Time for GAA chiefs to grasp a nettle that?s choking clubs

Diarmuid O’Flynn
FOR my various sins I’m PRO of the local GAA club here in Ballyhea and one of my weekly duties is to pen the notes for the local paper The Vale Star, the bible in this area of north Cork and in a similar area of south Limerick when it comes to things like dates, times and venues for all local events.
Again this week, as has been the case for a few weeks now, when it came to ‘Junior B & U21 fixtures’, I had nothing to report, no concrete championship date for either side.
For weeks now the junior B team have had no competitive game. With their league programme fulfilled they wait for a definite date/time/venue/referee for their championship match meaning that the management team of Derek Mackessy and Dave Ryan are at their wits’ end trying to keep the players occupied.
For the U21s it’s even more frustrating – not a single competitive game played yet this year, just a walkover granted in the one match that was fixed.
They now await their next fixture, which – if they win – will get them to a North Cork quarter-final. Meanwhile, a team who conceded a walkover has received its next fixture, which, if they win, will see them in the semi-final.
How does that happen? Only in the GAA. There isn’t a single other sporting organisation I know of,  where players and clubs are subject to this sort of contemptuous treatment. In any other sport you care to mention a fixture programme is drawn up at the beginning of the season and adhered to. Players, management, clubs all know where they stand, and can plan accordingly. At club level in the GAA however, in counties and divisions up and down the country, no such facility exists. Ironically the lesser competitions – the leagues and so on – may be played to a programme, but the major competition, the championship, is very often on an ad-hoc basis.
This isn’t just unfair, it’s stupid. How do you keep players interested? In Ballyhea the junior B and U21 is our link to the first team, the intermediate grade. Already we’re leaking players, one guy who played intermediate championship two years ago is gone. How many more must we lose? And this problem is by no means unique to this club.
Like so much else in this country it’s a failure at administration level, and like so much else in this country there’s an unwillingness, to confront the situation.
If a club were to stick its head above the parapet and create a stink at board level, the fear is that punishment will then be meted out in the form of a date, time, venue and referee known to be unacceptable to that club (hopefully that won’t now be the case here!).
That kind of thinking is endemic in the GAA, is endemic in Irish society generally, which is why we tolerate situations that would be intolerable in almost any other civilised society?
I was in Thurles yesterday to cover a fine initiative by the Munster Council which they’ve called ‘Munster Activity Days’, a programme led by vice-chairman Robert Frost and the two innovative Coaching & Games Managers, Pat O’Shea and Joey Carton.
At the session in Semple Stadium I met former Kilkenny star Christy Heffernan, there with a team from Passage East in Waterford, with whom his son David is the goalkeeper; “They don’t want to train,” said Christy, “They want games, games, games!”.
Exactly the same can be said of every player in the GAA, every grade; games, games, games, regular, meaningful, competitive, all laid out to a programme.
Yes, clubs themselves will try to get fixtures postponed for some reason or another, and my own club is no exception, but it’s time for GAA boards everywhere not just to lay down the law in all those situations, but to lay out a full fixtures programme at the start of every season. Time to grasp a nettle that’s choking clubs everywhere.

Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/uSBe3Yx5nOk/post.aspx

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