IN ALL FAIRNESS - Back to the Past

IN ALL FAIRNESS

 

It's fair to say that the planned formats for this years inter-county senior hurling and football championships are toast.

While the GAA are holding off until April 19^th to make any subsequent announcement about their plans, it is hard to see the championship proper starting on May 9^th & 10^th.

With New York's and London's games against Galway and Roscommon respectively postponed, it is likely that whatever championship goes ahead this summer will be without our foreign counties such is the seriousness of the Covid-19 outbreak in their respective cities.

So what are the GAA to do?

The optimist in me hopes that come April 19^th or 26^th that the situation will have improved such in the country that inter-county teams may be allowed back to train in controlled circumstances and maybe, just maybe the championships could be played as scheduled from May 9^th onwards but highly unlikely, unless they were played behind closed doors which also unlikely.

Whatever GAA games go ahead in May and possibly June, it is hard to see spectators being allowed into them until such cases of coronavirus in the country is virtually gone.

I know people will be wondering why are we talking about GAA at all when things are so serious and you are right but come May and June, the shutdown will begin to grate people and any distraction would be welcome.

If it came to it, come May 10^th, could the hurling games for instance be played behind closed doors. With no fans it means no stewards are required. Counties could only bring the minimum number of playing and backroom personnel required. The county chairman could be told to stay at home.

In terms of television, while outside broadcast units would be required, I'm sure viewers would settle for a minimum number of cameras to reduce the number of staff needed on sight on the day.

In an ideal world that would be great but is unlikely to happen as any start of the championship is unlikely to begin before the first Sunday in June. If that happens, the championship would revert to the knockout/backdoor format which was in place from 2002 to 2017.

While there is a great clamour for a return to the old days of straight knockout inter-county championship, there wouldn't be anything more dispiriting personally if after all this upheavel and social isolation for weeks on end that the Tipperary senior hurlers and footballers lose their first championship game and that was it for the summer. For some of us that live for the summer championship, it would exacerbate the harshness of the year.

So that's why a backdoor is needed and in terms of hurling it is perfectly feasible to fit in a backdoor and have the hurling championship completed in seven weekends between the first weekend in June and the scheduled All Ireland Final date of August 16^th.

Here is my suggestion:

6-7 June: Munster and Leinster round 1. One match in each province with 3 byes to the semi-finals

13-14 June: Munster and Leinster semi-finals

28 June: Munster & Leinster Finals – winners to the All Ireland semi-final, losers to the Qualifiers

6-7 July: All Ireland Qualifiers Round 1 – 4 Munster teams v 4 Leinsters teams with winners to the All Ireland Quarter Finals

12 July: All Ireland Quarter Finals

26 July: All Ireland Semi-Finals

16 August: All Ireland Final

In terms of football, a back door championship would require nine weekends because of the number of teams involved (30 without New York and London) but with the All Ireland Final scheduled for August 30^th, you could complete the nine rounds between the beginning of June and the end of August, from where the clubs can have their time as scheduled.

In terms of the Tipperary club championship, the fact that the county championship group stages weren't due to start until late August does provide lee-way for things to run as normal but a weekend does need to be found for football championship games postponed from last weekend.

The GAA should also look at deferring the club semi-finals from pre to post Christmas as was the case this year to allow counties a cut of November to get championships and then give the provincial councils up to early December to get their finals played.

Again, all this depends on when we get back to the old normal. It will be sooner rather than later if people adhere to strict guidelines up to April 12^th and reduce their movements unless absolutely necessary as the sooner we reduce transmissions, the quicker this will all be over and we get back doing the things we love.