Briody insists no ‘sacred cows’ in competitions review
Club Players’ Association (CPA) chairman, Micheál Briody — one of the chief stakeholders in the recently-established Fixtures Review Committee (FRC) — has insisted there will be no sacred cows left untouched in their quest to find solutions for the vast majority of footballers and hurlers who have their fixtures postponed indefinitely by the inter-county season.
Briody was reacting to the announcement by GAA President John Horan of the establishment of the Fixtures Review Committee (FRC) and how keen he is to have a second tier inter county football competition.
However, no existing competition is off the table if finding the best way forward means its’ exclusion.
“The whole idea that John Horan has committed to us, is that there is no competition and no game that will not be looked at in this review,” said Briody.
“The terms of reference for this review doesn’t have to be, ‘well, have a look and see what you see with the pre-season cups and the leagues, but we are not touching the provincials or the Championship.’ That’s not the case.”
As keen as Horan is for the new football competition, Briody insisted that its format is also something that will be presented to the FRC long before Congress next year.
“He was clarifying that he wanted to get the Tier Two football competition across the line,” said Briody.
We have been in discussions with him on that and if it will come in on Congress later this year, number one it will have been shown to the committee in advance so it is aligned with their proposals.
Briody’s comments slightly alter the perception of the mood within the CPA, after they sent an email in mid-April to their members, which hinted at a “possible escalation” of their actions.
He insists there was real frustration at the time, stating, “I suppose our frustration was never with any of the conversations we had with Tom Ryan and John Horan, it was with the pace that these things have happened.
“We think we could be four or five months down the line and there is a body of work to be done here. Bringing all the different stakeholders together, all the different categories competing for time windows.
"It’s not something you can do in two meetings. We were getting frustrated that the can was being kicked down the road a bit.”
He added: “They have committed on dates now because it has to be brought to Congress next year, the three proposals that John Horan announced today.
"There is a hell of a lot of work in that and it’s not a case of printing them on the first week of February. You do that after having gone back to all the clubs.
"So this has to be brought to fruition around October/November, printed up in readable format and then every club in the country are asked, ‘do you want A, B, or C?’”
The FRC will include a nominee from the CPA, one from the Gaelic Players’ Association, and others including representation from second-level and third-level education sectors and the GAA itself.
However, the insistence from Horan that a new level of football competition is delivered within his time in office is of “concern” to Briody.
“In this review committee, there should be no need to push through a Tier Two in a Special Congress at the end of this year,” Briody said.
“But it seems to be with the powers that be, that’s what they want. John Horan has announced it’s one of the things he wants to get through in his presidency, within his term. That’s where it is going.
"We don’t have power to assert over it but we did have certain concerns and that is being looked at on incremental change.
"But they have committed those couple of things; there won’t be a time period on it and the Review Committee will get to comment on the proposals and have a contribution and an involvement in what goes before a Special Congress.”
The establishment of the FRC is the result of many months of lobbying by the CPA and can be said to be a significant development in the evolution of what is a single-interest lobby group within the GAA — although that ‘single interest’ is extremely complex.
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