Dublin at the heart of club fixtures crisis

THE timing of the second of two Club Players’ Association statements this week could hardly have been more spot on.

If their first statement struck an apologetic tone – released to coincide with a 100-day milestone, acknowledging they had ‘underestimated’ the fixture crisis – the second one was bang on the money with its content.

It was released the morning after a series of first round games in the Dublin senior football championship had been played when the interests of five clubs were terminated in the competition and, in the process, that of in excess of 100 club players.

Those clubs and players have only a secondary championship to look forward to now; effectively a line drawn under their season by the third week in April. All-Ireland champions of 2016, Ballyboden among the fallen.

Can you just imagine the furore if the inter-county fixture programme was processed with such expedience that it’s 2016 champions, Dublin, were out of the Championship while the nation was still in the process of unwrapping its Easter eggs.

If there is some consolation for this week’s losers in Dublin, it is that they are spared playing the waiting game which is the prize for those who advanced.

If this year’s Dublin county final is scheduled in line with last year’s, the winners have a mere 199 days from the first round, which is in excess of 28 weeks, before the competition reaches its conclusion.

And nothing surely underlines the need for the CPA’s fixture reform campaign quite so persuasively than a club championship in the GAA’s most powerful county which is parked up for the bones of half a year.