FRC recommendations fail to find favour with Cork delegates

Cork have given short shrift to all but one of the Football Review Committee’s competition structure proposals.

Excluding the strict adherence of the closed season at inter-county level, all the other recommendations failed to receive support at Tuesday’s county board meeting.

A common thread running through the opposition to many of the issues was the effect upon the balance between inter-county and club games. In particular, the notion of defeated sides in the Ulster and Leinster SFC preliminary rounds being rehoused in Connacht and Munster to provide four sections of eight was short of support.

Chairman Bob Ryan pointed out there were big contradictions in that the proposals sought to increase the number of Championship games while also looking to run off club championships quicker.

“Then we’re lectured about player welfare,” he said.

County secretary Frank Murphy also made the point about further congestion: “Some years, we enjoy the situation where we don’t have to play a quarter-final, but here we would have one every year. That would take up another two Sundays, the day of the game itself and the week beforehand when we couldn’t have club action. And where is hurling in all of this?”

With regard to the FRC wanting to remove Division 1 football semi-finals, county treasurer Pearse Murphy mentioned the financial aspect.

“In Croke Park 10 days ago,” he said, “there were just under 30,000 people there, which is huge by any stretch. It was financially beneficial to the counties participating but also to the clubs, as a percentage goes down to them. We should be looking to have semi-finals in Divisions 2, 3 and 4 as well, as too many of the round seven games are dead rubbers when there is only a final.”

Chairman Ryan also felt the Central Competitions Control Committee being given overall responsibility of co-ordinating fixtures at all levels would be “a retrograde step”, and argued the aspiration that county championships should have reached semi-final stage by August was far too ambitious.

“July is nearly a non-event month at club level as there’s so much inter-county activity,” he said. “You’d wonder where some of the common sense is.”

Midleton delegate Pat Horgan felt ceding control of fixture-planning would render the county board members almost obsolete.

“This would be another nail in the coffin of the democracy of our organisation,” he said. Why should clubs send two delegates when you’ve one there doing nothing?

St Mary’s delegate John Corcoran backed up Horgan’s point and argued strongly against the FRC’s idea of the All-Ireland club championships being completed in a calendar year.

He said there was “very little thought put into the proposals, they’re not to the benefit of the grassroots, it would cause havoc in the junior ranks”.

Cork clubs are also in favour of enforcing regulations concerning the inter-county closed season, while there was no favour for reducing the minor grade from U18 to U17.