Sun setting on championship with cold front

A hot day. A big crowd. The tar melting on the road. The mountains visible over the stand. The smell of chips and burgers. The kids with ice cream. The green and gold and red and white. The sun beating down. Walking up to the stadium with the crowds before the game.

And back down with them to the town to have a pint 15 minutes after the final whistle. It was everything. Out of all the games and all the occasions, a good July day for a Munster final in Killarney was always magic.

(from In the Blood)

I KNOW I should be talking about the highlights from last weekend, the first weekend of championship football.

Ryan O’Donoghue’s 1-13 for Mayo against New York. The brilliant goals by Cavan’s Padraig Faulkner and New York’s Jamie Boyle. Waterford’s first Munster Championship victory in 14 years. Shocks? Not really. Surprises, yes.

But I can’t bring myself around to being chirpy or upbeat about the opening weekend of the championship because, to be perfectly honest, I am disinterested and disillusioned.

I think it is the first year in my life that I am not really looking forward to the championship.

Why so downbeat? No breathing space, no break from the end of the league, no big build-up to major matches or adequate time to reflect or pause.

Sorry, but I can’t buy into this packed schedule with the All-Ireland final over and done with before August, at the height of the summer. And it’s not just me being p***ed off. Judging by the supporters last weekend, they are voting with their feet by not attending games either.

SPECTACLE

The sight of matches being played in half-empty stadiums with spectators wrapped in heavy coats and woolly hats does not make for a great spectacle or good advertisement for the 2024 championship.

The big game of last weekend – the clash of near-neighbours Cavan and Monaghan – was a classic example. It drew a crowd of just over 8,000 people to Clones. The last time these met in the Ulster Championship in 2019, almost 14,000 attended Breffni Park. A red flag there for the GAA powersthat-be.

Next Saturday, Kerry and Cork play in the Munster semi-final. Kids with ice cream? Tar melting? Sun shining? Dream on.

The glory days of up to 45,000 packed into Fitzgerald Stadium for a Cork v Kerry Munster Championship clash is a dim and distant memory. The Munster Council will be damn lucky to get 15,000 there next Saturday.

I know the scheduling of the game in April is not the only reason for the lack of interest. But, for me, a Kerry-Cork championship clash in Killarney was summer, July, holiday time. Summer was defined by the championship in those days and we’ve lost that.

And by the way, it is not just me. At the launch of the Ulster Championship, Jim McGuinness echoed similar sentiments.

“I don’t think that supporters going to championship games should be going to championship games when the pitches are soft. The GAA football championship is the centrepiece of the summer and now it is not even being played in the summer.”

Jim is a very astute man, a very serious and deep thinker on the game. When he speaks, he should be listened to. And by the way, he talked about two other aspects of the GAA being squeezed into the first six months of the year. One, with so many matches coming one after the other, people and families, in particular, can’t afford to go to all the games. Secondly, he mentioned how he and Seán Boylan spoke about the shop window the GAA had for the championship being lost.

It is a similar point I’ve been making: we in the GAA are taking our two main products out of the shop window, inter-county football and hurling, at the end of July.

WORSE

We are leaving our rival sporting organisations a free run for six months. This summer, at the height of the championship, it gets even worse with even more competition from other sports.

The European soccer championships run from June 14 to July 14. The Olympic Games start on July 26 before the All-Ireland final is played – and Ireland and South Africa play two huge rugby games