LAST ORDERS FOR IRISH SPORT
Racing folds as long, empty summer beckons
A SUMMER without sport as we know it is becoming a more realistic prospect after the Government tightened restrictions in response to the coronavirus pandemic. While most significant events had already been called off, the Taoiseach yesterday made explicitly clear they are now cancelled, Horse Racing Ireland confirming that race meetings, which had been continuing behind closed doors in recent weeks, would cease as of midnight last night. Yesterday’s news means the Irish Grand National, planned for Fairyhouse on Easter Monday, April 13, is the latest big date to fall, with sources indicating it will not be held this year. The decision to limit gatherings to no more than four people, except in the case of family, makes collective training for teams impossible until at least April 19, the date to which measures has now been extended, with all golf clubs, practice facilities and courses across the island also closed. Yet even though that day is three and a half weeks away, there are already signs that it will not mark the end of the extraordinary measures being used halt the spread of Covid-19, with Leo Varadkar talking of ‘weeks, perhaps months’ of restrictions.
The FAI were quick to announce the extension of their cessation until April 19, but the ambition of resuming the League of Ireland by June 19 looks ambitious, too. It seems inevitable the GAA will have to abandon the National Leagues, but the championships are a far greater worry. A knock-out system now seems the most obvious way to run off the competitions in 2020.
“There is no way
teams can reach required fitness” “Playing the Championship is feasible”
SCARS MARKING the ruinous path taken by Covid-19 around the world will be deeply ingrained for generations to come.
Families will mourn loved ones, without the consoling memories provided by friends. Hundreds, if not thousands, will need weeks to recover their health.
The coronavirus will change our country forever. Economically, the consequences will be brutal. Politically, the instability wrought by last month’s general election will not easily resolve itself.
And sport will bear the marks, too. The summer of 2020 is already shorn of the European Championships in soccer, and now the Olympic Games.
But the barrenness domestically threatens to be even bleaker still.
While the Olympics is the biggest and best sporting competition in the world, and the Euros one of the big two soccer carnivals, they are not mainstays in an Irish summer the way other sports are.
Yet the prospect of meaningful Irish sport in the coming months receded significantly with the announcement yesterday of tighter restrictions by the Government.
The move was expected, but as with so much else in this bewildering crisis, the magnitude of what is required is still a deep shock when it becomes a duty in our lives.
And given the seriousness of what is now being demanded of Irish people, the effects on sport can seem incidental.
But they are not. Not only are there economic ramifications for the national finances generally — sport, after all, is an industry employing tens of thousands and generating hundreds of millions of euro — but the impact on sporting bodies will be profound.
The practical result of what was announced by the Taoiseach last evening makes training for teams, even in a limited form, impossible.
And that makes any resumption of the GAA or domestic soccer seasons in the short-term equally impossible.
With the rugby season finished domestically and done in all but name professionally, too, it is GAA and soccer that will be most obviously affected by what is to come. If gatherings of more than four people are banned, then there is no way teams can reach the requisite levels of fitness.
Jack McCaffrey spoke to the podcast last week about how Dublin were trying to organise training for players, while abiding by the restrictions that applied at that time. ‘The Dublin football team is one of the best teams in the country, and we make no bones about it: we’re going to try and win an All-Ireland,’ he said in a recent interview. ‘I can guarantee you that we’re not meeting up and training at all. You can, and we are, having guys meet up in twos and threes. ‘You drive yourself to training, you get out, you stay distant and you kind of run alongside each other, just because running can be quite lonely.’
Even at that, training was basic to the point of inadequate. Think of the particular case of Dublin. They are the most successful side in the history of Gaelic games, a group of supremely motivated players with a cultural knowledge of what it takes to win that is unsurpassed in Irish sport.
But they have a new manager in Dessie Farrell who has been in charge of them for just five matches. Good as they are, there is no way his plans for the group can be implemented when the players cannot train together.
In just a few weeks together, they will not have formed the relationships necessary to maintain the extraordinary success of the past half-decade.
And a manager like Brian Cody, in his 22nd season in charge of Kilkenny, still needs to spend hours and hours, evening after evening, week after week, to prepare his players to a level at which they can compete for trophies.
This is not unique to Gaelic games, of course.
The ambition of the FAI to resume the League of Ireland on June 19 was only announced last Friday, but it looks poignantly dated only five days later.
Teams cannot re-start their season to a standard remotely near their usual levels – and that is presuming that organised sport will be allowed to re-commence by then, even behind closed doors.
Páraic Duffy made an observation worth noting when addressing the effects on the GAA season yesterday.
He is a former director general of the association but, as importantly, he is someone whose life has been spent coaching teams and working as an administrator at all levels.
Duffy understands the GAA as well as anyone could. That made his assessment of what happens next relevant.
‘I think there’ll be huge pressure to play it this year if at all possible,’ he said. ‘The provincial councils will want the provincial championships to be played and they can be played very quickly.
‘They could all be played off as knockout in three or four weeks so I think they’ll be very, very slow to abandon those.’
Some commentators have pointed out as much, arguing that if both codes revert to a straight knock-out format, the hurling campaign could be done in five weeks, and the football in six. That time-frame does suggest that playing the championships this summer is feasible, even if they were to begin at the start of July.
But even a scheduled that fine might not allow enough time for preparatory physical and tactical training.
Of course, there would be something wonderfully unknowable about such circumstances, where even the royalty like Dublin and Tipperary are vulnerable to shocks because of limited time together, and a general dip in fitness throughout the sport.
It would be nothing like the
Championship we have come to know – but some, such as Connacht Council secretary John Prenty, say that may be no bad thing.
Under plans to start the League of Ireland again on June 19, the Premier Division would be reduced to 27 games in total, with matches finished on December 4, and the promotion/relegation play-off concluded a week later.
The FAI put significant work into revising its plans, but even in promoting them, Fran Gavin, the FAI Competitions Director, acknowledged that they were conceived in hope.
‘There are no certainties around the Covid-19 pandemic but this decision offers us something to aim for,’ he said.
‘UEFA hope to have European football back up and running by early June at the latest so June 19 is a realistic target for us at this moment in time.’
That remains a possibility, but if sport does get to illuminate the summer of 2020, it will be a rushed version of what we have known.
Expect few complaints about that. Having it back will be all that matters.
It may be very different from the finely honed diversions to which we have become accustomed, though.