Inter-county championship season may need to be tweaked

The GAA may have to tweak the inter-county championship season if it is to devise a sustainable new fixtures schedule. At present a sub-committee, looking to draft a proposed calendar around the idea of completing the club championships by the end of the year, intends to bring its blueprint to next month's Central Council meeting.

Despite all of the focus on completing the county championships earlier this year, some counties have withdrawn from the provincial competitions because they won’t have completed their own championships in time.

“The problem is that there has been a steady slide to later and later in the year and there’s no evidence that things are going to improve,” according to sub-committee member Feargal McGill, the GAA’s Head of Games Administration.

Come forward

“Central Council have agreed in principle to move towards a calendar year for the clubs and the sub-committee has to come forward with a recommendation, which will start a debate on the subject – an interesting debate.”

The growing problem for club competitions is that counties have increasingly been deferring local championships until their county teams’ interest in the All-Ireland series has concluded.

There have been proposals that the timing of the All-Ireland finals should be changed to bring forward the finals but also arguments that the GAA depends on the championships for profile and coverage and that narrowing the promotional window would be a bad idea.

McGill feels that there may have to be some compromise.

“You’re probably going to have to look at the inter-county schedule if you’re going to create space in the calendar. Practically speaking it’s going to be difficult to ask counties without anything else changing to have the club championships over by 8th December. It’ll be up to the sub-committee to come forward with proposals as to how that can be achieved.

“Some sort of balance is going to have to be struck and the inter-county window needs to be examined and maybe the schedules in August and September tweaked.”

Meanwhile, Cathal Corey has been nominated for the Donegal manager's job in succession to Jim McGuinness.

Proposed by the Naomh Conaill club, which he took to the Ulster final in 2010, Corey remains an outsider with Rory Gallagher still the favourite to be appointed.

McGuinness, who stepped down the week before last, will give his first interview since on RTÉ's The Saturday Night Show tomorrow.