Howlin: no benefit in moving club games
Last week’s Leinster semi-final between Portlaoise and Clara had to be abandoned three minutes into the second half due to fears for player safety after the constant rain made the pitch unplayable.
The Connacht football final between Charlestown and Corofin had already fallen victim to the sodden conditions the night before and the belief is that such biblical conditions will only become more common in the years to come.
“Who wants to play hurling and football in weather like we had last Sunday?” said Howlin, “but who is to say that moving the fixtures would solve the problem? We had days like that in August of this year as well.”
It is a point well made. Kerry and Galway met in an All-Ireland quarter-final at Croke Park in August 2008 in what could only be called monsoon-like conditions when the floodlights were turned on in mid-afternoon.
Laois and Tyrone met on a similarly unseasonal July evening in the All-Ireland qualifiers three years ago and countless other examples could be offered from this summer alone.
That said, the club championship’s place in the GAA fixture list has long been a bone of contention with many of the belief that it should be run off in the one calendar year and not continued through to St Patrick’s Day.
Weather conditions and replays have also seen some provincial championships stretch on into Christmas week in recent years with one Leinster final this last decade even being played on December 23.
Provincial councils have made an effort to run off their competitions much earlier in recent seasons and Leinster’s hurling and football championships should still be put to bed by December 6 this year.
As things stand, it is all but impossible to see what more the administrators in the various provinces can do to minimise the influence weather can sometimes hold over matters.
“You can’t look at the club championships in isolation,” Howlin explained. “The leagues start in February and we can’t start (the provincial club competitions) until the county finals are over so there is a small amount of room to work in.
“Last year, for the first time ever, we made our fixtures in March so that the counties could work towards them and they were very supportive of that. It worked very well and we will be doing that again next year.”
The Portlaoise-Clara match will now take place this Saturday in O’Moore Park after Ballyhale Shamrocks agreed to move Sunday’s provincial hurling final against Tullamore from that venue to O’Connor Park.
“The cooperation we got from Ballyhale was absolutely outstanding and shows for me what a great club it is and what great people they have involved down there,” said Howlin.
“Our backs were to the wall otherwise. We were looking at playing (the football) under lights in Portlaoise on the Friday night but even two days might not have been enough time for the pitch to recover for a hurling match.”
All in all, the weather has played havoc with club fixtures this month. Eight games were postponed at the start of November in Ulster due to conditions. Four were senior with two apiece in the intermediate and junior grades.
Rain hasn’t always been the culprit in these cases.
Last December, the Ulster senior club football final replay between Crossmaglen and Ballinderry was called off at short notice because of a frozen pitch at Brewster Park in Enniskillen.
As Stephen Donnelly of the Ulster Council explained yesterday, there is no Plan B in such circumstances. “If, say, Newry is unplayable, then what other pitch in Down will be?” he pointed out.
Not surprisingly, GAA officials around the country have been keeping a close eye on the weather forecast for the coming week and the chances of an uninterrupted round of fixtures look good.
“It’s not supposed to rain that much from Thursday to Sunday so we are keeping our fingers crossed,” said Howlin. “Our backs were to the wall only for Ballyhale and we want to stick to our dates as much as possible.”
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