Solving fixture jam won’t be child’s play

Fixtures planning expert Paul Kinsella has warned that alleviating the burden on club players will be considerably more difficult than has been portrayed this week.

At Monday’s launch of the Club Players Association (CPA), Martin McHugh insisted the fixtures problem could be addressed simply, saying: “If you go into a sixth year class and give them an hour to do it, they’ll sort it out. That’s how it easy it is.” The ex-Donegal star was backed up by CPA chairman Micheál Brody on radio later that day.

However, former Kilkenny chairman Kinsella, who chaired the national fixtures planning committee during Liam O’Neill’s presidency, says putting together a county’s fixtures calendar is an extremely sophisticated exercise.

“The big problem is there’s a lot of people talking and not looking at the difficulties. For argument’s sake, do you play club matches during exam time? Do you recognise club players go abroad to work for the summer? Do you realise the diminishing numbers rural clubs have and the fact they need everybody? Is the 13-day rule and seven-day rule for adults being factored into inter-county fixtures? Nobody seems to have mentioned it.

“What you find when you sit down to put together a fixtures programme is the weekends quickly become limited. I don’t think a lot of the people getting media coverage have actually tried to do that, putting inter-county and club fixtures on paper.

“The other thing I would say is each county have their own brand of club championship. Ours is on a league basis, so is Galway hurling, but others are knockout. Each county are doing what they think works best for them but the same system is not in operation.”

A couple of CPA executive members spoke of separate seasons for club and county, which has been previously backed by former Donegal manager Jim McGuinness. However, Kinsella isn’t convinced by the idea.

“I wouldn’t have a problem bringing forward the All-Irelands but if you create two separate seasons will the club players hang around for the inter-county season to end?”

Kinsella organised the fixtures calendar in Kilkenny for over 30 years. He readily acknowledges his job was made easier by working alongside Brian Cody in Saint Patrick’s De La Salle Boys School. He feels it is in the counties proficient in both codes where putting together a programme is an onerous task, with fixtures from one code impacting on the other.

“The counties with the real problems are the dual counties like Cork, Tipperary, Dublin and so on. Kerry, like Kilkenny, is effectively a single code county by and large. The one thing players require is certainty, when you publish at the end of February, as you’re supposed to do, that they’re adhered to regardless. Obviously, you can’t account for a draw but other than there should be absolute certainty.

“What we don’t know is how county boards operate. Brian and myself were in the unusual situation of being in the same building, I would give him the proposed dates in January and then we would debate what was possible and what wasn’t.

“The only way a match can be postponed in Kilkenny is a bereavement and the match is automatically fixed for the following Tuesday. That’s one thing everybody knows and it’s the certainty players want.”

Kinsella has previously shared his reservations about implementing a calendar season, as supported by GAA director general Páraic Duffy, president Aogán Ó Fearghail and the CPA. Were it to be implemented, dual counties would face a race against time to have their championships completed to have representation in the provincial competitions. Marrying that with other feedback Croke Park is receiving from clubs who want to be involved in their championships until July seems almost impossible.

Kinsella also raises another argument in favour of retaining the All-Ireland Club semi-final and finals after Christmas. “These couple of months for Slaughtneil are the best they will ever experience. I never heard (Ballyhale) Shamrocks complaining about the break to their All-Ireland semi-final. For the junior and intermediate clubs, they should be soaking in the build-up to their semi-finals because it may never happen again. ”