Club finals need to be moved

IS there anywhere else you’d rather be on Paddy’s Day? As you wander up Gardiner Street, nipping across Mountjoy Square and down towards Croke Park it feels almost an act of religious observation.

Forget about the parade down on O’Connell Street leading off from Parnell Square, this is a genuine expression of our national identity and culture. The club finals and Croke Park on Paddy’s Day are a match made in heaven.

March 17 is a day for community, March 17 is a day about connection to place, to kith and kin and in Croke Park those connections are made manifest through the club, through the families and friends who make them up.

It really was an inspired decision to graft the club finals onto our national holiday. They’re almost as much part of the day as shamrock – and drowning the shamrock – at this stage, which makes it such a crying shame that sooner rather than later this tradition needs to come to an end.

Outside of the obvious symbolic value – and we do value that – it no longer makes any sense whatsoever in the context of the wider GAA calendar. The long breaks between games that clubs have to endure to facilitate the Paddy’s Day final are completely indefensible.

Take the case of Na Piarsaigh. The Limerick kingpins won their All Ireland semi-final with Derry and Ulster champions Slaughtneil on February 10, fully five weeks to the day before this weekend’s All

Ireland final. Before that they had to wait twelve weeks – a full quarter of the year – between their Munster final victory over Ballygunnar (on November 19) and the semi-final with Slaughtneil. That’s certifiably bonkers. Nobody in their right mind would devise a championship like this. Admittedly it’s this way more by custom than by design, even so it’s needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency, especially now that the league season has been condensed in the manner it has.

Limerick’s entire push for promotion has come and gone – successfully thankfully for them – without having proper access to players from their most successful club. The same goes for the Cork footballers who will have to do without their Nemo Rangers players for six of the seven rounds of the league.

That’s a completely unacceptable burden to place on any inter-county manager and it does no favours either to any emerging inter-county players who happen to reach an All Ireland club final.

First world problems you might say, but does it really have to be this way? Out-going GAA Director General Paraic Duffy has, of course, long advocated the calendar year season, but even with the big changes this year it seems as far away as ever.

A more obvious solution would be to forget about the Paddy’s Day final and get all club activity played before the leagues get underway at the end of January. A festival of football and hurling over a weekend in January is the way to go.