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.
Quote from: armaghniac on June 28, 2014, 04:47:41 PM
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.
Quote from: armaghniac on June 28, 2014, 04:47:41 PM
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.
This is designed to alleviate burnout and to try and help teams.
Quote from: brokencrossbar1 on June 28, 2014, 06:02:24 PM
Quote from: armaghniac on June 28, 2014, 04:47:41 PM
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!
Quote from: brokencrossbar1 on June 28, 2014, 06:02:24 PM
Quote from: armaghniac on June 28, 2014, 04:47:41 PM
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.
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.
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.
Quote from: brokencrossbar1 on June 28, 2014, 06:21:07 PM
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.
Quote from: Canalman on June 28, 2014, 06:29:20 PM
Quote from: brokencrossbar1 on June 28, 2014, 06:21:07 PM
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.
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.
2016 is when they are bringing this into action.
I love it the way the GAA are able to bend - change the rules - make it up as they go along.
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.
We're getting there, painfully slowly.
Quote from: Syferus on June 30, 2014, 10:38:30 AM
We're getting there, painfully slowly.
Now that we have managed to play Provincial championships on a Saturday there should be no reason we can't tighten the whole Championship calendar down to free up more weekends for clubs.
Ulster should not need 5 weeks to play off 1 preliminary and 4 1st round matches. It could be done in 3 and the whole thing completed in 8 weeks.
Week 1: Tyrone v Down
Week 2: Fermanagh v Antrim & Derry v Donegal (preliminary replay)
Week 3: Monaghan v Tyrone & Cavan v Armagh. (& replays)
Week 4: Antrim v Donegal
Week 5: Monaghan v Armagh & Qualifiers Rd 1.
Week 7: Donegal v ? & Qualifiers Rd 2.
I'm really looking forward to the FRC actually explaining how in the name of God they think this can be done, without the county calendar doing most of the heavy lifting - and I think we all know the provincial councils are not likely to play ball in this regard. It's all very well to say that club games should be accommodated, but it's not realistic to say that they can all slot into midweek, or be played the weekend before county championship matches. If you're a dual county, you can't put club football championship the same week as, or the week before, the intercounty hurling team plays - or vice versa. That's all very well when it's a county like Offaly are at the moment, where progress into the latter half of July simply doesn't happen, but if you have any chance of making a run, what then?
Take Wexford this year, who had/will have intercounty senior games on the following dates:
1st June - hurling
7th June - football
14th june - hurling
29th June - football
5th July - hurling/football
Now if they get knocked out of the two competitions in the next round, then that's one thing - but they're on the "A" side of the football qualifier draw and drew with Clare last year. With a little bit of luck on their side, they could easily be playing constantly in either code up until the first week of August.
Around that, you've to work in a club championship where there are eight weekends of football and eight of hurling, without making allowances for replays. Even if you mandate that championships are to have no more than three games guaranteed, that's still twelve weekends to be found, and now they think that this can all be done and have their champions known by the start of October?
I'm really looking forward to seeing how the FRC think they can manage this.
they can't in a dual county. And the fact that it's the 'F'RC means they are probably not even bothered. They'll draft an outline fixture list that more or less ignores hurling.
The proposition that the entire structure of the club championship should be determined by couple of dozen dual players might be hard to sustain.
Quote from: armaghniac on June 30, 2014, 12:43:31 PM
The proposition that the entire structure of the club championship should be determined by couple of dozen dual players might be hard to sustain.
Dual clubs. You may play football for your county, and hurl and play football for your club. That's far, far more than a couple of dozen.
The total number playing may be more, but in many cases either the county team or the club team won't have a long run anyway. So a change will only affect a few.
Quote from: armaghniac on June 30, 2014, 12:43:31 PM
The proposition that the entire structure of the club championship should be determined by couple of dozen dual players might be hard to sustain.
If that's their conclusion, then they need to come out and say that clearly, that the GAA no longer wishes to support players in their efforts to play two sports. If that is in fact what the FRC want, then recommend it, put it to congress and let the GAA vote on it. Not this current tactic of making it all but impossible, while publicly lauding the players who do it.
Personally, I actually do think there should be a policy on this, despite the fact that both my home club and my new club where I've settled to live long term would be devastated by it. I don't agree that a round of county championship games should be held up in order to accommodate six or seven senior hurlers and in one sense, there is no reason why there wouldn't be a round of football games in Offaly this coming weekend. Nonetheless I wouldn't expect my vote to win out in either the Ferbane or the St Aidan's club if I was to advocate it.
Also, just to make the point, here's the Offaly hurling team that started against Antrim yesterday.
OFFALY: J Dempsey;
N Wynne, R Hanniffy,
C McDonald; K Brady,
G Healion, C Parlon;
C Mahon, S Ryan;
S Dooley, D Kenny,
C Egan; B Carroll,
D Currams, J Bergin.
The seven players that are in bold above are key men for their clubs in the Offaly SFC, while Seán Ryan also plays with Birr's first team in football, who happen to be junior. Now either you accommodate these men, or else you say to guys like Shane Dooley that by agreeing to be selected to Offaly, you may be forced to miss some Tullamore championship football games, and you roll the dice that the players don't decide to stick with their clubs as a consequence.
You'll have some crack trying to keep hurling alive in places like Mayo, Kerry, Meath and Kildare if you go down that road.
Quote from: armaghniac on June 30, 2014, 01:04:49 PM
The total number playing may be more, but in many cases either the county team or the club team won't have a long run anyway. So a change will only affect a few.
But you can't just say that it only affects a few and ignores the problem. You're asking clubs to play championship matches without county players, just in this instance they happen to be county players in another sport. You can't just gloss over that, you have to acknowledge it, get approval for it from the GAA as a whole and go from there.
And football in Tipp, Clare, Waterford and Limerick. I presume this change can't be brought in without a reciprocal arrangement for the hurling championship? Actually that's a good question, do the FRC proposals include the playing of the All Ireland Club hurling final in December as well?
Calm down gasúns - there's a Committee being set up to see how it can be implemented.
Quote from: Rossfan on June 30, 2014, 02:15:58 PM
Calm down gasúns - there's a Committee being set up to see how it can be implemented.
Hence the sense of concern, bordering on panic.
Quote from: Rossfan on June 30, 2014, 02:15:58 PM
Calm down gasúns - there's a Committee being set up to see how it can be implemented.
Ah well. That's okay then :)
http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/calendar-year-for-club-competitions-shelved-1.2263123
This idea has been booted out over the back of the stand. I can't say that I am surprised, counties were never going to move their entire schedules on behalf of a handful of teams involved in the later stages of the club championship.
Quote from: armaghniac on June 26, 2015, 02:07:54 PM
http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/calendar-year-for-club-competitions-shelved-1.2263123
This idea has been booted out over the back of the stand. I can't say that I am surprised, counties were never going to move their entire schedules on behalf of a handful of teams involved in the later stages of the club championship.
It always had the feel of something OCD about it - folk who couldnt quite deal with the mental gymnastics of a handful of club competitions going into the next year
Concentrate on setting up the best possible calendar for all parties (sensible and fair) and if it means that all club games are over in a year well and good and if it doesn't no harm.
The fact that those in favour were willing to move the club finals away from St Paddys Day with not even any sort of decent proposal for any sort of adequate replacement shows how ill-conceived this particular move to sort out the calendar was.