GAA press pause button on International Rules series

The announcement that there will be no international rules series this year has placed something of a question mark over the long-term viability of the 32-year old project. Plans to initiate a three-year schedule including series in Australia and Ireland plus what is described as ‘an exhibition series’ in the US.

GAA president Aogán Ó Fearghail hinted at the crux of the matter in the statement released on Sunday,

“The success of the last two series has been based on the ability of both teams to attract the finest talent to their ranks making for close, competitive and entertaining games. The aim of the series continuing in this vein is shared by both organisations and we believe these aspirations are best served by the staging of two games in a given year.”

Attracting the best players has always been more of a problem for the AFL than the GAA and although strenuous efforts were made in the past two years to ensure that the Australian team was representative of the best players, it was always open to question whether such high-profile commitment would be possible on an annual basis.

In 2014 and ‘15 the series had been reduced to one test, which had been tolerated rather than enthusiastically endorsed by the GAA and the trade-off in the weekend’s statement appears to be that the AFL will produce a decent-quality team in 2017 - which they were unable to do for this year - and the series will be played over two tests.

Reference to the frequency of the series is also made in the statement with the clear suggestion that there is still uncertainty whether the internationals can take place on an annual basis.

“We have committed to three series for the moment,” said Ó Fearghail, “beginning in Australia in 2017 with the timing for the Irish and US events to be confirmed later in the year as to whether they should take place in consecutive years, every second year or some other combination.”

The addition of an ‘exhibition series’ in American reflects the recent Australian preoccupation with staging matches in the US, something about which the GAA has remained sceptical - not least because of the lack of adequately sized pitches - but open-minded.

Last year the Australian team that contested the Croke Park test stopped over in New York en route and last year, coach Alastair Clarkson told a media conference in Dublin:

“We’re really keen to put that on as a spectacle to the world. Australia’s a long, long way away. It’s not very often that people are going to travel to Australia to watch our game so if we can somehow bring our game or elements of it to the rest of the world and part of that is this series which has been going for 30 years.

“It’s had its moments and it’s waned at different stages as we talked about before but if we’ve got a genuine belief we want to grow our code then we need to travel abroad.”

Meanwhile the GAA have also confirmed that Hawkeye will be used for first time in Thurles for the Munster championship meeting of Tipperary and Cork on May 22nd.