GAA to tackle county boards

The GAA are poised to take a hard line with county boards who continue to postpone local championships while their county teams are involved in the All-Ireland. According to association president Nickey Brennan, Croke Park may have to get involved in ensuring club players have adequate match programmes.

He was speaking about the task facing work groups recently appointed to review football and hurling intercounty competitions. "They will be looking at how to make the competitions more competitive and also how to condense the intercounty programme into a shorter space of time. We also have to make sure that county boards are allowing clubs access to county players and maintaining fixtures for all club players. Either the counties do this or we will do it centrally."

Referring to the tendency of some counties to postpone their county championships to allow county teams exclusive access to their players, Brennan said: "That is an intolerable situation. We have been giving counties leeway to see how they behave in this matter but we're hearing some very unsatisfactory stories so the question arises, 'does this need a central edict?' If we don't start taking this matter seriously the clubs will start kicking up and the clubs will be right."

The whole question of updating and streamlining intercounty competition is being reviewed by the Hurling Development Committee under the chair of Kilkenny's Ned Quinn while the equivalent football work group is to be chaired by Monaghan's Páraic Duffy.

Brennan stated his intention of instituting these reviews in his inaugural speech to congress in April and the matter has been given added impetus by widespread dissatisfaction with the championships to date, in terms of the quality of the matches and the size of the crowds.

Nonetheless he hasn't been overly perturbed by the season so far, citing external factors such as the World Cup and the exceptionally hot weather in recent weeks, which he says, "means people exercise options to do other things or go elsewhere. Lifestyles are changing. I think at this time of the year the games are under the microscope to such an extent there's going to be all sorts of different angles in the media. I'm not being critical of that; it's just reality."

Last weekend was a further jolt to the system as an unexpectedly small crowd, on an admittedly unpleasant afternoon, watched Limerick disintegrate in the qualifier group B summit with Clare. It seemed to maintain a sequence of waning interest and poor-quality contests. Brennan believes it was more of an exception than proof of a trend.

"I'm not sure that the early stages of the championships this year have been an awful lot different to other years. I know the Clare-Limerick match was very disappointing as it was seen as one of big draws of the qualifiers but I don't think anyone saw that coming and no one knows what happened. A county can't win three All-Ireland under-21s and not have a decent panel of players.

"We tend to get critical very quickly because as an association we're used to such big attendances. But we've also seen Westmeath hurlers drawing crowds of 7,000 and to give them credit they've used these home matches (against Kilkenny and Waterford) to promote hurling to wider public. That's been a positive development."

He's wary of the argument that with Croke Park largely provided for in financial terms, the GAA isn't under the same pressure to generate the booming gate receipts of recent years. "That may be on the face of it. The debt is manageable but I don't think any organisation would cheerfully accept a falling revenue stream. There are other challenges we need to respond to, challenges the development of the stadium didn't allow us to address, such as the floodlighting of grounds around the country."

Brennan also echoed a concern previously alluded to by director general Liam Mulvihill, the growing reliance on disbursements from Croke Park to county boards. "It's a bit like sectors becoming dependent on EU grants for an income stream but the day that counties become dependent on Croke Park for their day-to-day financial existence is the day when those counties have a problem."

But on a more positive note the president referred to last weekend's national under-14 tournament, Féile na nGael, in Cork. "I know it's a snapshot but to see the number of teams, the numbers of volunteer officials and mentors and the number of kids made me proud to be head of an organisation that does all that. Sometimes it's something we take for granted."

Dave Mahedy has followed manager Joe McKenna and coach Ger Cunningham by tendering his resignation from the Limerick senior hurling team, following last Sunday's drubbing by Clare in the All-Ireland qualifiers.

Mahedy's departure means Liam Lenihan is the only survivor from the McKenna regime and continues as a selector.