IT DIDN’T HAVE TO FALL FOUL OF THE WEATHER..
THE GAA’S head of games administration Feargal Mcgill believes some games could have gone ahead this weekend.
However, it was decided to err on the side of caution as Storm Emma tightened its icy grip across the country, with all 33 League games in both codes falling by the wayside.
It’s the first time since the foot and mouth outbreak in 2001 that an entire League programme has had to be shelved.
Croke Park might have been fit to host the Dublinkerry NFL game tomorrow evening but there were too many other issues to make it worth the risk.
Mcgill explained: “There is undersoil heating in Croke Park. We held an event meeting in relation to that game specifically.
“It wasn’t the pitch that gave us concern, it was the footpaths surrounding Croke Park and if you’re in midthaw on Saturday evening at five o’clock, people’s safety was foremost in our minds.
“We do feel that the pitch would have been playable but we’ve a lot of snow inside the stadium which has to go somewhere so that would be an issue we’d have to consider as well.
“There were isolated games here and there that would have had a better chance of surviving than others but we just thought discretion the better part of valour and put people’s mind at ease.
“A games programme like this involves not just the teams, there’s supporters, match officials, all of the people around the country in Tullamore or Portlaoise or wherever that have to make plans to be stewards and have to drive to it and have to come through back roads to get to these venues so we thought it was wisest just to pull the whole programme.”
As a result, the fifth round of matches in the NFL will now be played on the weekend of March 10/11, which was free of fixtures in that competition, while the hurling League games that have been snowed off will also move to that weekend.
That means, however, that the hurling final will be played a week later than initially scheduled on March 31 – the day before the Division One football final.
Mcgill added: “Something we anticipated all along was that if we did lose a week in the hurling that one of the ways we could catch up was by playing the hurling final on a Saturday.
“We knew if we did lose a weekend that we’d end up with the hurling and football finals on the same weekend, albeit the hurling final on Saturday, so it’s not really a big deal for us, to be honest.”
Mcgill (inset) didn’t completely rule out the possibility of the football and hurling finals being played as a double header at Croke Park on April 1.
“We’ll see, I don’t want to prejudge that at all.
“On Monday we’ll issue the full, revised fixture programme for the remainder of the League and we’ll make a decision on things like that in due course.”