CPA couldn’t accept status quo model

The Club Players Association (CPA) claim they were the only member of the fixtures taskforce to “develop further plans during the process”.

Their statement read yesterday: “This is not a matter of sour grapes but illustrates in our view a reluctance to take on board differing views. Our mantra has been it is not who is right but what is right for the Association.”

In total, the CPA put forward five plans at the outset which “were not entertained”.

In good faith, they worked on what they believed were improvements to two blueprints, which had been listed among five by GAA director of games administration and player welfare head Feargal McGill last month.

With conditions, the CPA supported the idea of four senior football provincial conferences each comprising eight teams, excluding New York who would face the tier two winners in a newly created President’s Cup game. They also backed the suggestion to reverse the League and Championship.

Their versions of each, they highlighted, would provide the space for at least 16 weeks of local (county) club championship and league activity and 22 for inter-county championship and league games to be played. Both plans would have seen the club and county seasons run concurrently.

In a letter dated October 25, the CPA said they could not support the “improved status quo” model because “the status quo is the very reason the taskforce was needed.”

In their correspondence on Monday to taskforce chairman Eddie O’Sullivan, the CPA’s national secretary, Michael Higgins, wrote: “In our opinion, the process has been designed to ensure that the ‘Improved Status Quo’ option is successful, squandering a unique opportunity for real and effective change.

“Club players across the country will continue to be disrespected and disenfranchised and inter-county players will continue to have too much demanded of them.”

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