There's a thought.
Injured? Hungover? Don't fancy it? Sure you're only a phone call away from freedom.
Club games get called off for all sorts of loose reasons. Yes, some solid ones too but others, let's say, convenient. The opposition ask you at the start of the year can you swap dates because a stag do is going to screw them over; naturally you say no, sniffing out a handy two points; naturally, they flick through the obits every day in the build-up to the game looking for anyone who might be the third cousin of a selector's auntie.
In Wicklow this weekend though, nobody had to go to any kind of length to get a fixture postponed. In fact, it couldn't have been easier it seems. One junior match was called off despite the management not finding out and the chairman not finding out - and it was called off by that club themselves.
So when the message went into the club WhatsApp group to find out how the junior side got on, people were still stumped.
It turns out that someone, purporting to be from the club in question, had contacted to get the game called off so the match was subsequently cancelled. But the management weren't aware of this - because they didn't know who it was who called it off. And the chairman wasn't aware of this - because he didn't know who it was who called it off.
So players from one team showed up - the team who were said to have actually called to get it off. Needless to say, it didn't take place. And, still, nobody seems to know why or how.
Clubs in Wicklow are going to have to start initiating passwords for such events.
