IN ALL FAIRNESS - Split season requires tweaks

I don’t know about you, but I have found the last month or so a little strange.This time of the year is always a period of adjustment as we move from the long summer days to the darker mornings and evenings. There are people that take time to adjust when the clocks change in October and March each year due to daylight savings time. I’m one of those that thankfully isn’t impacted but I have found the GAA calendar changing this year a bigger adjustment.

Not a bad complaint, I found this summer went on longer than any other and I put a lot of it down to the change in the GAA schedule. The inter-county championships previously ran from late May to mid-August in recent years. This year it was from mid-April to late July. The All-Ireland finals always felt like the end of summer, this year summer was just warming up when Croke Park was at its busiest, with Garth Brook and his fans keeping them busy on Jones’ Road at the moment.

There has been a lot written and said since the conclusion of the inter-county championships about whether them ending earlier in the year is the right thing to do for both club and county.

The first thing to do is to acknowledge is that the split season was needed and only come the end of the year can we gauge properly how it has worked out. I do feel it has largely worked, but I do feel a few tweaks are needed to make it perfect.

In terms of the clubs, J1’s and holidays have been a major issue to contend with this summer, particularly as it is the first time since 2019 because of the Covid-19 pandemic that young people have been able head off as many have done before to the US, Canada and beyond. However, it meant the early rounds of club championships in late July and early August being without key players, where even one game can be pivotal, and Holycross/Ballycahill could point to if they had Bryan O’Mara for their first-round game, could they be in a quarter final in two weeks time.

Young players going abroad during the summer is going to an annual issue so maybe the GAA needs to adjust for it where club championships won’t begin until the first weekend in August at the earliest. That would open the possibility of extending the inter-county season by two weeks, no more than that, and I feel that is all that is needed from having as close to a perfect schedule between club and county as possible.

The GAA’s initial plan was to finish all competitions in the calendar year with the club finals in December. However, there is a growing feeling that the club season will extend permanently into January. I know this creates some debate of it being unfair for some clubs not to be able to enjoy the Christmas and New Year festivities, but if you knew you were that close to an All-Ireland in a given year, you would forsake one festive period where you might row back on over indulgence.

If it is the case that the club semi-finals and finals are played in January, as Borris-Ileigh experienced in 2020, it means the provincial club championships could be delayed to mid November, which opens up early November for county finals.

Prior to the untimely passing of Dillon Quirke, which altered the Tipperary club championship schedule, the county hurling finals were pencilled in for 8-9 October but the Munster club campaigns weren’t due to begin until a month later, on 5-6 November, and the same four-week gap applies for football with county finals on 15-16 October with Munster quarter finals on 12-13 November.

Now that lee-way that was there has been eaten into with the two week delay which forced the postponement of a round of hurling fixtures last month and pushed the county hurling finals back to 22-23 October. Hopefully, what happened this year will be a once off and if it is, that four weeks gap, plus pushing the Munster quarter finals later into November, opens the door for a later start to the county championships, which this year were 23-24 July.

Would starting on the first or second weekend in August be a major issue? I don’t believe it would as most players, young or old, will have their J1’s/holidays out of the way and can fully plan their GAA autumn. It also opens up the possibility of the All-Ireland inter-county finals finishing around the August Bank Holiday weekend which feels like a fitting time to end the inter-county season.