Gaelic Games

2021 GAA season likely to resume with leagues in late February

County chairs give proposal their overwhelming support during remote meeting

The 2021 GAA season is set to begin in late February with the intercounty leagues. Photograph: Tommy Grealy/Inpho

Seán Moran's face
Seán Moran
Fri Dec 11 2020 - 16:08

The 2021 GAA season is on course to open in late February with the return of the intercounty leagues. At a remote meeting of the county chairs on Friday, there was overwhelming support for this schedule, which still needs to be approved by the management committee and Central Council.

A management meeting, scheduled for Friday evening, has been deferred until next week, when Central Council also meets.

Proposals from the Central Competitions Control Committee (CCCC) that the intercounty season would begin in late February with the All-Irelands played by mid-July were put on hold last month pending a financial review.

The delay was intended to work out the financial implications of having no intercounty crowds for a second season, as the GAA are concerned at the prospect of another year with no gate receipts, having lost €35 million this year.

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The stalling has caused some angst in the counties, as managers try to work out how long they have to plan training schedules and prepare panels.

Despite the financial caution, the county chairs were strongly of the view that the CCCC blueprint should proceed.

The radical new calendar is a product of the pandemic restrictions, which this year saw a lockdown until the summer and then in sequence, club programmes followed by a resumed intercounty season.

Such was the success that the split-season model has emerged as the likely shape of the new, post-coronavirus season. That means that as well as being a response to the expected circumstances in 2021, the proposal will in all probability be the way the GAA moves into the future.

Another argument in its favour is that the public health environment will hardly have improved in the next two months to the extent that club fixtures will be allowed to resume, which is at Level 2 on the Government scale.

That leaves a stark choice between getting the county teams up and running or having no scheduled activities.