McGuinness: Calendar must be tweaked to accommodate clubs

Jim McGuinness has called for all football calendars to be condensed so that clubs have exclusive access to their county players for longer periods of time.

The Donegal manager believes the clubs’ decision earlier this year to postpone the championship until the end of the county’s All-Ireland senior campaign has paid dividends, as much as he suggested two rounds of games be played in April and May.

“That decision has brought us to the All-Ireland final,” he maintains.

But taking a wider view and starting with moving the Sigerson Cup to pre-Christmas dates, he believes clubs can be provided a better window in the season.

“Last year, and when I was managing club teams, you would play one or two games in the championship. So you’re building up for championship training for, say, six to eight weeks. Then you play your game or you play your two games. Then there’s a three-month gap, where everything you built up is lost. Boys go away to America. Boys come back from America. And then you pick up the pieces again at the end of the summer, and you get into championship football then again. I don’t think that’s right.

“I’m not saying there’s a right or a wrong way here. I’m saying the whole thing needs to be looked at. The calendar needs to be looked at. College football, inter-county football and club football have to be condensed, and there has to be hard decisions made that everybody gets a really good opportunity to prepare. That’s the key thing.

“And if you’ve got time to prepare and you’ve got a good framework to work with, I think it’s doable. But it’s difficult making those decisions.”

It will involve compromise but McGuinness stresses it’s exactly what’s required to give each level adequate time to complete their schedules.

“I do think the third-level thing took over too much there, and I think from a county perspective that you weren’t preparing properly for the National League at all because a lot of the time you very rarely saw your players in the lead-in to the National League — and I don’t think that’s right.

“I’m a big advocate of the third-level, no doubt about that, but I think that needs to be looked at in terms of when in the year that is on, and could you buy a month there, or five weeks.

“The other thing about it is you’ve got lads coming off the back of summer football, and then they’re starting college in September — and then the Sigerson’s in March. They’re fit in September, when they’re going to college. They’ve got a high level of fitness built up anyway with their clubs; so you’ve got September and you’ve got October, and if you played it in November, you’ve got a 10-week period where they could prepare intensely to play in that competition. And then maybe you could shut the whole country down for a month, instead of people hiding around corners pretending there’s a training ban... there is none. You know what I mean?

“And everybody conning, and county treasurers rubbing their hands because they don’t have to pay out expenses! And dinners and everything else.

“You know it and I know it and everybody else knows it; it doesn’t make sense. But it’s hours and hours and hours that conversation.”

McGuinness believes the decision by the Donegal clubs to hold off on their club championship has been justified by the county’s second All-Ireland final appearance in three years.

“If we had club championship in the middle of the Ulster championship this year, you’ve got fellas like Glenswilly and St Michael’s paired and this type of thing; and Kilcar, going toe-to-toe with one another.

“And then on top of that we had fisticuffs in the Michael’s/Glenswilly [match]. And county players going toe-to-toe with each other. And that’s the same boys then that are going into battle with each other two weeks later.

“So you’d all these negative dynamics, you’re losing players, you’re not getting traction in your training, you’re picking up injuries... you’re managing a situation, not a team.

“The clubs have given us the opportunity to manage the team this year and prepare as best we can.”