Mayo’s hard line keeping clubs back in the shadows
BUT ROCHFORD STILL PLAYING BY RULES
Clubs are still reliant on the goodwill of county bosses
THE joke hot off the stand-up press this week is that Arlene Foster and Stephen Rochford have become the most unlikely bedfellows, wedded by their shared contempt for regulatory alignment.
In the process, both may be about to torch fragile frameworks for harmonious working relationships because of self-interest.
The punchline? Apparently Jean Claude Juncker high-tailed it out of Paraic Duffy’s office this week, declaring that there was a better chance of Arlene opening her address to the next DUP Ard Fheis with ‘Ní neart go cur le chéile’ than of reason ever breaking out in the club/county crisis.
Thing is, no one is laughing. But, then again, and far more significantly, neither is anyone surprised.
Indeed, while Rochford will take some heat, the reality is he was not even the first inter-county manager out of the tracks in laying waste to the notion that April would be reserved exclusively for clubs.
Last month, Donegal’s new manager, Declan Bonner, made clear his intentions.
‘We have our last game in the League at the end of March,’ he said.
‘I would envisage giving players a week off, but then our preparation for the Championship would begin in earnest.
‘The way the modern game is going, preparing a county team has to be at a professional level.’
He has since softened his stance, most likely after a county board voice in his ear, pointing out that he would not prevent players linking up with their clubs during April.
Rochford took it a couple of steps further, by seeking to not only take his panel into camp for a week in mid-April but also, according to Mayo’s vice-chairman Séamus Tuohy, insisting that players will not be available after the players return from that camp on April 18. While Rochford’s stance this week will stoke anger for advocates of the club game, the reality is, that while he might be out of step with the spirit the new masters fixtures schedule sought to impart, he is not out of step with rule. The only sanction Mayo will face is the possible loss of home advantage of one Allianz League fixture in 2019 as a result of holding a training camp prior to May 3. If that punishment appears a little on the light side, it is also one that is proportionate to the offence.
One general misconception, perhaps, is that the GAA’s dedication of April to clubs did not in any way impinge on the training of inter-county teams; instead it merely delivered what it said on the box it would.
By not fixing any inter-county games for that month, it opened the window for club fixtures to be played but ultimately it is down to individual county boards to oversee their fixture programmes.
Under official rule, there is no compulsion for county managers to make players available to their clubs outside of Championship, and for the vast majority of counties April is simply too early for Championship ball.
In that sense, nothing has changed and clubs are still reliant on the goodwill of inter-county managers to play fair with them.
Addressing that issue, the Club Players Association, in a motion that will go before the Wexford convention this month, has called for ‘a mandatory closed period for games and collective training of all inter-county panels for four consecutive weekends during the period April 1 to May 20.’
The reality, though, is that writing such a defined window into rule will not be deemed pragmatic in a calendar schedule which will see the curtain raised on the intercounty Championship by mid-May.
It would be wrong to suggest that the new fixture schedule has changed nothing and, while it might not deliver a resolution, it could provide a pathway to one in the future.
The condensing of the intercounty season has already seen counties such as Kerry declare that they will delay the start of their senior county championship
until after their interest in the All Ireland has concluded.
That will come as no surprise to Croke Park, with Duffy intimating that it was likely that most counties would be inclined to start their county championships at a later date under the new schedule.
But it raises the question as to how useful is it to create a window for clubs at a time of the season when county teams are ratcheting up their preparations for the summer.
The pathway to reason is surely a split inter-county/club season, and the month of April might just provide more relief to clubs if it was to be utilised to start the inter-county championship a few weeks earlier, thereby ensuring that it could be concluded in July.
That will not sit well with those who believe that taking the county game out of the national sporting shop window even earlier will not serve the GAA’s profile well.
But clubs, who could still begin their season in the absence of their county players in mid-spring, will only get the room to breathe when they are freed from the suffocating presence of their inter-county master.
Like elsewhere, finding the best place to draw that border holds the key.