Hurling fixtures debated
AVONDALE’S Brendan Brady criticised the amount of fixtures made over the last month by Wicklow GAA at last Monday night’s County Board meeting in Ballinakill.
“There was an awful lot of matches, I know we had this fixtures book, but I don’t know what went wrong, everything has been packed together for this month. We had an incident where we had a chap who played almost 300 minutes of hurling in six days. I mean, that’s ridiculous. He was on the senior hurling team and the Junior hurling team. Talk about burnout and player welfare. In July we had four hurling (matches). That’s all we had in July. This is something that hurling clubs and dual clubs will have to look at. It’s just crazy,” he said.
Tom Byrne, standing in for Chairman of the C.C.C. Mick Hagan who is away, said that the clubs in Wicklow would have to look at themselves when it comes to fixtures.
“At the end of last year I went through what was in the booklet at the start of the year and what was played and I can tell you now in every month there were 33 and a third per cent of changes to the fixtures in the fixtures book,” he said. “That’s a third of fixtures that weren’t played on the dates as set out in the fixtures book. And I’d be saying to myself, “what do I spend three months at the start of the year doing a fixtures book for?”
“We didn’t do a fixtures book this year, we just sent it out to the clubs but I know this year is just as bad. I haven’t sat down yet because I haven’t had time but this year is nearly as bad. But for any club, and I’m not singling out Avondale, to say that they’re piled in now, the number of games called off every week or changed, and if you ask me the reason why, I don’t know, because I haven’t had a valid reason all year. So, lads, don’t start the kicking the ball around everywhere, kick it in your own field first and sort it out,” he added.
“There has to be a better spread,” said Brendan Brady. “
“But we’ve only six hurling clubs in the county and we’re ramming it all in now in September and it’s crazy,” added Brady.
“On the Senior hurling, Mr. Chairman,” said Tom Byrne, “you can’t start it until after the Christy Ring. “Then you have, Bray are a dual club, Rathnew and Glenealy are the same players, Avondale are a dual club, Carnew and some of those clubs have players from three or four clubs playing for them. We fix the dates for the Senior hurling championship and Senior football championship on separate weekends and there were hurling weekends. If one of those dates is changed it effects about five football fixtures. The hurling didn’t stay to its fixture programme this year, didn’t stay to it. I don’t know the reason why because I just put the fixtures in the paper and I gave up asking”.