Griffin: Schoolboys’ league has lost its ‘wriggle room’

TWO weeks of match postponements has caused mass headache for fixture schedulers across the various codes locally, including those looking after the Dundalk schoolboys’ and junior leagues.

There have been matches played in the Clancy Cup, with junior league secretary Gussie Hearty accepting that the weather hasn’t caused as much damage to their plan as it has for other organisations.

But Barry Griffin, schoolboys’ league chairman, and his colleagues have lost their breathing room in relation to calendar space. They had already planned to start later than last year in order to avoid this type of chaos.

“It’s taking our wriggle room away, to be honest,” said Griffin.

“We planned to start later. Last year, we started in March but with the weather, we were cancelling games every week and not getting a clean run at it. So we decided to wait until April and hoped that it would have picked up.

“We’ve never seen this level of rain before. Like I was talking to a boy out in Kilkerley (GAA) and the lawnmover has got stuck in their pitch on three separate occasions. That’s never happened before either. It’s just crazy.”

Hearty agrees, claiming the rainfall is the worst he has ever seen

“We started off the season on March 25 with the Clancy Cup and we got six of the 12 games played. The weather has been terrible and it’s the worst I’ve seen in all my life in football.

“We had four groups of three, which meant some of the teams have got two games and others are yet to play at all.

“But we’ll be starting the league in a fortnight’s time and I’d say Kevin (Scollon) will fit the important games in the Clancy Cup in the next three or four weeks and have the semi-finals later in the season. We’re just hoping the weather picks up a bit.

“I wouldn’t think that it’s set us back too much. Last season we started the season in late-April into May and we decided we’d go a bit earlier this year

so I’d say we won’t be too bad fixture-wise and that we’ll have time to fit everything in.”

The schoolboys’ league are guided by clubs where cancelling matches are concerned and Griffin believes players are being protected by their cautious approach.

“We are guided by the clubs and we put it out to the clubs and they’ve come back to tell us that pitches aren’t ready so once we got over 60pc of matches being pulled, we just put out a blanket call-off,” he added.

“Most of the pitches are in good order; cut and ready to go, but the ground is too soft. In that scenario, is it safe to put children on to those pitches? We’re holding off more on child welfare grounds as much as anything else. What if a child slipped going into a tackle and there is a serious injury and there are questions over why we went ahead with games in these conditions?

“These decisions aren’t easy for us to make but we’re looking it from a welfare point of view and we have a duty of care towards the kids playing.”