Problem for GAA if sports return in time for summer
THE League of Ireland getting up and running would turn the spotlight on the GAA and the staging of the 2020 Championships, says Mark Antony Mcginley.
Dundalk, Shamrock Rovers, Bohemians and Derry City, the four clubs who have qualified for European competition, are all back in restricted training from next week having reported no COVID-19 cases after two weeks of testing and it is hoped the remaining clubs can regroup by the end of the month.
Although there are several issues still to be teased out, the league could well resume by August and if other sports are successfully running off their fixtures, questions will inevitably be asked of the GAA if it is lagging behind.
Their official position for now is that inter-county games won’t be played before October, albeit Croke Park is to publish its roadmap later today.
“That would only be natural to say if one sport is able to operate under these conditions successfully, why can’t another sport?” says Mcginley (above), the current Finn Harps ‘keeper who previously lined out for Donegal and continues to play at club level for St Michael’s.
“You can see that, say for example, if another sport came back before soccer, you could see the FAI having a few questions.
“The first sport to go back, if they can do it successfully, it’s going to be something similar with the Bundesliga going back – the Premier League learned from that and they’re going to take on it on and try and apply it and try and improve on it.
“It’s going to be the same in Ireland. The first sport back is going to pave the way for the roadmap for all the other sports to come back and at the minute it looks like soccer’s the closest to it.”
Although the GAA has said it is committed to resuming games at club level first Mcginley, who still hopes to see action for St Michael’s this year despite his Harps commitments, believes that restarting with inter-county fixtures is more practical.
He added: “We’ll just have to see what happens but I do think that probably it’s going to be inter-county – I can see intercounty coming back before club football in the GAA.
“Just because, for example, if the testing is going to be used, it’s more feasible to do it at inter-county level. There’s more money involved. It’ll be more feasible at inter-county level than at club level.”