Tuesday night blights

Hurling clubs up in arms over championship fixtures

THE fixing of Senior hurling championship games for Tuesday nights could have major implications on all championships according to some of the hurling clubs at the recent County Board meeting in Ballinakill.

With Paul Wilson being out of the country the responsibility to deal with the issue fell to Coolkenno’s Conor Doyle who explained to the Glenealy delegate who raised the matter that there wasn’t much leeway on the subject given that the Wicklow hurling manager attended a meeting and asked for the players to be left in his panel.

‘Eamonn Scallan is not for moving at the moment,’ he said.

‘The hurling and football managers came here in ‘meeting one’ lets call it and said that they didn’t want any game splayed in April, that’s kind of the way it was at that meeting, right,’ said the Glenealy delegate.

‘The draft fixtures list was presented (to delegates) after that meeting at the next one. When you have a county manager coming in to a meeting saying we don’t want any (games in April), it’s very hard to fight against the manager, like no clubs would go against the manager, or try not to.

‘But then you come and you’re face with the reality that you’re playing the premier hurling competition on a Tuesday night. I don’t think that’s right. I know a lot of delegates here are football but there is a knock-on effect for football. You take our situation. Everyone knows we have players playing on permission with other clubs. The reality is, just say one of those clubs are playing on the Sunday, we’re on the Tuesday night; the reality is they won’t be playing on the Sunday, we’re going to have to pull the plug on that. These are the knock-on effects of the way those fixtures are set out,’ he added.

Martin Fitzgerald intervened at this stage and stated that the ‘weeks are not there’. He said that Croke Park has the county penned in on both sides.

‘Club championship is gone from St Patrick’s Day to before Christmas. The Intermediate championship has to be two weeks before the Senior this year because I think on the same day as our Senior championships the Leinster Intermediate is starting so they’ve gone back two weeks on everything. And we’re starting two weeks later. In fairness, the fixtures people’s hands are tied on this,’ he said.

Fitzgerald then informed delegates that there is a proposal coming down the line for 2021 from Croke Park that in April and the first two weeks in May that clubs would ‘definitely’ have their players to run club championships and leagues.

‘Wicklow County Board or any other county board won’t be monitoring it, Croke Park will be, and the sanction, if you’re caught playing or training, the sanction that is being proposes is that the team will be removed from championship and the manager will be suspended,’ he explained.

A Carnew Emmets delegate asked why it had to be the hurling clubs that suffered and not the football clubs.

Martin Fitzgerald said that the football clubs were playing on the Saturday and the hurling clubs were playing on a Tuesday and he asked what was the difference.

‘Exactly,’ said the Carnew Emmets delegate, ‘what’s the difference?’

‘I think some of the football should be changed to a Tuesday,’ added another Carnew Emmets delegate.

‘The reason that was given, and it’s a fair point, is that there will be three hurling matches, and you could have possible eight to 10 football matches,’ replied Martin Fitzgerald.

‘There’ll have to be six (hurling matches), three Senior and three Intermediate,’ said the Carnew delegate.

‘Intermediate won’t effect be played...’

‘We have Intermediate footballers playing Intermediate hurling,’ said the delegate.

Yes, but I’m talking about hurling,’ replied Fitzgerald, ‘the Intermediate hurling can be played earlier because it’s not effecting any county team. It can be played in June or July.’

The Carnew delegate then asked if Senior hurling games could be played on June 29 if agreed between two clubs?’

Conor Doyle said that nobody knew how Wicklow were going to do in the Christy Ring so that the CCC couldn’t pre-empt that but that it had been discussed it as much, that can that if Wicklow don’t do well in the Christy Ring that they bring forward the hurling championship.

‘We’re going to ask some of our players for three nights during the summer to go and play championship. If you take a lad working in Dublin – so he’s up in the morning at 5am, into Dublin, coming back at 6pm, and then play championship that night, three or four times in the year. Whatever about one midweek match but definitely not three,’ said the Glenealy delegate.

Martin Fitzgerald asked how to avoid it.

‘We go at the weekend,’ said the delegate. ‘The weekends are not there,’ replied Fitzgerald. ‘Swap over with some of the football,’ replied the Glenealy delegate.

‘Every hurler in the county, or 95 per cent or more, play football so it’s going to be the same thing whether it’s football or hurling,’ said Fitzgerald.

‘If it’s the same thing then why not have some of the hurling matches on the Sunday and the football on the Tuesday,’ said a Carnew delegate.

‘That’s the problem with this, Martin,’ said the Glenealy delegate. ‘The optics of this are the problem. The reality is, I understand the problem of fixtures. When we didn’t speak down the county managers that was the moment this went wrong,’ he added.

‘I actually couldn’t believe that that did happen,’ said Fitzgerald.

‘I tried to, but it’s the optics of how it looks back to the hurling clubs that’s wrong,’ said the Glenealy delegate.

An Éire Óg delegate wondered if there was any sense that setting aside the month of April for clubs is not really working.

Martin Fitzgerald said that there are three proposals being considered by Croke Park. One being six weeks left aside for the club, all of April and two weeks of May. Another option would be that the All-Ireland finals be played in June and the clubs take the next six months. He said that he would get Chris (O’Connor) to send all the proposals out to the clubs.

The Glenealy delegate made one final point. ‘At the moment the hurling league is over and the first fixture is May 10 (eight weeks). I know in my heart and I think every delegate in here knows that those players are going to be, the manager is saying ‘I don’t want them playing’, and that’s grand, that’s his business. But those players over that eight weeks are going to go back and play Junior, Intermediate and Senior football league matches, hurling league matches, that’s what’s going to happen. This is a ridiculous situation that we are not playing championship in April, absolutely ridiculous,’ he said.

‘But unfortunately, we agreed to this at the first county board meeting,’ said Fitzgerald.

‘We agreed to it with a heavy heart. We didn’t know the fixtures,’ replied the delegate.

Colm Finnegan said that certain people had pointed out the ramifications at that first county board meeting. He said that delegates can’t turn around mid-stream and that the night to object to this was when the county managers attended the meeting.

‘But we didn’t know they were going to stick the hurling championship in on a Tuesday night. We didn’t know any of that (then),’ replied Glenealy.

Finnegan said that if two rounds of hurling championship could be played in April it would change the whole thing dramatically.

‘That’s there to be looked at,’ he said.

A Kiltegan delegate said that on the particular night when the county managers attended the meeting in Ballinakill that Paul Wilson of the CCC outlined to delegates that there would be lots of Sundays and time to play the Senior hurling championship.

‘At that time, he didn’t realise that we weren’t in the Senior hurling championship (Leinster) and that we were in the Intermediate so he lost two weeks. The delegates didn’t know this. If we had known we would have done what Colm Finnegan is saying, and said ‘no’ to the hurling manager. In fairness to the clubs here, we gave the support to the county managers because we believed that we would be able to play our championship at the weekend. It was only after that that it came back and said we had to play our games on a Tuesday night.

‘We have the same problem in our club, same as Carnew, same as Glenealy/Rathnew with dual players. If they’re not playing Senior hurling it’s Intermediate and they’re playing football as a well. To be fair, I don’t think we’re being fair here, squeezing in the whole lot and asking players to play 14 weeks in a row, to go out on a Friday for football and Tuesday for hurling,’ he said.

‘How do we fix it?’ asked the County Chairman.