It has to be county before club
IN the alternative reality where Covid-19 was little more than a particularly nightmarish episode of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, we’d just be coming off the back of a hell of a weekend of championship action. You just couldn’t ask for better conditions. Blues skies, the sun beating down, pitches in pristine condition.
It was a weekend heaven sent and made for football and hurling. Probably you’d be better off not thinking about it – it would rather tend to drive you to distraction – but the thought did tend to cross our mind when we saw a few young fellas pucking ball on the beach.
Don’t get us wrong here. The weather has been a real relief during this odd period of our lives. It’s just that with championship weather, championship is what our thirty six years on this planet has conditioned us to expect.
Look we know we’re not going to have championship any time soon and we’re not calling for the GAA to go full-steam ahead straight away or anything like it, but we do think that it would probably be more sensible to play the inter-county championship before we attempt any return to club action.
There are political considerations for the GAA’s stated aim to play club competitions before inter-county – it’s not a great look for an organisation often accused (unfairly most of the time) of elitism – but the practical considerations suggest it should be the other way around as Wexford hurling manager Davy Fitzgerald suggested this week in the Wexford People.
Think about it if you were to restart club competitions the length and breath of the land you’re talking about a hell of a lot of teams. In Kerry alone there’s as many clubs as there would be inter-county sides across both hurling and football. With far fewer teams and far fewer players involved an inter-county championship would be that much easier to organise.
It would be easier to ensure that dressing rooms and things could be run as safely as possible in county grounds as compared to club grounds. If there’s a need for a testing regime, then that’s much more feasible at inter-county level too (hell the government would probably swing in behind it). The need to play the games to satisfy broadcasters and make some money for the GAA at a central level is an important consideration too. It’s not grubby or self-serving. It’s sensible. Davy’s right, inter-county must go first.