How is a fixed calendar for club possible?

[Angelo]

Both club and county seasons should be a lot shorter.

In the current guise intercounty football starts in early January with competitive games and ends in late Aug/early Sept.

Club football starts in or around April and historically went on until March but I think the AI club finals were in January this year?

So in effect you have both intercounty and club matches running for 8/9 months each at different intervals meaning county players are demanded all year round.

It's good to see some big calls now for completely segregating the two streams, it would allow clubs access to their players and a more defined fixture list.

Conceivably you could get the county season ran off in 3-4 months and maybe 4-5 month for the clubs. Some counties have extremely convoluted methods for the county championships with backdoor systems and round robins etc, I don't think you need that in club football.

For the county season, you are probably looking at 7 rounds of a league, played back to back weekends and get rid of the finals.

I'd be loathe to lose the Ulster Championship but it's the only properly functioning provincial system in it and it's not really fair on Ulster counties but I think an open 32 draw for Championship is required. Teams should be seeded via their league standing, Div 1 and 2 counties seeded, Div 3 and 4 unseeded. Championship is straight knockout, winners go into the last 16, losers go into a last 16 B competition. Everything open draw from there on in. The Championship should be able to be ran off over 5 weeks. TV rights could be an issue but look at the disrespect played to the football Championship in recent years, I think RTE had one football championship match covered live last year before the Provincial finals which was the Donegal and Tyrone meeting.

You could run the Championship off in 5 weeks. There is an option for standalone provincial competitions if wanted that could be played before or after the league.

The club system should operate in a similar manner and I believe there should be some sort of standardised regulations across the island. I don't like what they do down in Kerry to be honest, I think it breeds super clubs - how many actual senior clubs take part in the County Senior Championship - is it something like 6?

It's an amateur game and some of the demands expected of club players these days is unrealistic. Do league campaigns really need to run into around 20 games as they do in some counties? 8-10 clubs per division and one round of matches should be perfectly realistic, club championships should all be straight knockout as they are at Provincial and All Ireland level. Some clubs teams are probably not a whole way off playing 30-40 competitive games in a season which I think is madness, particularly when they will inevitably have some county players who could be playing county football, Sigerson etc along with that.

You'd probably have your warm up competitions etc too that might have another 3 or 4 games so every club would have 10+ competitive games in the year and potentially up to 20 for those who progress on in their county championships, provincial and All Ireland. There's nothing stopping counties setting up their own pre-season tournaments that don't involve county players either to fill in the gap before the club season starts.

It's an interesting debate that the Covid debacle has caused now, there's certainly greater interest than normal in the club scene.

[caprea]

Why do the CPA never address that this system will leave players in Carlow and loads of other second tier counties twiddling their thumbs for at least 2 months from start of June to start of August in prime summer season.

[Rossfan]

As it appears well be having the "split" with County (primarily) to mid July and Club solely from there on...
What do ye think of the GPA proposals?
https://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/gaa/arid-40043720.html

No Provincials in football will hardly make it.

[sid waddell]

As it appears well be having the "split" with County (primarily) to mid July and Club solely from there on...
What do ye think of the GPA proposals?
https://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/gaa/arid-40043720.html

No Provincials in football will hardly make it.

Not much

Provincial championships should stay and All-Ireland finals in July is a crazy idea

Run county and All-Ireland club championships from April 1-June 30

Run inter-county championships from July to October

Or else have a FIFA-like rule mandating the release of county players for clubs on designated weekends throughout the year, with no exceptions

[macdanger2]

As it appears well be having the "split" with County (primarily) to mid July and Club solely from there on...
What do ye think of the GPA proposals?
https://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/gaa/arid-40043720.html

No Provincials in football will hardly make it.

Not a bad proposal, makes the league more important and gives every team a pretty equal route

[Rossfan]

https://www.rte.ie/sport/gaa/2020/0918/1165957-gaas-fixture-taskforce-only-considering-split-season/

[Blowitupref]

https://www.rte.ie/sport/gaa/2020/0918/1165957-gaas-fixture-taskforce-only-considering-split-season/

Meanwhile, with uncertainty amid the pandemic, it's also possible that the 2021 Allianz League structure could be adjusted

In what way will it be adjusted I'd wonder?

[Farrandeelin]

https://www.rte.ie/sport/gaa/2020/0918/1165957-gaas-fixture-taskforce-only-considering-split-season/

Meanwhile, with uncertainty amid the pandemic, it's also possible that the 2021 Allianz League structure could be adjusted

In what way will it be adjusted I'd wonder?

#dublinlockedout

[Eire90]

i believe all club county championships should be straight knockout aswell  to make them different from the leagues  in counties with low numbers maybe you could use league positions to determine byes.

[Rossfan]

No.

[Farrandeelin]

They should leave the club first, not the county in my opinion in case of injuries to players etc, that is if things return to normal properly.