Cork GAA will not support motion to introduce club game requirement for inter-county players

At the Cork county board meeting on Tuesday, it was suggested that the media should once again be allowed attend.

Cork GAA will support a motion at Congress which, if passed, would make hurling a requisite in all club nurseries. Pic: Eóin Noonan/Sportsfile

Cork GAA will not be supporting the Clontarf motion to Congress compelling a player to have played four league games with their club in order to be eligible for inter-county involvement.

The motion by the Dublin club proposes that a player must have lined out in a minimum of four club league fixtures in order to play inter-county championship in the same calendar year.

If passed at Congress later this month, the four-game requirement would mean a revisiting of the split season and the games calendar of several counties.

Speaking on the Irish Examiner’s Gaelic Football Show earlier this month, former Dublin footballer Dr Noel McCaffrey, who proposed the motion at his own club AGM before it was later passed at Dublin convention, said the split season has solved one problem but worsened another.

“That success is being celebrated wildly and widely. It is discussed up and down as a great achievement. I suppose it is, but in tandem with it what has happened is, as an unintended consequence, county players play even less with their clubs now in the split season than they previously did. Some people would say they weren’t playing at all anyway. It depends on the county, that has become clear to us as we have gone around our business of consulting counties.” 

Cork will be supporting at Congress the motion of Wexford’s 1996 All-Ireland winning manager Liam Griffin that hurling be a requisite in all club nurseries (U7 to U10).

Elsewhere during Tuesday’s Cork county board meeting, chairman Pat Horgan took issue with certain aspects of last month’s Irish Examiner story revealing the introduction of club levies, by the executive, to help service Cork GAA’s €31 million-plus debt and raise funds for a centre of excellence.

The introduction of levies was first mentioned by the top table to delegates during January's behind-closed-doors county board meeting, and it was suggested at the end of February’s meeting, held on Tuesday of this week, that allowing the media to return to the monthly county board meeting would end instances of the top table taking issue with details from their in-camera meetings winding up in media reports.

Although the suggestion to once again allow media access, 13 months after the executive banned journalists from attending the monthly meeting, received support from another delegate, it was not entertained by the top table.

When announcing the banning of media from all monthly meetings in January 2024, except for annual convention, the Cork GAA statement said the decision was taken to “allow more open and transparent engagement with clubs”. 

Yet at the first behind-closed-doors meeting later that month, and when asked by a delegate why journalists were no longer permitted to attend, a Cork official claimed the county board report appearing in the following morning's newspaper was giving a different impression of how the meeting had actually gone.

It remains to be seen if further efforts are made at next month’s meeting to bring the subject of media access to a vote and how the executive would respond to such a proposal from the floor.

Separately at the meeting, it was revealed that the Cork minor football and hurling teams will play all their 2025 Munster championship home games at Páirc Uí Rinn, and not Páirc Uí Chaoimh, as had been the case going back to 2018. While Páirc Uí Rinn had been used for some minor championship games in recent years, the majority were staged at Páirc Uí Chaoimh. It was not outlined if moving the minor home games to Páirc Uí Rinn was a cost-saving Páirc Uí Chaoimh measure.