We need to follow rugby model and split clubs from elite, says Kilmacud chief
THE CLUB fixtures crisis is so bad, the GAA would be better served following the rugby model and cutting the cord between the game’s elite and their clubs. That’s the opinion of Tom Rock, a mainstay of Kilmacud Crokes and chairman of their famous sevens tournament.
But, while Kilmacud, Dublin hurling champions enter provincial action against Laois kingpins Rathdowney Errill at Parnell Park this afternoon (2.30), Rock has an issue. Looking at the wipe-out of fixtures over the summer months as club players were held in thrall to the county scene, he is adamant that the situation is at breaking point.
The advent of the professional era in rugby saw a clear delineation between club, province and country. The top players were contracted to their province and country and Rock feels a similar revolution is coming in Gaelic games.
If a model were implemented where the inter-county scene existed in isolation to the club scene, then, he argues, the majority of club players who are currently disenfranchised would be better off because they would have a regular programme of fixtures which would not be dependent on the inter-county scene.
‘Coming from a big club like ours, which gives a lot of players to the county, it’s probably the last thing you’d think to say. But I do think it will come to that situation, and it will arrive in a number of years,’ says Rock. ‘It’s a radical solution, one that has been applied in rugby. And it has worked in rugby. The clubs get on about their business and play and get their regular games every week or fortnight or so.
‘If the GAA don’t do that, then they will have to look at how to liaise with their clubs and release players to play with their clubs during the year.’
And that’s coming from a club that only last weekend won the Dublin county senior hurling final. But even that achievement, Rock (below) says, doesn’t paper over the cracks; the summer was a writeoff due to the Dublin SHC being put in cold storage until the county team’s participation was over.
‘We lost senior players this year. We lost about 12 of our senior team to America, to Europe, to travelling. Therefore, we’d no senior team from May. Therefore, they are playing no hurling for May, June, July and August. And they’re coming back to us two stone overweight, totally unfit – and some of them are not coming back at all.
‘One guy who won a county championship two years ago, he has given up the game because he was disillusioned with the fixture list.
‘This thing of the whole club scene being put into mothballs for the entire summer is crazy.’
The former club chairman has been at the forefront of the annual Kilmacud Sevens and his regular contact with clubs from around the country gives him a sense of their frustration.
He suggests top clubs are effectively being penalised for producing county players.
‘Ballyboden have 10 or 11 on the county hurling panel at the moment, we have six or seven.
‘We’ll have similar in football. So we are being penalised. No question. But the strong club is going to have to make a decision: do we sit there all summer or do we play without our county players? Let the county board contract them out and do whatever they like.’
Rock doesn’t want to get into a discussion about the road to semi-professionalism; he just wants to make the point about the fixtures crisis. He suggests the GAA should ‘get their act together as regards club and county and fixture lists. Form a strong committee, including people who know what is going on at ground level with the clubs. Not the usual bureaucrats. ‘If they find that doesn’t work, then they should go the route of picking a panel, say 25 players at the start of the year, and clubs accept that they’re playing without them.’
Dublin chairman Andy Kettle acknowledges that the current situation is far from ideal but wouldn’t like to see a divide.
‘Certain counties do that – play designated rounds without county guys. I can see the argument. But I would hate to see clubs being denied their county players. The promotional value of an inter-county player within a club is huge,’ says Kettle. ‘I look at Fingallians and Paul Flynn. My own (Fingal Ravens) and Darren Daly.
‘At the moment, there is a committee set-up to look at rejigging the whole fixture list. It arose from the proposal from the FRC to get the club calendar finished in the calendar year.’
Kettle would be worried that Rock’s radical suggestion would only further the divide which already exists given intercounty players rarely see their clubs. ‘My initial reaction is that it wouldn’t do the association any good, it wouldn’t do the teams any good, and there would be a big disconnect’ says Kettle, who admits: ‘The fixture list at the moment certainly has to change. I would have views on whether colleges should be allowed into the subsidiary competitions, whether colleges should have first call on county players.
‘Take the Under 21 scene – the football is played early in the season, the hurling late... There has to be re-jig on it. At minor level, should we have the back doors?’
GAA president Liam O’Neill believes Rock’s radical alternative wouldn’t wash with rural clubs, in particular, including his own club Trumera.
‘It’s easy for Kilmacud to say that – they are a super-club,’ counters O’Neill. ‘My club couldn’t. If we had a county player, my club couldn’t do without him. That’s a populist solution to a complex problem.
‘We are working on proposals at the moment on the calendar year. That’s the key.’
The proposal to finish the club championships in the calendar year would do much in theory to solve some problems.
‘If people are saying that we have to find windows for clubs, then it’s the clubs who decide county board positions. And the clubs have to start flexing their muscles,’ says O’Neill.