GAA president sets targets to suit clubs

One of the enduring challenges of any GAA president is trying to satisfy all of the people all of the time - which essentially means all players and officials at club and county level. For Nickey Brennan, that challenge starts by looking again at the GAA fixture list, and asking some hard questions.

"I've thrown out a number of ideas on that, yeah," he says. "I definitely believe we need to have a bigger window relating to the playing of club games.

"We can achieve that in two ways, first of all by tightening our intercounty programme. There's a clear view coming across now that the All-Ireland finals should be brought forward a bit. We've done that this year because of the Ryder Cup, and there's no reason we couldn't go further next year.

"That's one of the challenges I've given to the new Central Competitions Committee (CCC).

"To get extra space maybe we should bring the league back to the autumn again, and play three games before Christmas. Because one thing we do know is that players involved in the club championship won't play with their counties anyway until the club championship is over.

"And I'd like to see the debate started on minor and under-21. People could turn around and say we had two classic under-21 football matches at the weekend, and that's very valid. But the age profile of the senior intercounty player has come down a lot in recent years, and many of them are playing with their club at a multiple of grades, some are dual players, with various managers, and maybe a Sigerson or a Fitzgibbon manager as well.

"So they're being pulled and dragged by various managers, who are all at different stages of their competitions. Training is often not co-ordinated, so it's not surprising that so many players are feeling the strain.

"I'm hearing all the time that young players are getting too much of it, while trying to get an education for their careers ahead.

"Yet all the time we're adding competitions. That's why I'd pose the same question about the Tommy Murphy Cup and competitions like that. That's no disrespect to the people who brought in those competitions or the people who play in them, but we must have the very clear spot in the calendar so that the clubs get their fair crack at the whip.

"We won't want to become the big bad brother here, but one of the messages I get all the time is that county players are almost strangers in their own ground. Surely clubs should have all their county players one night a week."

Being a hurling man at heart, Brennan is likely to pay careful attention to the work of the new national co-ordinator, Paudie Butler, and also the new rule passed at congress whereby weaker hurling counties can recruit outside players.

"We still need to consider some practicalities of that," said Brennan. "The CCC just won't be able to facilitate requests to suit club matches in a number of different counties.

"We want to make sure it's not discriminatory as well. And we don't want the situation where a player landing in a county suddenly wants to play in a big match the following Sunday. So we have to make sure the thing isn't abused.

"As for Paudie Butler, I think it's good that he's trying to get 12 counties competing for the Liam MacCarthy Cup. I think realistically the big challenge is to make that top tier more competitive, and bring up the counties just below that level. We can't expect Paudie Butler to deliver that in three years, but it's about starting the process in the counties."

Brennan also announced David O'Donoghue as the GAA's new full-time national match officials co-ordinator, who will deal with all aspects of refereeing.