Chill out...they’re just pre-season friendlies

HARDLY a ball kicked in anger and already the GAA is knee deep in a fixture crisis.

The rescheduling of the Sigerson Cup has now become an issue with its early start – it begins today – creating an issue for some.

Donegal manager Declan Bonner (left) pulled his team out of the McKenna Cup in response to the Ulster Council refusing an application to defer their semi-final clash against Monaghan to Tuesday night.

‘We have 13 players playing Sigerson Cup. Something needs to be done,’ argued Bonner in the aftermath of his team’s midweek victory over Derry.

But something has been done.

The Sigerson Cup this season has been streamlined into a knock-out competition which will be played over an 18-day period, all done with the purpose of minimising its intrusiveness on the intercounty game while ensuring that the game’s elite young players are not the rope in a college/county tug-of-war.

Indeed a proposal to start the McKenna Cup in early December, which would also have allowed college teams to participate, was rejected by counties, which gives them precious little reason to whinge now.

The McKenna Cup is a preseason competition – a substitute for challenge games – and it might serve Ulster well for once if it dialled down its competitive instincts and saw it as just that.

And given the provincial championships have lost so much of their allure and importance, the last thing the GAA needs to be concerning itself with is ways to protect secondary provincial competitions.