Kieran Shannon: Firm pitches and happier marriages... the split-season's pay-off

The conditions were reflected in the scorelines; over both semi-finals and the final the highest tally any team put up was 0-15. In the county final Sixmilebridge edged out Newmarket-on-Fergus, 1-10 to 0-11, in a downpour one paper described as “biblical”.

The Irish Examiner itself reported how hordes of spectators had to huddle together to secure some shelter and how “players were slipping and sliding, the ball was getting stuck in the muck, wet sticks were twisting in the hand.” That same winter Clare county board officials were hauled in and rapped on the knuckles by Croke Park for how late their championships were finishing up and how they hadn’t got in more games during the summer. What irritated headquarters all the more was how unapologetic Clare were. So what if Cork had run off club games through the summer? Clare were trying to win an All-Ireland through the backdoor and weren’t going to compromise such a rare opportunity by squeezing in club games.

Since Clare beat Cork after extra-time of the 2024 All Ireland final – no replay allowed – each of their club teams has played three group games. Last weekend, in glorious sunshine and on firm pitches, all four senior quarter-finals were played, one match better than the other, each result more surprising than the other. Éire Óg and Shane O’Donnell – out. Clonlara, reigning county champions, gone as well.

For years now, both in and since Pat Fitzgerald’s time as county secretary, Clare GAA has provided a brilliant programme of county championship games, for both supporters and players, especially the dual variety. One weekend the Cratloe footballers will be in action; the following one many of the same players for the hurlers; then alternating again the next week again.

The championship is not rushed or raced off. Every team gets at least three group games. There are no dead rubbers. Finish last in your group and you’re into a relegation playoff. Every game means something.

But what has made the championships even more pleasurable for players in recent years is that the majority of games are played in decent weather and on good pitches. For all its downsides, ultimately the split season has been very good for the club player – and the county player who has gotten to know them again.

Clare is as good a microcosm of its benefits and not just because this year’s All-Ireland final victory over Cork didn’t go to a replay and was finished in late July rather than late September.

In 2010 Christy O’Connor wrote the classic GAA book, The Club, and what made it so great was he spoke for that silent majority: The Club Player and all the frustrations as well as joys involved with it.

“Last year was a joke,” he wrote at one point. “A complete joke. We started training on January 16 and didn’t play our first championship match until August 15. We were supposed to play our first game on June 27 but the Clare hurling manager Mike McNamara went into a county board meeting the previous night and requested that all club games be pulled that weekend: he didn’t want any disruption to Clare’s preparations before their Munster final against Tipperary on July 13.

“We had been preparing for that game for six months but just was we were warming down and going through our game plan at training, we received news that all the games were off. It was a sickening feeling but it wasn’t anything new to us.” 

He went off to list off a litany of similar cases. In 2006 his St Joseph’s Doora-Barefield team played their first game in early May and their next match in late August: a 112-day lay-off. “By October we were burned out and fed up.” In 2007 they didn’t play a championship game in July or August.

“It’s no wonder so many players walk away from their clubs each year,” he surmised. “They just can’t handle the hassle. The ordinary club player often exists on a week-to-week basis, not knowing when or if the county board has decided to fix a game. It’s almost as if county boards assume that club players don’t have jobs, don’t take holidays, don’t have family commitments, they all still live at home with their parents and there’s no such thing as divorce.” O’Connor’s own marriage was nearly over before it began. Six months before himself and Olivia got engaged they broke up for a week. They had planned for months to go to a wedding in Mayo when Christy learned at short notice that the minor team he was coaching had a championship game moved to the same day as wedding. When he didn’t make it to that wedding, for awhile she wouldn’t entertain the idea of him being at her own.

“If you were to think about it, how could you rationalise it?” O’Connor ponders. “You risk your future with your loved one because of a match? You must be mad.” O’Connor would explain the roots of the problem back then. The GAA’s unique playing structure whereby an elite player plays with both his county and club. The advent of qualifiers and group stages: while it increased the profile of the sport it simultaneously brought with it “a new level of uncertainty into the calendar”. Increasingly county managers were looking to freeze all club championships as long as their own team was still in their championship.

Two years after O’Connor brought out his book Donegal won an All-Ireland football championship before a ball in their own club championship was hand-passed. Mayo, the team they beat in the final, by then had already reduced their own club championship to its four semi-finalists.

More tellingly Donegal’s’ semi-final opponents, Cork, who had won their quarter-final against Kildare the same day Jim McGuinness’s team won theirs against Kerry, got in a round of championship during the intervening four weeks, acquiring a couple of injuries. That semi-final was decided by two points. In the fight for inches would you give up that yard? Who lauded Cork and Mayo for being fair to their clubs? In 2013 the Clare hurlers opted to be more Donegal than Mayo or Cork, while Cork followed the example of Cork.

The split season has downsides. This Monday was the 12th anniversary of that Donegal-Mayo final: a massive occasion made for September and that helped make our Septembers. Without it, it feels as if something is missing.

But even more has been gained. County players now get an uninterrupted period of time with their clubmates (just as earlier in the season a county manager has an uninterrupted period with his players ahead of a Munster final or any inter-county game); lads they’d only get to interact with for a few weeks are now as familiar and close to them as county teammates. The young lads in the clubs are no longer strangers but likely buddies. A natural order has been restored.

“When you begin training at the outset of every season, the promise of long summer evenings and the thrill of championship matches on a hard summer sod are invariably the stimulants that keep propelling you,” O’Connor wrote in The Club. “You assume that your first championship match will be played on a dry pitch with a fast ball.” 

 The likelihood of that prospect has increased now for the club player. There is now a certainty to the calendar. They can plan their holidays, know if or when they can go to a wedding months in advance.

The romantics might yearn for September All-Irelands but O’Connor will testify that having them in July has helped other forms of romance. A study of media coverage will tell you that the profile of the games at this time of year may be down but a study of divorce rates among club players would likely tell you that they’re down as well.