club championship calendar year

[armaghniac]

Report on the radio that the club championship will be run off in the calender year. This is fine for Cross people who get a day out at Christmas and useful for Armagh and Roscommon managers. But it does mean that most club teams are finished up quite early in the year, unless leagues etc carry on after the championships.

[Syferus]

Report on the radio that the club championship will be run off in the calender year. This is fine for Cross people who get a day out at Christmas and useful for Armagh and Roscommon managers. But it does mean that most club teams are finished up quite early in the year, unless leagues etc carry on after the championships.

Eh? Leagues regularly run past the end of the championship in counties I know of.

At least some common sense with the club championship has finally prevailed.

[brokencrossbar1]

Report on the radio that the club championship will be run off in the calender year. This is fine for Cross people who get a day out at Christmas and useful for Armagh and Roscommon managers. But it does mean that most club teams are finished up quite early in the year, unless leagues etc carry on after the championships.

When do they plan bringing it in?  Farcical and a show of disrespect to the club player to expect them to play the biggest game of their career in the muck and gutters of October/November. 

[orangeman]

This is designed to alleviate burnout and to try and help teams.

[Syferus]

Report on the radio that the club championship will be run off in the calender year. This is fine for Cross people who get a day out at Christmas and useful for Armagh and Roscommon managers. But it does mean that most club teams are finished up quite early in the year, unless leagues etc carry on after the championships.

When do they plan bringing it in?  Farcical and a show of disrespect to the club player to expect them to play the biggest game of their career in the muck and gutters of October/November.

It's also farcical to ask a county to be without some of their best players for up to five months of training and games because of two club games spread over those five months.

March is also a pretty bitter month of the year itself!

[Zulu]

Report on the radio that the club championship will be run off in the calender year. This is fine for Cross people who get a day out at Christmas and useful for Armagh and Roscommon managers. But it does mean that most club teams are finished up quite early in the year, unless leagues etc carry on after the championships.

When do they plan bringing it in?  Farcical and a show of disrespect to the club player to expect them to play the biggest game of their career in the muck and gutters of October/November.

The final will be in Croke Park so the pitch should be in great nick regardless of the time of year. The rest of the club championship games are played in the muck and shite as it is. This a great development and not a moment too soon.

[brokencrossbar1]

The only way it will work is if there is a master fixture list drawn up that every county has to stick to.  I doubt that will happen.

[Zulu]

A master fixture is another must. I can't understand why this hasn't been done before so hopefully this is a step in that direction.

[Canalman]

The only way it will work is if there is a master fixture list drawn up that every county has to stick to.  I doubt that will happen.

Disagree a tad with that. Rule stating that County championships have to be finished by x date or they forfeit entry into the provincial club championship will sort that out imo. No county board will want that humiliation imo.

[brokencrossbar1]

The only way it will work is if there is a master fixture list drawn up that every county has to stick to.  I doubt that will happen.

Disagree a tad with that. Rule stating that County championships have to be finished by x date or they forfeit entry into the provincial club championship will sort that out imo. No county board will want that humiliation imo.

I don't know about the other province but that currently exists in Ulster.  I just think a standardized list would work in terms of having closed periods for club games and county games etc to allow clubs to have time with their county players at training. 

[drici]

Also the chattering classes idea to throw a County out of Ulster to have four makey up groups of eight Counties instead of Provincial Championships  has been whacked for the time being.

[rodney trotter]

2016 is when they are bringing this into action.

[orangeman]

I love it the way the GAA are able to bend - change the rules - make it up as they go along.

[orangeman]

Time to celebrate.

"A good day for clubs" is how Football Review Committee (FRC) chairman Eugene McGee described Saturday's Central Council meeting.

The specially-convened session to debate the second part of the FRC's report surprisingly saw Central Council back the group's call for the Central Competitions Control Committee to be handed overall authority for fixture-making at all levels. However, the re-jig of the provincial championships, shifting four counties from Leinster and Ulster to Munster and Connacht to make four groups of eight, was rejected.

McGee had expected it would not garner support, but admitted he was taken aback the recommendation to give the national CCCC so much power got the green light.

"I was surprised that went through. I don't know if anybody has studied that at all."

He was pleased to see more proposals than he had expected given the go-ahead although there had been a sense the call to finish the club championships in a calendar year would be favoured.

"It's a major gesture to the clubs and it's up to them to respond now and get their county boards to put their fixtures in order. The finishing line for all championships will be December. All boards who runs competitions have no option but to get their accounts in order. If you're starting a business the first you thing you do is put down a completion date.

"That's not the case as things stand because, as we all know, provincial club finals can come sometimes go late into December and even into January. So that will be all over and I think clubs will like that because they will get some element of certainty. An awful lot of counties have improved their club calendars in recent years; a great number of them have come up with sensible solutions.

"But there is still a lot of them who don't and there is this worrying thing about some counties abandoning their championships for three or four months as long as they are in the All-Ireland series. There is still a lot of work to do but there is an air of optimism about change probably because of the pressure coming from club players asking what the hell is going on. It's working in a lot of counties and people are realising the slipshod method can't go on forever. The GAA moves at a snail's pace but I would regard whatever progress was made on Saturday as important. It's up to other people in the future to carry it on now."

A special group will be established by GAA president Liam O'Neill and director general Páraic Duffy to look at how the club championships proposal can be implemented. They will report back to Central Council with detailed proposals later this year with a mind to them forming motion or motions at Congress and coming in for 2016. It was also decided on Saturday the Railway Cup football competition be relaunched with the possibility of making it into a festival competition.

A national strategy for less successful football counties will also be drawn up, guided by a national steering group chaired by Duffy and with a membership drawn from all the relevant stakeholders. Council also chose not to abolish Division 1 semi-finals.

[Syferus]

We're getting there, painfully slowly.