League’s quality is watered down
THERE was a time when we only really tuned in to the long weather forecast for harvest time, but these days it applies to the hurling season too.
And suffice to say that the longterm forecast – as in the next fortnight – is such that you certainly would not be cutting the hay.
Of course, even the city slickers reading this would know that this is not the time of the year to be in a harvest field, but neither is it the time to be in a hurling one.
The GAA can’t be held to account for predicting the weather, but it most certainly can be held to account for overseeing the ungovernable mess that the fixture calendar has become.
And it can, and must, be held to account for creating the monster that has devoured all reason and joy from our game.
Last Sunday, I watched and shivered from the warmth of my couch as the Clare and Laois teams played a game of rugby, with a small ball and sticks.
There was nothing else they could do as they played into the teeth of a fierce wind and driving sleet, while pulling their legs through a pitch that facilitated a bouncing ball much in the same way that a ploughed field would.
I shivered for all kinds of reasons. For the game, to see it showcased as such a brutal ugly spectacle.
I shivered out of pity for the players; this is a game to be enjoyed and not a brutal reality TV survivor show where we get our kicks from participants struggling to deal with extremities.
I shivered because it brought back bad memories of standing on the same line in Cusack Park for the 2005 Clare County final on a day you would not put a dog out, and watched as my Wolfe Tone team went down to Clarecastle on a scoreline of 0-9 to 0-7.
I have never been a believer that a high-scoring game equates to a high-quality one, but that Clare county final was every bit as grim as the final score suggested.
I was sickened watching two good teams reduced to a push and shove contest, a crude battle of wills that bore little or no relation to the game we had trained for and had been coached in all that summer.
I shivered mainly, though, because that game last Sunday went ahead as a result of the GAA having backed itself into such a corner with such a packed fixture schedule that its instinct now is to get the games played no matter what they look like.
There are a multitude of reasons why it has come to this, but the biggest one is that the GAA have chosen to look the other way as individuals with short-term and selfish interests have been given a free run at dismantling the very structures that define this association.
The GAA is now in the business of sending its sickest patient for a cosmetic procedure when it really needs a life-saving operation.
The main reason why the GAA are reluctant to call games off, even in conditions that I would argue are a health and safety risk to those playing, is they don’t want inter-county activity in the club-only month that is April.
They have failed to deliver on that commitment for the past two years, but the truth is that it matters not a jot to the clubs where the window comes far too early in the season to be truly productive. But the real purpose it serves is that it allows the GAA to give the impression that it has the interests of its grassroots at heart and is being proactive in dealing with their concerns. It is, of course, total nonsense.
I like Davy Fitzgerald, and he has done wonders for our game by lighting a fire in Wexford, but he is well behind the curve in the self-awareness stakes.
In his interview after last Sunday’s win over Kilkenny, he made a huge deal about how he gave his players to their clubs for four weeks. He sounded more like a judge in a family court who had decided that the parents would get limited custodial access to the child, but only if they were grateful for the privilege.
Where do county managers get off? Are they really that unaware that the players they have inherited have been moulded by their clubs?
Are they aware that ever since Abraham Lincoln put his foot down, that human beings, even those good enough to hurl at county level, are not “owned” but play of their own free will. It would appear not. Last weekend, there was a tsunami of outrage over the amount of money being spent on county teams and how it was continuing to squeeze the club game, but very few solutions put forward as to how this crisis should be addressed. We need to take a cleaver to the county and club game schedules by ensuring we have fewer games, but more of a higher quality.
The inter-county season needs stripped down and stripped back. Not only would I get rid of the pre-season competitions – for pity’s sake, they even started them before Christmas this year – but I would have only the one hurling league instead of two.
The league could start in March and feed into a knock-out championship come the summer. It would mean less games and it would also facilitate an integrated club/county fixture programme.
And, in payback, the club championships would revert back to knock-out competitions – inevitably they have aped the roundrobin format which is such a money earner for the inter-county game – with club players compensated by getting more high-end, high-quality league games at a time of the year when it would be a pleasure to play.
In effect, I am suggesting we go back to a far better future. It will mean the GAA taking a hit in the pocket, but the flipside is there will be less money to throw at inflated management teams, who have decided to take ownership of our games and players. Above all, it would mean the days where we sit shivering watching the game we love would be behind us.
We should go back to a far better future