Co-operation the key to ending club fixture chaos

CO-OPERATION and communication. That’s the consensus view among a number of county board chairmen who were canvassed for their views on the club/county divide highlighted over the past week in Laois.

Bringing county team managers on board and consulting with the clubs on a regular basis offers the best hope of avoiding conflict, though it’s not guaranteed to keep everybody happy.

Dublin chairman Gerry Harrington believes they have a good system in place. “We talk to the managers at the start of the year and the GAC (Games Administration Committee) set out a master fixtures plan. The qualifier competitions are inclined to throw that out of synch for us, but by and large the county managers are cooperating well with the GAC and vice versa.

“The important think is they are talking to each other. While there’s no doubt there will be difficulties, that’s the time to get them all sitting down and talking again. At the end of the day if people are at loggerheads you’re going to have problems.’’

The senior football championship this year is being run on similar lines to the inter-county system, with a back door, and already two rounds have been played. “We have one match left to play in the second round, and with the agreement of the county manager, we’re going to play that next week.’’

Kerry chairman Sean Walsh is pleased to report “no problems”, commenting: “We are working away smoothly. The week before county (senior) championship games, we let the county players go to the clubs.

“We structure our county championship around the Munster and All-Ireland series if we are involved, where possible. We called off matches last year in relation to the All-Ireland semi final, but this year there will be no matches called off for the inter-county team — unless we are involved in the qualifiers or a replay.’’

Interestingly, he pointed out that clubs are facilitated for county league games by the policy of not holding all players on the Kerry panel. “Last year we only kept back about 20 players at most for all matches the weekend before and all the rest were allowed to play. That way, you have more players playing football rather than having more players on the bench.’’

Ned Quinn, the Kilkenny chairman, conceded that while they tailored their county championship with the schedule of the senior hurlers’ games, it was accepted there was no perfect solution to keeping clubs happy.

For instance, he pointed out that if players were training with Kilkenny four or five nights a week, it was “highly unlikely” they were training with their clubs.

“We have had two rounds of club games already, and another round on Sunday week. That will leave us two weeks before the Leinster semi final. Our league is part of the county championship, so all the players are available to their clubs.

“I would have to say that there would be some concerns expressed about the situation overall, but there is no serious issue. We cooperate — that’s what we do.”

He accepted that problems can arise where a club has a number of players involved with different county teams.

“That’s becoming more of an issue, an issue we have to be mindful of.”!

Cork chairman Mick Dolan admits that they have to be “strict” in implementing their championship games schedule — as they showed last year when they refused to grant Erin’s Own a postponement of their championship quarter-final after a number of players were injured playing with Cork.

“We have to be firm, otherwise the whole thing falls down,’’ he said.

“We would be failing our club members if we didn’t strictly adhere to fixtures schedule. We nearly have to look after them before we look after the inter-county scene."