Autumn leaves McGill cold

THE GAA’S director of games administration and player welfare, Feargal McGill, has talked down the possibility of a return to the National Leagues being started in autumn.

Roscommon, via their club Elphin, will bring forward a motion to this April’s Congress calling for the competitions to commence in October for the first time since 1996-97.

Their proposal, which if backed would see three rounds of the leagues being played prior to Christmas, has gained momentum with former Meath manager Seán Boylan and Offaly hurling boss Joe Dooley supporting the idea.

However, McGill has argued the school of thought isn’t representative of opinion at grassroots level or Croke Park and the ‘appetite’ for the idea is not there.

“I don’t believe the motion will find much support,” he said.

“The groundswell of opinion is against the idea of pushing the league start back to autumn and there is not much appetite for it among Croke Park officials.

“The biggest advantage of a calendar inter-county season is the benefit it provides to the clubs.

“By the first week in August, there are four teams left in both the All-Ireland football and hurling championships.

“Because of that, the remaining counties have almost the entirety of August, September and October to give to their clubs exclusively.

“If there was an October start to the National Leagues, county teams would be back in training in mid-August and that’s something I would be confident clubs wouldn’t tolerate.”

McGill also highlighted the switch to an autumn start would create a player welfare issue to mitigate against the idea.

“If we were to reject the calendar inter-county season there would be a whole host of difficulties.

“The 12-month season is what we’re trying to move away from and it would be generally agreed there has to be some form of a break.

“My own county Leitrim haven’t had much success in recent years. Say it they were to go out of the championship in the first round of the qualifiers in July, they would likely be back training in mid-August for an October start to the league.

“The county board would have just five weeks to roll off a championship unaffected by inter-county commitments. That’s not taking in club league fixtures either.”