Club players need to be offered more championship action
The past few weekends have thrown up many fantastic storylines: Cratloe’s double in Clare, Ballincollig winning a first senior title in Cork. There’s been stories of redemption, like Sparrow O’Loughlin, after a disappointing spell over Clare, winning yet another county title with another club in Limerick; Seanie Johnston back winning another county for Cavan Gaels. Even the continued dominance of the likes of Crossmaglen in Armagh, St Brigid’s in Roscommon, St Gall’s in Antrim, Portlaoise in Laois and Corofin in Galway are remarkable achievements and stories in their own right.
Yet for all the bunting and celebrations and battles the club scene throws up in a month like this, it also triggers as many questions about its future and where it will reside in the GAA scheme of things, especially its calendar.
On Saturday week, probably the most important set of proposals and papers of Liam O’Neill’s presidency will come before Central Council. A working group featuring O’Neill himself as well as Páraic Duffy and Dónal Óg Cusack has been established to help draft a competition schedule that would facilitate the All-Ireland club championships being completed in the one calendar year.
If it is approved, or at least its amendments are, it will go forward as a motion at Congress next February, and be in operation for 2016.
That working group will have been influenced by another, namely the Football Review Committee, chaired by Eugene McGee. It recommended club championship games be played throug the summer, to the point that every county should have reached the semi-final stages of its senior and intermediate football championship by the first weekend of August.
Our fear would be that in trying to meet such a deadline, more and more county boards could favour straight knockout championships. Whereas in most counties now a club player is assured at least three or four championship games, he could be only be guaranteed the one in 2016. That would actually counter the intention of McGee’s group, namely that club players are provided a decent number of championship games in the summer months.
Already, too many counties don’t have enough championship games and too many league games that don’t mean enough. Take Tyrone. Their championship is straight knockout. Their league consists of 15 games — and up until recently, that used to be a mammoth 21. There have been occasions the last couple of years where the two top teams in the league and county have been drawn to play each other in the first round of championship, and one of them is finished by May.
Contrast that to Mayo. As much as its county board gets deserved grief, it doesn’t get enough credit for overseeing one of the best run club championships in the country, played through summer. Its 16 senior teams are split into four groups of four, the top two making the quarter-finals, the bottom-placed team then entering relegation play-offs. This year, Castlebar and Ballintubber were drawn in the same group and to play each other first day out. Castlebar won, but Ballintubber weren’t gone. Instead Cillian O’Connor & Co would regroup, develop, and win their remaining two pool games. Last Sunday, they beat Castlebar in the final. By 2016, they could be gone by June, after one game. It might help run off the club championship but is it really helping and developing the club player and team?
There are ways the fixtures working group can get around it. Some traditional dates will have to change. We’re already resigned to next St Patrick’s Day being the last time the All-Ireland club finals are staged on March 17. No matter what the GAA comes up with on future St Patrick’s weekends — a blitz of attractive, box-office league games, or another club day countrywide — it will not match that celebration of the club that March 17 in Croker used to provide. But ultimately to protect the club, that celebration of the club needs to be moved.
All-Ireland finals in September may also have to go. Certainly the football final will need to be moved forward by at least a week. All-Ireland semi-finals could be doubled up on the one weekend — one on the Saturday, one on the Sunday, just as semi-finals are condensed in any other sport, or even in the GAA for any other competition. The provincial finals could be run off over two weekends in July instead of three.
More reform will be needed in years to come. We look at the flags and excitement around towns with teams in intermediate county finals or women’s All-Ireland football and camogie intermediate finals and wonder should there not be All-Ireland inter-county football intermediate championships too? Even the GAA will cop that football in particular needs more evenly-matched high-profile championship games.
But that is for down the line. What’s required now is more championship games for the club player, especially in the better weather. What Cusack, O’Neill and Duffy come up with should constitute plenty of change for now.
