We didn’t ignore CPA concerns, insists fixture taskforce chair Eddie Sullivan

Fixture taskforce chairman Eddie Sullivan has rejected the Club Players Association claim that their proposals to reform the GAA calendar were ignored.

The CPA representative withdrew from the fixtures review committee in the middle of last month, stating they could not “in good conscience put our names to such a compromised document”.

The CPA labelled the fixture calendar review taskforce a “Trojan Horse” and alleged plans they put forward at the outset of the committee’s work “were not entertained”.

“Well I chaired [the committee] and I don’t accept that narrative whatsoever,” said Sullivan, in response to CPA criticism of the taskforce.

“They did put in proposals, they were examined. All proposals were examined. The phrase I used to use to the group was that all these proposals had to be road-tested in terms of what impact they were going to have and they all got stress-tested, so they all were and their proposals were, as well.”

Sullivan revealed he did not attempt to persuade them to rejoin the committee after they outlined their concerns.

The conclusion reached by the CPA when withdrawing from the process was that the committee and their work was “designed to give cover to GAA authorities to ratify the status quo while having the appearance of consultation and thoughtful deliberation”.

This was a proposition yesterday rebuffed by fixture taskforce secretary and the GAA’s head of games administration Feargal McGill.

At the end of the day, the main allegation from the CPA was the report was geared towards what’s already in place. If you think that, that’s fine, but the report speaks for itself, as far as I’m concerned.

McGill continued: “The CPA proposal, from memory, scheduled the Allianz League in seven successive weekends. I don’t think that’s feasible. In addition, any competitions you schedule in February and March, and this has been proven in the past couple of years, you must include what we call ‘gap’ weekends or ‘catch-up’ weekends to allow for weather. Again, their proposals don’t do that.”

One of the taskforce’s scheduling recommendations is that county players, where possible, should not be asked to play on more than four successive weekends. “That to me is good sense and good player welfare sense,” the committee secretary added.

The CPA proposals included 16 weekends for clubs to play meaningful games with their county players. The largest number of such weekends in any of the blueprints contained within the taskforce’s report is 15.

“You could schedule any of the proposals in this report in such a way that you’d get 16 club weekends. You could cram the league games together so that everyone’s playing seven weekends in a row; cram the qualifiers and round-robin games so that everyone is playing seven, eight, nine weekends in a row. You’ll get 16 or 17 [club] weekends, no problem.

"But is it the right thing to do? Would it be good scheduling? Would it be fair on county players? In the view of the committee, no,” McGill remarked.

The committee explored three scheduling models: a ‘split season’ involves the first portion of the year dedicated to inter-county and the second-half to club; a ‘multiple windows’ approach would see club and county calendars, after the spring inter-county competitions, weave together through the summer; while the ‘spring window’ model is currently in place.

This spring window ensures two significant and defined periods in the calendar [April, and August onward] where the club becomes priority.

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