In the glacial chill of the protracted cold snap Gaelic games followers could warm themselves with the thought that they are actually experiencing the high season. These weeks, for all their meteorological hostility, see more intercounty action than mid-summer.Gaelic Games

And it's causing problems. Last weekend saw the first of five National Football League programmes in successive weeks. This exhausting schedule is the consequence of the calendar-year league and the need to fit in seven rounds between February and April.

Given that the National Hurling League runs in tandem and will be sharing three of those weekends the concept of the dual player is fast becoming practically impossible as well as theoretically undesirable.

But that's not the only exposure to excessive demands and the risk of burnout. The last few weeks have also seen the playing of the Sigerson and Fitzgibbon Cups and the under-21 championships have already started. So the pressure on young players at this time of the year is immense.

Donegal manager Brian McEniff lost the in-form Christy Toye to an injury sustained while captaining Sligo IT to the Sigerson. A frustrated McEniff floated the idea that the third-level championships should be put back to the autumn. An obvious obstacle to that would be the level of club championship activity at that time of the year.

There have been enough tugs-of-love between colleges and clubs disputing the services of individual players in February and March at a stage when there's usually only two clubs left in the championship to suggest that there'd be mayhem in October or November when a considerably greater number of clubs - which like college teams see a very restricted window of opportunity for wider success - are involved.

McEniff's Mayo counterpart John Maughan raised similar concerns when pointing out that seven league fixtures in nine weeks was putting a huge strain on teams whose resources have been thinned by injuries or other factors.

There is little room for manoeuvre, which means that during this inclement time of the year a player winning the Sigerson and playing for his county in the football league would face 11 matches in 59 days.

During last summer's championship the highest number of matches played by any county was seven, by the Cork and Kilkenny hurlers and the footballers of Mayo, Kerry, Derry and Fermanagh (who would have made it eight had Tipperary not forfeited the first-round qualifier).

So instead of concentrating intercounty activity on a time of the year when the weather is most appropriate and the counter-attractions of elite international competition involving Ireland's rugby and soccer teams aren't as obvious, the Gaelic games season rattles off its fixtures in early spring.

The main argument against pushing the league format into the summer has always been the situation of the clubs and their need for time and space to run their fixtures. Yet this carries an air of unreality.

Club activity is of course vital to the GAA. It's not just a matter of producing players for the future but rather that the whole communitarian reach of the association depends on the social networking of teams and the excitement or at least involvement that competition against other clubs generates. But the intercounty schedule is also vital. In an age when triumphantly and encouragingly, Gaelic games have held their own and thrived in the face of competition from global sports and the vast media industries that hype them, the GAA needs to optimise its own product.

In the past five years the landscape of the intercounty championships has changed radically to accommodate the need for more matches - both to make the players' season more meaningful and provide outlets for spectator interest - and the strain is being felt at club level.

But is that strictly unavoidable? In his report to the 2001 Congress - the last one before the advent of the qualifiers - GAA director general Liam Mulvihill had this to say: "Last year many of our officials were shocked at the stark figures giving details of the number of competitive games arranged for the average club player - with the number less than 10 in many counties."

In other words even before the expansion of the championship calendar, clubs were being neglected, often because counties experiencing even limited success were pulling the plug on club activity.

Four years on and we can see from Mulvihill's report to the 2004 Congress what progress had been made.

"Despite numerous appeals to county committees there is no evidence that the provision of regular games for the average club player has been improved in the 75 per cent of counties in which this was rated a serious problem in the report presented in 2001.

"At the risk of repeating myself I want to reiterate that the provision of a regular schedule of well-administered club fixtures is the single most important challenge facing the association."

Meeting that challenge requires urgent action and it's hard to avoid the obvious solution of club schedules that go ahead without those players committed to county panels.

In his Games Development Overview the GAA's head of games, Pat Daly, had this to say at last year's Congress: "The club championship schedule can be complemented by the organisation of leagues - played on a county or a cross-county/provincial basis - on the understanding that county players may not be available for selection. (The Munster senior hurling and football leagues and the senior football league, which has been in Ulster in 2004 to cater for counties Armagh, Cavan, Fermanagh and Monaghan are good examples of how club needs can be catered for in this regard.)

"Under these circumstances it will be possible to speak in realistic terms about providing all players with a minimum of 20 competitive games over a six to eight-month period as distinct from the usual lip service, which is typically engaged upon in this context."

The treatment of club players has been a scandal in an organisation that prides itself on amateur status and the equality of all members, but failure to resolve the situation is going hand-in-hand with inability to schedule an optimal intercounty programme.

It's a delicate ecosystem but it needs to change.