National task force fixtures proposals on hold

The GAA’s national fixtures task force will meet again on Wednesday before their report is launched early next month.

The Club Players’ Association (CPA) suggested the body were to conclude their work last week. However, the task force, headed up by GAA management committee member Eddie O’Sullivan, will only sign off on their proposals this week and Central Council will then decide their fate.

Some of those recommendations, especially those focusing on governance and counties providing their own fixtures for the year, could be rubber-stamped by Central Council next month or January in time for annual Congress in February. However, plans to alter the All-Ireland senior football championship may require a Special Congress later in 2020, possibly May, as it is felt clubs will need time to digest them before a vote is taken.

What’s certain is the structure of the All-Ireland SFC has to be addressed in 2020 as it is the final year of the Super 8 experiment. As the Irish Examiner reported last week, the task force are expected to put forward three All-Ireland SFC options that all tie in with the recently-backed second tier — the current structure played in a more condensed time-frame, flipping the League format into the Championship and four conferences of eight teams based on the provinces.

The task force are also looking at the idea of delaying the start of the inter-county championships until the end of May so that April can be given over to club games exclusively while county teams have early May to prepare for Championship.

However, it remains to be seen how practical that later start date is given the round-robin format of the Leinster and Munster senior hurling championships, which currently take seven weeks to play, and what impact that would have on the schedule of the remainder of the competition. The task force had reportedly not intended altering the All-Ireland SHC but could yet indicate that the system has to change.

On Saturday, Central Council signed off on the 2020 masters fixture plan, the details of which will be released by the GAA’s Central Competitions Control Committee in the coming days. The biggest change from this year’s plan will be the U20 football championship returning to the spring, which will allow U20 players to line out for both their county’s U20 and senior teams.

A number of start dates for competitions are already known such as the Sigerson Cup (January 12), the Allianz Football and Hurling Leagues (January 25), the provincial U20 championships (early February) and the provincial senior football and hurling championships (May 10) with Galway’s senior footballers heading to New York for their Connacht opener the weekend before.