The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Guidance from LGFA ‘outstanding’
LIKE every other sporting body across the land, the Kerry Ladies Gaelic Football Board is having to come to terms with the new-reality forced upon us by COVID-19.
With up to four months of the season likely to be scrapped it’s a huge challenge for the people at the coalface to devise plans and contingencies. However, chairperson of the Ladies Board, Seán Walsh, says that to a large extent it’s a waiting game.
“With the ladies, as with the men, everything is up in a heap at the moment,” he told The Kerryman.
“We’ll have to look at it and wait for a date for when we go back to normalisation. After that we’ll be looking for a period of two or three weeks before starting our programme.
“Getting schedules [together] and the most important thing is we’ll have to work to get every team in the county games as soon as possible, to get people back to playing games and playing in the competitions that they love.
“We will be working from the time when we get clearance, whenever that may be, to start those competitions around three weeks after that. You have to give teams an opportunity to get together and put things in place.
“The most important thing I’m going to say to you and I was thinking about it last night myself with the ladies, is that they’re going to have three or four different dates of when you’re going to start and when you get clearance and after getting clearance we’re going to have to give three weeks, even the county is going to have to give three weeks, before a championship game can be attempted to be played and Croke Park will also be attempting to play matches and that’s why the idea of a straight knockout would be very appetising for that reason.”
The Moyvane native was full of praise for the swift action taken by the authorities in Croke Park to close things down and for the clear advice they offered to their constituent units.
“I would like to say that the direction we got from the LGFA and from the camogie was absolutely outstanding,” he stressed.
“It was really a relief for people to get it, because other for that people and counties and clubs and everybody was going to be making individual decisions, but that was taken out of our hands and they were very pro-active and I have to commend them for it as organisations.”
The impact on the ladies game in the county is not inconsiderable. The senior ladies’ push for promotion has been has been voided with the LGFA cancelling the season, as there no clear path back to action in that competition as championship will take precedence once action resumes.
“We have Under 14s, Under 16s, minors, and seniors to competition level to the All Ireland all under our auspices,” Walsh explained. “They were all preparing and had to be preparing over the long length of time. Everything is closed, there’s no coming together of any groups or any people under our auspices, none whatsoever.”