Ne is where it’s nferior product

HERE FOR VERY S: GET OVER IT

dar. e people forgotss the GAA was sustainability of and the feeling b players around ?

ractive

me of players we ould continue to y the season was, g away to a more port and life. players couldn’t give the commitment over that prolonged period and club players were simply fed up being treated like second class citizens.

The Donegal soccer league I played in during the off season had a set calendar all year and you could actually plan a life around it.

GAA players couldn’t do that for so long because the club game pandered to the inter-county game.

There were two routes out of this: the split season or we go down a semi-professional/ professional route and separate club and county scenes.

The latter for me, and many others would be unpalatable.

We have pushed for this for so long now and it baffles me to see people arguing for a longer calendar again.

I can’t understand it at all, and I refuse to believe the argument that it’s for selfish reasons.

I just think it’s more misguided than anything.

The split season is here to stay and we have to make peace with that.

What we should be doing now, instead of voicing silly notions about going back to the old way, is working out how we can make the split season better because it’s not nearly as good as it could be.

We still need to get to a point where we have no provincial influence in the All-Ireland series.

And we still need to get better at this marketing crack. That includes the club scene.

Promote the club games in the second half of the year but don’t for a minute think it’s going to do a better job of attracting young boys and girls to the games than intercounty.

I said last week that the GAA is on a good road, and while there’s a lot more to fix, I’m not buying it from anyone making an argument for going back to the old way.

I’m also not buying what’s being said about the quality of the on field stuff in the club game.

Keep the split season but don’t be harping on about how good club football is.

Inter-county football where it’s at. is

BOTH second-string teams had to survive the most intense of semi-final examinations before booking their places in the Glen Dimplex All-Ireland intermediate final.

They had advanced directly as group winners to the last four so that might have been the expected eventuality, but Cork had already lost to Derry in the round-robin phase and so knew they would be up against it in the rematch with the Oak Leafers.

And it wasn’t looking good as they trailed by three points entering the closing stages of a cagey affair. It was notable that Trevor Coleman’s charges reeled in the deficit with four straight points, with the equaliser and winner both coming in injury time from the stick of former senior All-Ireland winner Joanne Casey, the latter in the fifth minute of the supplementary period.

Also significant was the impact the Rebels got from their subs, Katelyn Hickey coming on in the 44th minute to score two points, including the first of that definitive four-point stretch, while Rachel O’Shea also split the posts and was then fouled for the winner, which Casey nonchalantly provided.

Prominent

Rachel Harty and Lauren Callanan were prominent at midfield throughout while Lauren Homan struck three classy first-half points.

Galway had a fairly serene progression through the group stages, when the likes of Tegan Canning, Laura Kelly, Cora Kenny and Niamh McInerney scored heavily.

It came as no surprise