Are we all mad?
People are sick of going to matches wrapped up like eskimos
Overall, I’m a big fan of the split season in the GAA calendar. I fully understand why it was done. How we needed to better cater for the club player, the 98 per cent of our playing base, with a bigger summer window. Why the inter-county season needed to be compressed to allow for that.
I am more than aware of all of that. In Offaly, our fixtures are already pencilled in for the whole year. Our Competitions Control Committee secretary Pat Teehan, who ran for GAA president, has already sent the schedule out so that players know the dates, times and venues for their club fixtures – which is fantastic for the players who can plan their lives around it.
It’s just that it’s led to this awkward transitional period between league and championship, where the competitions overlap with each other. We had the Allianz Hurling League final last night between Clare and Kilkenny, the same weekend as the provincial football championships kicked off.
And there is no getting away from the issues arising from how the inter-county season is being really squeezed. I argued for years that players wanted matches. That’s why you train. So all the extra games and the added layer of round-robin group games in hurling and football are good things. I argued for years that the trainingto-games ratio needed to improve. I guess the one thing we haven’t accounted for is the weather. Climate change.
Fairyhouse hosted the Easter Racing Festival and I heard general manager Peter Roe describing the unseasonal rainfall. How from February 1 to March 27, 176 millimetres of rain fell. How only twice there were two consecutive days without rain in that period. How three different race meetings had to be cancelled because the conditions were that bad.
That gives you a flavour of how bad things have been in recent months. These are half tonne national hunt horses and they can’t run over the ground.
Yet our players have to try and play important hurling and football games in similar conditions.
The 24th of November was the official return to training date for inter-county teams. We spent millions on redeveloping a top-class
Centre of Excellence in The Faithful Fields but it has been closed a lot because of the weather.
Now the National Leagues have always taken place in wintry conditions but this feels different altogether. Add in all the lads in college training on heavy ground and it has to be contributing to all the injuries we’re hearing about. I could give you 100 different stories of Offaly players picking up knocks. In my position as Offaly chair, I’ve seen the players slogging through it.
We kicked off our inter-county championships last Saturday week when the minor hurlers played Meath in Ashbourne. I went out on to the pitch after and the wind and the cold... it was absolutely Baltic. I was thinking: ‘How did the players play in this?’
The following Tuesday, our Under-20
footballers played Louth. I was on the way up to the match when I had a call to say the venue changed from Stabannon Parnells to the Centre of Excellence at Darver due to torrential rain. Driving cross country on a dark night in brutal conditions, I was left thinking: ‘Are we all mad?’
It’s a fine training ground but there is no protection. We watched it from a bank with hat, scarf – the lot! With the driving wind and rain, it was horrendous.
Last weekend then, I played 18 holes of golf in Tullamore early Saturday morning and it was like a summer’s day. By the time I got to Dublin to watch the U20 hurlers it was like the end of the world.
When the weather is like this, it’s hard to know what the point of running off these games early is.
Looking back on my Offaly days, I know I’m a bit romantic about them. But it’s only now we would be going in for proper championship training. After doing our heavy winter training maybe in some of the clubs in south Offaly we moved to Tullamore for April, May, June. The ball would be flying around in training. There was a feel of summer about it.
Now the lads are going in and it feels like a bit of a slog because everything is so early. For the inter-county player, our showcase player, do we reverse out of the split season again?
The inter-county season is a bit of a joke in the conditions that we are playing it. It’s the first week of April and you have minor and U20 teams out of the Championship. How is that going to make them better players? That has to be demoralising for your young lads.
Everything is being sacrificed to benefit the club player. But what about our county players? They deserve better, too.
Part of me wonders whether it would be better to even go back to knock-out, and run it later, than this. Where is the enjoyment?
We have to allow for bigger gaps in the league schedule to allow lads recover.
It all should be reviewed. It’s not a million miles away but it’s not working properly as is. We couldn’t foresee climate change but we’re going to have to plan for this better in the future.
If that means reviewing the amount of competitions and perhaps sacrificing the O’Byrne Cup or pre-season competitions, well, something has to give.
Our priority has to be our championships and our leagues.
Because I’m surely not alone in thinking people are sick of going to inter-county games in the wind and rain, wrapped up like eskimos.