GAA President: Games unlikely while social distancing is in place

THE President of the GAA, Mr John Horan, speaking on The Sunday Game indicated that Gaelic football and hurling is unlikely to return while social distancing protocols are in place.

“If social distancing is a priority to deal with this pandemic I don’t know how we can play a contact sport and that is what Gaelic games is, a contact sport,” he said.

The GAA president also expressed a certain amount of scepticism about the prospect for games being played behind closed doors later in the year.

“I have an issue about the ‘closed doors’ concept because if it is safe enough for the players to be in close contact on the pitch it is going to be safe enough to have a certain number of people in a gathering at the ground itself. We’re fortunate as an organisation to have such fantastic stadia,” he said.

“Take Croke Park, 83,000 is the normal attendance, I’m sure we could put an attendance into Croke Park that could be done in a safe manner. Crowds gathering in that situation will probably come before we have contact sport.”

Mr Horan also explained why the GAA came to the decision it did regarding keeping club grounds closed, despite government guidelines indiciating that it would be possible to open them for small groups in the coming weeks.

“We had to examine it and look at it closely,” he said.

“There was a concept in it that people had to gather together in groups of four, but we felt that it couldn’t be marshalled by people in our clubs because our clubs are led by a load of good quality volunteer people, and to put the onus on volunteer people to make the decisions to police and organise training within our facilities, we just felt that would be too much on them.

“I’ve had contact since from one or two club chairmen who said ‘thanks for taking it out of our hands’ because we were concerned how we were actually going to police it within our grounds.

“We took our time but I think we have taken the right decision in this matter. I think people’s health and safety is the key to it all.

“We’ll be taking our information from the health authorities to see is it safe and it’s only if and when it’s safe that we will actually allow training and our games to recommence.”