More time is last thing Mayo need after 65 years

IT was hard not to wonder what Páraic Duffy’s reaction was this week when he heard the Mayo County Board had cancelled a round of championship fixtures that were due to be played this weekend.

You would like to think Duffy (below) put his head in his hands with despair, but we are betting the most he gave the news was a resigned smile

Last year he failed to get through a string of proposals that sought to create extra breathing space for the club game by proposing modest changes to the calendar schedule, but he has always rightly argued that clubs have to seize the initiative and demand they get their games played.

It never happens and there was not a whisper of dissent this week to the postponement of a round of fixtures that will ensure the Mayo championship will be reduced to a blitz, diminishing its status and raising player welfare issues, not least for those county players involved.

But the silence that followed suggests this is a road worth going down if it facilitates the winning of the Sam Maguire.

Perhaps, but where is the logic in needing 28 days to prepare for a single ball game?

Where is the guarantee that players are not open to picking up an injury in what should be vigorously contested training matches as they would playing for their clubs?

The notion that a team would need four uninterrupted weeks to focus on one game suggests, perhaps, that it was just as well that Dublin edged out Mayo in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final replay.

They obviously would never have got their heads around a two-week turnaround.

The odd thing is that after 65 years, more time is the last thing that you would have thought they would wanted for the killing.