Championship in blitz format is now going at top speed

LAST WEEK saw a return to action on the club scene with important games in all grades, almost three months after the last round of championship matches. It’s an annual gripe amongst the club fraternity but attempts at Congress to address the fixtures situation by bringing forward the All-Ireland series were dismissed by delegates.

So the old Albert Einstein saying was definitely referring to many aspects of the G.A.A.

Insanity: doing the same things over and over again and expecting the same results.

A regular summer programme of games for club players will never happen within current structures and it doesn’t matter whether you are a dual or single sport county.

The net effect on the club player is that the championships are now run off on an almost blitz basis. Last week young players had to play Minor, Under-21 and Senior in the space of six days.

The same will happen for the next few weeks, but the issue of player burn-out will be strictly taboo as championships need to be finished.

With two rounds of football still to go in the local championships there are still many scenarios that can arise in all grades, so after this weekend we will have a clearer picture of what will happen.

Issues at the bottom of the tables will hold greater interest this weekend. Glynn-Barntown, Horeswood and Starlights are bottom of Group A, while the clash of Adamstown and Sarsfields will decide who will finish bottom of Group B.

Similarly, the clash between Kilmore and Rosslare is a crucial game in Intermediate Group B, and local rivalry here should make this one of the games of the weekend.

Tipperary and Clare footballers have grabbed the headlines over the last few weekends for all the right reasons in the All-Ireland football championships. It wasn’t only the fact that they progressed so far, but their style of play was skilful and refreshing and showed that football can still be good to watch.

Tipperary’s achievement is all the more remarkable given the number of top-class players they lost to hurling, emigration and Australian Rules this year. Their performances remind me of the Wexford team of only a few years ago when we also reached the semi-final.

They won’t win the championship but their story and journey has rescued this year’s competition. Rumours that Tipperary hurling supporters are insisting their hurling team wear black armbands as a mark of protest next weekend have been strongly denied.

Next Friday sees the start of what used to be the greatest show on earth, the Olympic Games. What used to be the pinnacle of all sporting occasions has now been tarnished by the extraordinary revelations of drug doping by participants, particularly Russians.

People would be extremely naive to think that it is only Russian athletes that transgress, and the worry now is that every medalist will have a question mark over their performance.

The games will still captivate us though, especially with the Wexford interest we have in the boxing arena.

Wexford man Eddie Bolger is assistant coach to the strongest Irish team ever to take part in an Olympics, with a number of genuine medal hopefuls on the team.

It has been a great journey for the Wexford town man who could come up against his former boss, Billy Walsh, in the opposite corner. Walsh is in a unique position having contributed to the qualification of eight Irish boxers and eight U.S. boxers for the same games, surely an unprecedented achievement.

Murphy’s Law guarantees that a U.S. fighter will meet an Irish man or woman during the tournament. It’s a dilemma that Billy Walsh’s family and friends have been dreading but expecting. I know who I’ll be cheering for!