All the Louth footballers wanted was an even break. Instead, they fell short and the cavalry call echoed.
The Wee County had high hopes for this year’s championship summer.
Fresh from their April triumph in the Allianz League Division 4 final, Louth approached the Leinster Senior Football Championship with something other than fear. It felt good.
They saw off Carlow and fancied a crack off Meath. Unfortunately for them, The Royal County cracked back harder. They expected to lick their wounds for a week before going through the all too familiar qualifier route.
Instead, they were drawn against Derry and had to hit the road, to Owenbeg, six days later. They started brightly but faded badly; legs would not obey and hearts sank.
Facing a summer on the outside, looking in, Louth’s Declan Byrne voiced his frustrations on LMFM and claimed seven months of hard work had been dismissed, just so the GAA could rattle along with the qualifiers.
Byrne also rounded on the Gaelic Players Association for not stepping forward on Louth’s behalf. Player welfare was bypassed, he feels, and the GPA were nowhere to the been.
SportsJOE has been in touch with GPA spokesperson Sean Potts and learned no-one from the Louth set-up had approached them with concerns before the fixture took place. However, Potts commented:
“We would have had serious issues with the scheduling and totally agree with the [player’s] concerns; yet another unfair anomaly in a structure no longer fit for purpose. It is unfair if both teams are not in same situation and it raises issue of demands on players in the current set-up.”
Potts hopes some good can come from the Louth situation, now that it has been raised in public. In the future, and if counties row in behind their players, the GPA may be in a position to negotiate for fairer fixtures with the association. Potts told us:
“It’s a learning process for squads to understand that if they’re organised and harness the GPA centrally, they are in a very powerful position. But that central organisation is essential.”
There could be some interesting changes ahead.
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