No decisions made

Players must wait another two to three weeks

WICKLOW GAA players will have to wait at least another two or three weeks before they will learn how their championships are going to be structured at the various levels.

The decision of how the county will proceed with its club championships won’t be made until the next county board meeting which will be in two or three weeks’ time, the Wicklow/Bray People was told on Tuesday.

‘We can’t decide anything (until the county board meeting),’ said Paul Wilson. ‘We have two or three options for both football and hurling, the staging of them, the timing of them.

‘There are arguments for running off your hurling first or your football first or mixing them up and that all has to be decided at county board level by the clubs,’ he added.

County Chairman Martin Fitzgerald said that the championship will start at the end of July, start of August and that spectators will be able to attend with social distancing measures in place at the various grounds.

There was a welcome sign of a return to some kind of normality when the GAA released its roadmap to get back playing. Walkways in clubs across Co. Wicklow reopened on Monday but all other activities in GAA grounds are still off limits.

From June 29 GAA pitches will open for small group training, both adult and juvenile, but club buildings will remain out of bounds and all training will be non-contact and involving small groups of no more than 10 players.

All players will be expected to arrive and depart togged out and each team must have a Covid supervisor appointed.

Then, providing the Government doesn’t make any unforeseen changes, things really start to take off. From July 20 it’s a return to contact training with club games getting underway from July 31. Buildings, however, will remain closed and all the Covid regulations will still be in place.

County teams will be allowed to resume training on 14 September with the window for club games with county players to last until October 11. The CCCC will produce a full fixture schedule once Phase 3 is completed. The inter-county action will get underway no later than October 17.