Tipperary to wait on national schedule before confirming club plans
By Shane Brophy
Tipperary County Board are awaiting the release of the revised inter-county schedule before confirming the formats for club championships in both hurling and football.
Unlike a number of counties who have already released their updated club schedules, a meeting of Tipperary County Board officers last night agreed to hold back on confirming plans within the county until they get exact details from Croke Park on the shape the inter-county competitions will be plan in and when they are scheduled for.
Croke Park are expected to release their schedule within the next week but there is growing expectation that the October 17th restart to inter-county competitions will begin with the completion of the Allianz Hurling and Football Leagues, with the championships beginning in November.
Tipperary County Board are keen to give the senior hurlers and footballers four weeks lead in preparation time for knockout championship games and in such a scenario the county may be able to use ten of the eleven weekends available for club action.
“We have met Liam Sheedy and David Power and they are happy enough as long as they get four weeks before a first round knockout game,” said Tipperary secretary Tim Floyd.
“If we got up to the first weekend of October, we could get five rounds in hurling and five rounds in football which is ideally what we’d like to do. In fairness to the dual clubs, you couldn’t expect them to play Sunday, Wednesday, Sunday.”
With the Tipperary senior hurlers already eliminated from the national league, playing club games into the first weekend in October is possible, however, the senior footballers have two outstanding games against Offaly and Leitrim to retain their division 3 status.
As it stands, county teams can restart training from September 14th, seven weeks into the club window which will begin on the August Bank Holiday weekend, with Tipperary officials aiming to get another three weekends to get competitions completed without the need for midweek matches, however, the Tipperary senior footballers league situation complicates matters.
“We can’t be playing right up to October 17th,” admitted Floyd.
“The footballers still have two crunch games to play. The eleven weeks that have been laid out is really only eight weeks unless we can get some leeway at either end.”
While the Tipperary hurlers early exit from the national league may well benefit them in one way, they could also come in cold depending on how the revised Munster Championship is redrawn admitted Tim Floyd.
“Looking back on it now, being eliminated from the National Hurling League might not have done use any harm but if you are facing into a knockout hurling championship in Munster with five teams, will one team get a bye to the semi-final or will three teams get byes and have one preliminary round game?
“If you got that bye and you could be meeting a team with already a match under their belt going in cold. It’s a big disadvantage to get the bye, you’d be better off having a match.”
Even with starting a Munster Championship in early November, it is possible to have both All Ireland finals played before Christmas and that is the preference of Tipperary County Board, rather than pushing the completion of some competitions into the New Year as was suggested by GAA President John Horan.
“We would hope it wouldn’t because you are carrying the problems of 2020 into 2021,” Floyd said.
“You would then be interfering in the 2021 leagues. We’d prefer as officers in Tipperary that there would be a clean slate going into 2021.”
The make-up of the county championships won’t be considered until they receive the national plan from where a county management meeting will be called to thrash out what is possible.
The county board are also awaiting clarification on whether the county management committee can make the final decision on the revised club formats, without a full county board meeting of club delegates.
“The management committee at Croke Park were able to get approval from Special Congress to make decisions on inter-county schedules and we presume that carries down to clubs but we are awaiting clarification on that,” confirmed Tim Floyd.
With the county board hinting at a preference for a five round club championship in both hurling a football, it would be possible to use the four team groups already drawn in hurling and football, thereby giving each club three games. However, it could mean just the group winners progressing to the county semi-finals, thereby removing the quarter final round to fit into five weekends.
Relegation would also remain with the bottom team in each group progressing to a semi-final and a final with a loser being relegation and the winner of the next tier championship being promoted.