How might the All-Ireland Championship be rebooted?

With the postponement of all sporting activity likely to extend well into May, at least, Paul Brennan considers how the GAA’s Football Championship might look when the action does recommence

THE future for this fixture will be considered at a later date and in the context of the anticipated overall re-drawing of the national fixtures calendar for 2020 as necessitated by the ongoing disruption to the GAA games programme.

So read the second of a two-sentence statement from the GAA, which confirmed that the Connacht Senior Football Championship meeting between New York and Galway, scheduled for Gaelic Park, New York on May 3, has been postponed “due to the current uncertainty created by the Covid 19 pandemic”.

In the context of how the interfixtures programme might be affected in the weeks and months ahead because of the Coronavirus crisis, we can probably be only certain of two things in these most uncertain of times: first, that the National Leagues will not be completed, and also that the Championship will, at best, be run along a much tighter time-line than hitherto scheduled, and, at worst, be played out on a different format than it was last year.

Let’s start with the National Football League, the finals of which were due to be played last weekend. Clearly that was never going to happen once the Round 6 matches scheduled for the weekend of March 14/15 were postponed. Now, with Rounds 6 and 7 still to be completed, as well as the four division finals, it’s looking increasingly impossible to see where those fixtures can be accommodated.

Of course, even the exercise of wondering how the GAA might start to unravel the greatest fixtures conundrum yet is an exercise in futility for the simple reason that no one yet knows when the starting point will be. The initial postponement of Gaelic games activity for two weeks from March 14 until March 29, with the hope and well-intentioned expectation that the big wheel would start to turn again on that date, expired last Sunday, only for Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to announce an extension of even tighter restrictions on gatherings until Sunday, April 12.

As we head in April the Covid-19 crisis is no closer to being resolved; indeed, we seem to hurtling headlong into a much longer period of social distancing and sporting inactivity. Even now that April 12 deadline will most definitely need to be extended further towards the start of May before this health crisis shows any real signs of abating.

It really is a how-long-is-a-pieceof-string science trying to arrive at a date when the world might start getting back to some sort of ‘normal’, but few conservative guesses suggest nothing will move on a football field until the start of June at the earliest.

Indeed, Munster Council PRO has told The Corkman today that “to be realistic, it’s probably going to be a mid-June start”, but even at that we can’t be sure if that would mean the resumption of competitive games - the GAA Championship no less - or just a return to collective training, by which time every inter-county team would need at least three weeks, and maybe more, to work their way back to a level of fitness and cohesion that would do justice to themselves and the Championship.

So, if we’re all agreed there is going to be no more National League action in 2020, what then? The simplest, not to mind fairest, thing would be to void the entire League such as it was, and start again with the same four divisions in 2021.

Yes, that would be particularly

hard on the Cork footballers - the only team of 32 that hadn’t lost a match in the first five rounds - who are all but promoted to Division 2, and who were desperate not to spend any longer than one season in Division 3.

Such a course of action for the League would have a particular and direct impact on the Championship in this of all years. The new Tier 2 Championship, adopted at Special Congress last October, is predicated on National League standings; namely, that the eight Division 3 and eight Division 4 teams at the end of the League would compete in the Tier 2 Championship unless they qualified to play in their provincial final. Of course, without full and final League standings the Tier 2 Championship cannot proceed as per rule, so it’s not unreasonable to presume the new championship for the Tailteann Cup will be put on ice until 2021.

That leaves us with the Championship itself. Two Connacht Championship fixtures have already been postponed with the other three provincial championships due to start on the weekend of May 9 and 10. It’s safe to say that won’t happen. The Connacht final is fixed for June 14; the Munster, Ulster and Leinster deciders are, as it stands, down for the following weekend. In the very best case scenario the suspension on social gatherings and collective training would be lifted or eased on April 12, although it is probably going to be mid-May at the earliest. By May 15 it will be nine weeks since the football fields and gymnasiums were closed down, which is almost as long a stretch as most inter-county squads shut down for over the winter. And if strict social distancing has been adhered to over those nine weeks - as it absolutely should be - then it wouldn’t be unreasonable to allow four weeks for teams and managements to get back up to speed, as it were.

Are we then looking at a straight knock-out format, and a return to the 1990s and the pre-Qualifier days?

Will it be possible to allow six weeks to play the provincial championships, as is currently allowed for? What of the Qualifiers? The Super 8s?

Are we looking at the All-Ireland Final returning to the third Sunday of September rather than August 30, or is an October date more likely?

These are things the authorities in Croke Park are, no doubt, mulling over right now, but like the rest of us, they’re really just shuffling around in the semi-dark when it comes to their deliberations and contingencies.

And in all of the considerations, the club framework - and the club footballer - has to be not only considered but also at the heart of those considerations.

County Boards across the country have already accepted there will be irreversible disruption to club fixtures and competitions, and the longer the Coronavirus crisis continues the more the club scene will suffer to the point that some competitions will either not start or not be completed.

And in all the considerations also, understandably, is money.

The inter-county game will have to be re-inflated quickly and with enough bounce to as to energise the country, get the turnstiles clicking and the euros flowing in. With two rounds of the League and the League finals (as well as lots of hurling fixtures) unlikely to be played, the GAA has already taken a big financial hit.

People’s health and livelihoods, of course, remain the priority, and everything else, including sport, will fall into place when our health is safeguarded. Still, when the time does come - be that June, July or whenever - the safeguarding of our national games will have to be ensured too, and that means playing All-Ireland football and hurling championship in some shape or form.

The 2020 Championships might, in time, come with an asterisk beside it - a reminder of how the games endured after this terrible pandemic passed - but even now, as the playing fields lie silent, every county, including Cork, has designs on the Sam Maguire - and Liam MacCarthy - Cup, and will happily take it no matter the pathway to success.