GAA MUST GO BACK TO BASICS FOR CLUBS
WHEN photographs of O’Moore Park pinned under a fall of snow began to circulate last Sunday morning, it was cited as more evidence of the alleged madness at play in asking footballers to compete in December.
Yet there should be no difficulty with fixing games for year’s end: rugby is a winter sport, as is soccer throughout Europe. Under a coherent plan, running a competition through the winter months should be possible, with accommodations made for unpredictable weather conditions.
The issue confronting the GAA, of course, is a coherent plan. Club players will tell you that there is none they can rely on, and they are right.
Matches fixed for November and deep into December would be ineva itable under designs for a reliable, fairly-regulated club programme. Two of the three plans produced by the Club Players Association (CPA) earlier this year foresaw the club season running from April 1 to December 31.
Today’s refixed Leinster final will see conditions that are cold and almost certainly wet, and even the most tenderly nurtured pitch will suffer accordingly. The environmental factors would be more bearable as part of a season that granted players certainty.
And certainty is the most important word in the entire club player debate. There is a tendency within the GAA – at official level, among elements of the inter-county game and within the media – to respond to CPA initiatives and arguments with a roll of the eyes.
There was, however, no more important development in the game this year than the establishment of body that can represent the silent majority of members.
Their various contributions to the debate about the futures of hurling and football throughout 2017 consistently returned to the issue of certainty: club players throughout the island suffer for the want of it.
They cannot plan family holidays. They train for weeks on end with no possibility of a meaningful game. They pay their dues and remain diligent, while the association that professes to value the club ignores them.
Rather than whine, the CPA has offered solutions but the prospect of its proposals being greeted with serious engagement, let alone championed, remain remote. The problems it highlights are only going to get worse, and disillusionment pervades club level like damp.
This is a difficulty that poses existential questions for the GAA. Professionalism was for decades the unutterable fear, but there remains no plausible argument in favour of it, either practically or philosophically. No, the debate should be about the schism between the county game and the rest, and how that split is managed. The quality and popularity of the All-Ireland championships must be treasured, but it has come at the undeniable cost of the club game.
As such, the club season should be shaped to accommodate that fact: no county manager will willingly let players represent clubs while his team are still involved in the Championship, and it is futile to maintain otherwise.
If that means a calendar in which club championships are concentrated in the months from September to December, then so be it. League competitions, minus county players, could be played through the summer.
It would have the virtue of certainty, which now merely taunts players as a dream they will never see realised under the status quo.
The business of fixture scheduling is a dry one, but in this context it will help decide the health of Gaelic games for decades to come.
It really is that important, because the frustration and anger among club players is instantly detectable from conversations by anyone interested enough in seeking them out.
A complication is that everyone professes their love for the club: presidents mention their home place through gulped tears when they land the big job; county managers are absorbed back into the club game when their Croke Park days end; it is where any star worth their salt will see out their playing days.
But everyone loves late summer and the biggest days, too, and an All-Ireland final kindles interest and generates revenue more than all the county finals added together. To get to the grandest occasions, managers want unfettered access to players. County boards want the money and the status that comes with success and acquiesce to their demands that club matches be postponed.
And when the All-Ireland finals are over, love for the club fills the air once more.
That is feeble consolation as matches are run off in a mad dash and so vulnerable to winter weather.
In 2017, this mess became the biggest one in the GAA. Cleaning it up remains a matter of urgency.