If every team starts together we’ll still arrive at end with deserving champions

IF you’re a Gaelic footballer or hurler of any ilk, at this point in time you’re happily training away with your club. You’ve dug out the kit bag last seen back in mid March, turned the socks inside out (a favourite trick of an old club mate of mine), cleaned the boots by walloping them off the ground, rinsed off the gum-shield, and you’ve been haring and tearing away on the club pitch for the last few weeks now. All is well again in your world.

If you’re an inter-county footballer or hurler, then you’re pretty much in the same boat. The club boat, that is. Only difference is that you most certainly have fresh socks and clean boots and a new gum-shield, because the Gaelic Players Association (GPA) has surely seen to that. One of the perks of being an inter-county player (and why wouldn’t there be a few perks for that group) is plenty of training gear, which the GPA has secured for its members. If there’s one thing the GPA does well it’s to ensure its members are well looked after. As far as unions go - and that’s what the GPA is - it’s right up with the best of them for looking after its members.

It shouldn’t, therefore, have come as any surprise to see the GPA issue a statement on Wednesday of last week which addressed the GAA’s return to play policy, and batted for its members against what the GPA called the ‘sustained negative discourse surrounding inter-county players’. What followed, however, was a message that was about as clear as something from the White House Press Office. Where to start?

Let’s start with this paragraph, which we had to read three or four times to be sure we weren’t taking it up wrong: As things stand and for complete clarity, the roadmap clearly highlights that there should be no collective inter-county training prior to September 14th. However, it would be highly negligent of us, and utterly wrong, as the body charged with looking after inter-county player welfare, not to seek to have any such training covered by the GAA Injury Benefit Scheme, should these sessions be sanctioned by their respective counties.

Yes, that’s right: in the first sentence of that two-sentence paragraph the GPA - which has representation on the GAA’S Covid-19 Advisory Committee - states that the GAA clearly highlights that there should be no collective inter-county training prior to September 14. (Of course, it’s noted that the GPA merely state that fact, without really supporting it.) Then, in the second sentence of the two-sentence paragraph, the GPA asks that any player partaking in a training session they acknowledge shouldn’t be happening, be covered by an insurance scheme to cover injuries that might occur when said player shouldn’t be training.

You couldn’t make it up...except the GPA just did.

Whatever about the rights and wrongs of the September 14 red line for inter-county training to resume - and we’ll come back to that - is it not just as ‘negligent’ and ‘utterly wrong’ of the GPA not to simply tell its members to abide by the rule put in place?

The GPA does lots of good things, not least through supporting current and former players with education programmes, and in relation to their mental well-being and mental health, so it seems at odds with all that positive work that they cannot simply instruct their members, i.e. inter-county players, that perhaps the best course of action in the circumstances is to go along with what the GAA itself has recommended, with respect to getting all units and players back on the playing field before the year is out.

Instead, the GPA is happy on the one hand to acknowledge the GAA’s return to play roadmap, yet on the other hand are happy to imply that should illegal training sessions be sanctioned by their respective counties - which they shouldn’t be - that those players are covered by an insurance scheme that isn’t active to them until mid-September. It’s baffling, and more than a little disingenuous.

Elsewhere in their statement the GPA address a point that has been made often in the last couple of weeks, that players should be allowed to return to inter-county training once their involvement in club championship action is complete. And on the face of it, it seems a reasonable ask and one that should satisfy most inter-county players and managers, and one that clubs shouldn’t have any great issue with.

However, on closer consideration one wonders if this solution isn’t just creating another problem. First of all, it could open the door for county boards to run off their club championships more quickly so that their inter-county men can get back training sooner. And don’t think that wouldn’t be considered in some counties at least.

Second, isn’t there an innate fairness about every county team jumping off at the same starting point, instead of some getting (or giving themselves) a headstart by compressing their club competitions, or simply because a particular county can get their club calendar finished earlier than another one.

In this year of all years, with the football championship being run on a knock-out basis, isn’t there something pure and noble about every county team getting the same amount of time to convene beforehand and prepare themselves for what is a winner-takes-all match in every instance.

In fact, might there be a better argument to be made that the weaker, less well resourced counties - even Division 3 and 4 team - are the ones to get the head-start on the field, in the same way that horses or golfers are handicapped according to ability and form?

Needless to say, every county board has suffered big losses in revenue this summer, but some of the bigger, better resourced counties could still fund 10 or 12 weeks of inter-county training, with all the attendant expense, whereas the smaller, more cashstrapped counties simply couldn’t afford that stretch of training in the circumstances, even if Croke Park do cough up for certain player expenses.

At the end of the day, it’s the counties with the best players, the deeper pool of talent, the best managers and coaches, who will rise up and compete for the top honours. All things being equal from October to late December we can still expect Dublin, Kerry,

Tyrone, Galway and one or two others to be the genuine contenders for the Sam Maguire Cup; in hurling the Liam MacCarthy Cup will surely end up in Tipperary, Limerick, Galway or Kilkenny by Christmas.

If a bolter comes out of the new knock-out format then great. Leaving aside county loyalties, who wouldn’t enjoy seeing a Cork v Roscommon All-Ireland semi-final and a Monaghan v Meath one on the other side. Better again if a Clare or Tipperary or Cavan or Laois or Sligo somehow made it through to an All-Ireland semi-final or, whisper it, the All-Ireland Final!

At the start of this pandemic, The Kerryman looked back on the Millennium Cup that captured hearts and minds here in Kerry in 2000. In the end Glenflesk emerged as surprise but worthy and welcome winners. Given the tumultuous year this has been - on a sporting and personal level for many - there might be a certain GUBU-ness in the Sam Maguire going to Monaghan and the Liam MacCarthy going to Laois.

Neither will happen, of course, but the very least we owe to every county in the race is that they all start on the ‘bang’ and no one jumps the gun.

We’re lucky to have Championships to look forward to...let’s not get ahead of ourselves too soon.