This group is hell-bent on change, says Derek Kavanagh

The Club Players Association (CPA) fixtures co-ordinator Derek Kavanagh insists the newly-formed group are going about their business with their eyes wide open.

The Nemo Rangers man was struck by the nature of the questioning from journalists at yesterday’s launch in Ballyboden St Enda’s clubhouse in south Dublin.

Kavanagh felt CPA executive committee members had to regularly substantiate their reasons for getting involved in the campaign to improve the lot of club players when he perceives the cause as self-explanatory.

“Listening to the questions, it’s almost as if we’re trying to defend something evil. What are we arguing about, like, here? I mean from September on you pick up a paper and every single week there’s a piece about the demise of the club scene and you hear people giving out about county championship on a Friday night and playing provincial championship on a Saturday. What are we defending? I just don’t get it. Why don’t we change? This group is hell-bent on change.”

Kavanagh admits he was naive in 2012 when the Cork executive failed in their attempt to defeat his motion calling on the All-Ireland finals being brought forward by two weeks.

“I was ridiculed,” he recalled. “It was said it was idiotic and September is sacrosanct. But my answer to that was September is sacrosanct but I’m retired, I have a hip replacement. I was then 32 years of age, I was coaching guys that were walking away at 30 years of age because they were wasting their lives. After two years of coaching in the senior club scene in Cork, I said: ‘Never again. It’s just a waste of my life’.”

He has since learned while the group boasts plenty of experience in men like Wexford’s Liam Griffin and Donegal’s Martin McHugh.

“Why do we not have a fixtures calendar that we can hand to a player? It’s the utmost disrespect. Guys are walking away and what this group is saying is to those that aren’t walking away that we’re going to represent ye. That’s basically what this group is about.

“I could tell by the sentiment in the room and the language in the questions (from journalists) it’s like we’re being naive and being sniggered at a little bit and ‘do you know what you’re doing here?’ We know, we’re all GAA people.

“We’re all brought up in the GAA and know how resistance to change they can be. We’re aware of all that but it still needs to change.”

Kavanagh is prepared to stand up to the establishment but hopes it doesn’t come to the point of locking horns with county board executives.

“I would hope there’s enough realisation that change has to happen and we’re not going to be met with so much conflict and distrust. I would hope that negotiations go smooth. I would expect they will because I don’t think any county board is happy with the way it is going.

“I would love to meet a player in any club that could put his hand up and say he is okay with the fixtures. I would love to meet somebody from a county board to say they are happy with the fixtures. It’s just not there and we all know there is a problem.

“I think they will welcome it but if there is too much conflict we will have to take another route but I would hope it will greeted positively because I think the whole country is fed up with it, really.”

Asked for the identity of the CPA’s opponents yesterday, chairman Micheál Brody said “bureaucracy”. Kavanagh accepts not being able to put a face on what they wish to counter is difficult.

“It would be great to have a figure you could visualise or a person you could choke or something, but we don’t have that and I understand that. There is no silver bullet. We don’t have the ideal fix, but hopefully in a year’s time, or three years’ time, we will have figured out a way.

“The structure is such that a good motion coming from a specific club in Carlow or in Monaghan, it might be suppressed. It might have great potential if it was run by a different county, for example, and it might get the power or the backing then.

“Now that club in Monaghan or Carlow will be connected through this association and suddenly we can get on it, we can get into the clubs and we can use the democratic association to make sure that every club is bringing it to their county convention, every county convention is bringing it to Congress and every county board delegate at Congress will be advised and pleaded with to vote on whatever proposal the association deems smart.”

The former Cork captain remembers how in 2012 Bishopstown’s senior footballers had to wait 19 weeks between first and second round games — “that’s three pre-seasons and a month off. These guys were just training and training and maybe playing a couple of meaningless league games in between when they probably struggled for numbers. So I was just flabbergasted that they (executive) went against it because it would have made their job a little bit easier. Obviously, there were agendas in the background that, you know what, if you tried to figure them all out I’d be dead (with the amount of time trying to figure them out).”