Village boss describes fixtures move as ‘crazy’

RATHNEW Senior football manager Harry Murphy has described the decision taken at Monday night’s County Board meeting to push theround of championship games back from the June Bank Holiday Weekend to after the Leaving certiciate as “crazy” and says “there’s just no logic to it”.

Speaking to the Wicklow People, Murphy said that all clubs knew three months ago that the Leaving Certificate was taking place and now, following the decision reached at Monday night’s County Board meeting, “every footballer in the county has had their football put on hold for another five weeks,” says the Rathnew manager.

“This seems totally crazy that we are not going to play championship football for another five weeks.

“If you look at our neighbours Wexford, they’ve already played two rounds in hurling and football, Dublin, fresh from the league final, are at the quarter-final stage of their championship.

“Can we not try copy a successful county instead of beating our own way all the time.

“It now falls on the fixtures secretary’s shoulders to get these fixtures played. Every footballer in the county is held up, there’s no logic to what they’ve done. Build everyone up to play championship in the first week of June and then pull the rug out from under their feet,” he added.

Murphy also says that it wasn’t a show of disrespect to the county teams by fixing games in the period after the county games and he said that any county worth their salt would have a back up plan if the county team was beaten. He said a county doesn’t sit back for five weeks. He also added that both he and the Rathnew club wish the Wicklow hurlers and footballers nothing but the best.

Over the road in St Pat’s, Casey O’Brien was taking a much more philosophical look at things.

“We were ready to play championship even though there was a stag on the weekend before it,” said O’Brien. “We had players ready to sacrifice their stag party to be here for the championship. There were 12 set to go but 10 of them were staying to play the championship the following week,” he added.

Baltinglass Senior football manager Paul Garrigan said that the original fixtures sent out earlier in the year had the championship down for commencement in July and then they were changed to the start of June.

“I would have preferred to stay with the original fixtures but if it was on the fourth of June it was on the fourth of June.

“Every club will have Leaving Certificate students, we have Mark Jackson and Adam McHugh and if we had to play without them so be it.

“The fixtures people have a difficult job,” he added.