game time got to me.”
Masters, like Sherlock, was one gifted footballer. Mercurial would be too harsh a word to describe either as their finishing qualities and match-winning acumen aren’t questionable but just as Masters’ face mightn’t have fully fit in Conor Counihan’s set-up, the same appears to apply to Sherlock in Cleary’s group.
By the end of this past championship, Sherlock was a starter albeit because of Brian Hurley’s injury. It may be that he wasn’t given the assurances he required from Cleary for the season ahead. Either that or he just needs to take stock and is only unavailable temporarily.
Nevertheless, history has repeated itself in an unfortunate way and Cork is the biggest loser ahead of a Division 2 campaign they readily acknowledge they must conquer.