Now behold the price of leaving yourself with no room for error.
The GAA tried to squash league football and hurling, pre-season competitions, club All-Irelands and Sigerson and Fitzgibbon Cups into three months at the start of the calendar year and, with this pointless scheme to leave April free for clubs, they left themselves with no scope for manoeuvre.
And what has happened is that there was bad weather in December which affected Corofin’s trip to London – which affected their clash with Moorefield, which meant that some players had to either choose between a club semi-final and a Sigerson Cup final or try to play both on the same day.
What happened then was there was bad weather in January which delayed McKenna Cups and FBD Leagues and meant that, during the break weeks in the national league, counties had to contest finals of pre-season games in mid-February, others had to fulfil rescheduled fixtures. The O’Byrne Cup decider still hasn’t been played.
And, now, bad weather at the end of February has seen all the fixtures for the first weekend of March postponed. That eats into the calendar again, it pushes the O’Byrne Cup back further and threatens April – the month for clubs (for whatever reason) when the football league football is already penciled in for the start of April.
Dublin v Kerry
According to Colm Keys in the Independent, the Dublin and Kerry game which was originally fixed for Croke Park on Saturday night will now take place on March 11, a Sunday. The game would struggle to get the green light for a Saturday again with Ireland playing Scotland in Dublin that same day in the Six Nations and a Rally for Life in the city centre.
It means that Dublin will play out four weeks in a row now – if the final stays at it is – to finish and win the league and that leaves four weekends for clubs in April – with the inter-county championship then starting on May 6. The Dublin club championship begins in April too so, effectively, players will be going from four back-to-back weekends ending with a league final and going straight into club championship, before the inter-county championship kicks in.
The GAA will confirm on Monday what they’re doing – you can forgive them for giving themselves a few extra days of banging their heads against the wall.
Once next weekend is filled up with round five games and the hurling quarter-finals are pushed further away, it means there are games in both codes in different competitions to try and fit in again with the tight schedule they’ve giving themselves.
Meanwhile, when the weather’s better and there’s more appetite for spectators to go out to watch matches, counties will be winding down their calendar because the season is completely lopsided.
Think about it this way: it’s only March now and a lot of counties only have five more games left for the entire season.
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