Lengthy delay to Galway final highlights struggle of club footballers

Both sides last played league fixtures in late July.

Earlier this year, when a restructuring of club hurling fixtures was announced, our Niall McIntyre wrote:

'The GAA fixture calendar will never please everybody. There are too many competitions for one, and loads of these overlap with one another which means that individuals are being pulled in all directions... There are too many stakeholders and not enough weekends in the year.'

How true those words remain for club footballers. We know both Claregalway and Kilconly GAA are in Division 6 [North] but surely there was a gap in the calendar to play their final before this weekend? Back on April 14, both football clubs kicked off their league campaigns in earnest. Both made good fists of it. On July 23, Claregalway took on Cortoon Shamrocks in their final league fixture. Six days later, Kilconly finished up against Athenry. With the dust settled and points tallied, both sides would face each other in the final. 5 months later, that final is about to take place. Saturday, December 16 at Tuam Stadium and Claregalway and Kilconly will finally get to face off. A post to the Galway Footballers Homepage reveals some of the frustration over the delay:

'Why has there been nearly 5 months of a break before the final? 'It just shows the blatant disregard for the club player, the lifeblood of the association.'

One hopes both sets of players had ample training time to get reacquainted with each other. One also hopes they got all of their Christmas shopping out of the way.