IN ALL FAIRNESS - A positive from Covid

2020 proved to be a hugely disruptive year in all our lives and while the impact of Covid was largely negative with the lives lost and the negative impact it had on society, it forced change upon institutions that might not have happened.

One of them was on the GAA and the full introduction of the split season. It might have been heading that way but what the GAA was forced to do in 2020 in creating some form of a club and inter-county season to provide some kind of a distraction for many people, was one of the best things they ever did.

The reason this springs to mind is off the back of Kiladangan’s county senior hurling final replay win on Sunday, to add to their one and only success back in 2020 when just one hundred of their supporters could be in Semple Stadium for that historic occasion while their home-coming wasn’t able to be what they were able to do last Sunday and I’m sure through the rest of this week.

Going back to 2020, it would have been easy for the GAA to decide when return to play was granted that, being in the summer, the inter-county championship would get things moving again as to give people something to look forward to on a weekend, even if they could not go to the games in person.

Instead, the focus was on the majority and getting the clubs going first. What we got in 2020 was a twelve week window from July to September where the club championships could be started and completed before the shortened inter-county championship would fill the void in those bleak winter months.

Since inter-county managers first started messing with the club calendars around the start of the second decade of this century, even without Covid, a point was always going to come where a full separation of the club and inter-county seasons was needed. A sop was provided with the April club month, which was largely abused by many county managers who dictated how many, or in many cases, how few club games would be played.

Tipperary were one of the few counties who tried to make it work but then they ended being penalised at inter-county level as doing the right thing for the club ended up with them being ill-prepared for the inter-county championship as many other counties used the “club month” for players to fine-tune for the championship.

Over the last two years since the All-Ireland Finals were cemented to be played by the end of July, the clamour for the inter-county season to be extended into August, or in some views, back to September, has been growing, yet it is only a brief roar. Those views tend to be from GAA people whose first love is for the inter-county game, and who can blame them, it brings with in the colour, excitement, glamour, 82,000 people at Croke Park and all that. However, that isn’t the be-all and end-all.

The club game has proved to be the ideal aperitif to the GAA year. Despite Tipperary exiting the hurling championship in a disappointing manner this year at the quarter final stage, isn’t it great to have the club championship to fall back on and ease the pain of that.

Within two weeks of Tipp losing to Galway, the club championships were underway in earnest. Okay, it might have taken a week or two to burst into life, but when it did, they were the only show in town in communities around the country, from the success of those clubs lucky enough to achieve something, be it winning a championship, making progress, or avoiding relegation.

Looking through the list of winners in a North Tipperary context in 2023, there are few communities that didn’t have something to get excited about in terms of divisional or county championships to celebrate from Kiladangan to Lorrha to Moneygall to Ballinahinch to Knockshegowna to Toomevara to Silvermines to Ballina, and many more besides. These might be the clubs on a high this year, but it will be others in the near future so enjoy the good times when they come because they won’t last long.

And for Kiladangan, Lorrha and Ballinahinch, their campaigns are far from over as they now don the blue and gold jersey and go onto represent Tipperary in Munster and are three and four games respectively away from being able to run out at Croke Park and play for an All-Ireland title, if they are good enough and fortunate enough to get that far. Now wouldn’t that be another great story we would be denied if the inter-county game swallowed up everything else. You only have to look at rugby to see how the club game has suffered with the almost entire focus now on the provinces.