Any gratitude for getting a weekend off? Not a sausage
She was out of luck. Following a sunny weekend when any lump of meat that didn’t have a pulse was fired onto a grill, our butcher was sold out of anything that could be barbecued. The local off-licenses also required major re-stocking.
While the entire county spent that Friday and Saturday gathered round a ‘barbie’ guzzling booze, Derry’s club footballers were forced to obey their vows of abstinence.
The frustration of being forced to park their social lives because of club games on Sunday eventually forced some players to vent their exasperation via Twitter and Facebook.
Noting both the scale and volume of these complaints, a local journalist, Cahair O’Kane, conducted a survey for his newspaper, The County Derry Post.
Players were asked to select the day when they would prefer to play matches: Friday night, Saturday or Sunday.
A total of 175 players from 32 clubs responded to the survey. Their responses will give the Derry County Board much to consider.
A miniscule 11.4% wanted the status quo of Sunday fixtures to be retained. A massive 48% desired Friday night games, while 26.8% were in favour of Saturday matches. Another 10.85% would like games to be played on Friday or Saturday, but not a Sunday. In short, an overwhelming majority of 85.65% wanted games moved away from the traditional Sunday slot.
The reasons provided by the players made interesting reading. The opposition to Sundays wasn’t based entirely on the desire of young players to ‘find a wife’ or take a drink.
A former county player said: “Keep Sundays free for families.” The intensity of club training regimes was further highlighted when ‘many’ players outlined why they were in favour of games on a Saturday rather than a Friday. If games were held on a Friday night, they feared their managers would still hold training sessions on a Sunday morning.
Were it not for the threat of a Sunday morning session, it seems even more than 48% of respondents would have expressed a preference for Friday night games.
Considering the resounding vote that Derry’s club players delivered in favour of Friday evening football, they would no doubt be baffled by the fanfare which has surrounded tomorrow’s qualifier between Laois and Carlow — the first SFC game to be played on a Friday night.
It’s a novel and fresh idea and, in keeping with the time-honoured traditions of the GAA, the response has bordered on the hysterical.
We were informed that supporters would struggle to get to the game in time. Bear in mind we are talking about a match between two neighbouring counties that starts at 7.45pm.
Unless fans are crawling on their hands and knees to Dr Cullen Park, it shouldn’t really be a problem.
Further annoyance was expressed on behalf of the players. How would they cope with this huge change to their ritual? Donegal manager Jim McGuinness said it was inevitable that players would need to take a day off work. Dublin boss Jim Gavin said that if players had to take a day off work, they would need to be compensated. McGuinness echoed those sentiments and stressed that it wasn’t pay-for-play, it was compensation for loss of earnings.
Meanwhile, the rest of the GAA world looked on and wondered how many players are in jobs where they will lose a day’s pay if they take a day off.
As any avid reader of match programmes can testify, inter-county footballers are either employed in a full-time capacity, or they’re students. Or, as is increasingly the case, they’re unemployed.
For 99% of inter-county players, taking a day off work doesn’t involve any loss of earnings. It means taking a holiday.
Having read the newspaper articles which called forplayers to be compensated for taking a day off work, an irate county board official sent me a text message. This particular individual booked last Friday off because he was involved in organising the Ulster Hurling and Camogie Féile that was held in Derry last weekend. His text message posed the question: “Should I be compensated too?” And the argument raised by Gavin and McGuinness poses another question. Before playing Tyrone in the first round of the Ulster championship, Donegal spent five days at Johnston House in Meath.
No doubt, the All-Ireland champions had to take time off work. If players should receive compensation for taking annual leave for a match, do the same rules apply when they are expected to take time off for a training camp? Rather than being pilloried for introducing something new, the GAA should have been praised.
A Friday evening fixture serves two main functions. Primarily, it maximises publicity for the GAA because it means games are spread across the entire weekend. It also provides extra exposure for the Laois and Carlow players who will now play in a standalone fixture.
The Carlow and Laois players are lucky. The sun is expected to return this weekend. When most of their peers will be in full championship mode, they will be able to enjoy a beer and maybe even a sausage.
A few weeks ago in Derry, there were club players who could only dream about such an indulgence.
