Colm Cooper sums up modern dilemma of club against county

Colm Cooper is one of the most recognisable Gaelic athletes of the past 15 years. He has scaled the heights of county football but ironically ended up as a symbol for the agonies of the club championship. As if to emphasise the point, he sustained the most serious injury of his career attempting to get Dr Crokes through what turned out to be another fruitless semi-final.

Despite all that he has won with Kerry, he hasn’t managed to get any closer to a club All-Ireland than when he was an eight-year-old mascot for the Dr Crokes team, featuring his older brothers, that won the national title 25 seasons ago.

Next weekend, at 33, he is back in a Munster final and hoping that this is the season he can finally fill the most conspicuous gap in his CV.

There were two recurrent themes in this week’s media conference with Cooper: one, how deeply runs his attachment to club football in general and Dr Crokes in particular; and secondly, his agnosticism tending to outright disbelief that anything will be done to improve the schedules for the club player in the foreseeable future.

Sometimes there is a touch of Charles Haughey about county footballers sending bulletins from the club front.

Just as in the 1989 general election campaign when the Taoiseach told an unimpressed electorate that he’d only just realised how bad the health service had got during his two years in power, players returning from intercounty activities to issue sombre dispatches about how bad it’s all got are open to the accusation that they are part of the problem.

That can be unfair on them. During his robust advocacy on the subject of burnout in the GAA, former Meath All-Ireland medallist and surgeon Gerry McEntee made the point that county players are often the meat in the sandwich, required by managers to distance themselves from the club and then expected to report back at the end of the intercounty season and join what can be resentful club dressing-rooms.

Friction

When they speak out, as Cooper did, their opinions do carry impact, however. Whereas he denied that he had ever felt friction between himself and the Dr Crokes team, he did acknowledge that conflicting pressures between club and county was causing “tension and frustration”.

More pessimistically, he said that he couldn’t see a resolution on the horizon. Whereas he would favour a calendar-year club season, for instance, he believes that priorities accorded county teams make this “impossible”.

The calendar-year season would be a great relief for players involved in the All-Ireland club championships. Cooper cited the challenge of “not handling the Christmas break well”. Is there a more startling example of the abuse of club players?

Having won county and provincial titles, they must put their lives on hold for a further two or three months in order to play two more rounds. For club players, who neither sign up to nor have the experience of full-on county involvement, to be obliged at the biggest family and social time of the year to continue the deprivations of training and lifestyle curtailment is unfair and, from an administrative point of view, nuts.

Change would also benefit county teams, as it would mean that random players weren’t unavailable in the early spring. Antrim hurlers, for instance, have been regularly forced to play important league matches without any representatives from their county champions.

Only on Sunday, Clare’s All Star football nominee Gary Brennan was giving an interview pondering how he might manage to help out with the county footballers, who face a challenging season in Division Two of the league, as well as continue on his hurling journey with new Munster champions Ballyea.

Streamline

It’s an irony that this inconvenient extension to the club year is the one time when the needs of the club actually take precedence over county teams, but eliminating it would streamline the season far more effectively.

Yet the calendar-year season has showed few signs of materialising. It hasn’t yet secured the approval of Central Council and voices have been raised around the country about the difficulty of running off county and provincial championships in time for a December All-Ireland final.

Maybe this is realpolitik but it also takes place in the context of counties suspending their championships while intercounty teams are still active, leaving vast swathes of the summer unused by the clubs.

There is of course another issue and that is director general Páraic Duffy’s proposal for a restructured All-Ireland championship, including a round-robin at the last-eight stage.

On its launch, the idea raised eyebrows in that the GAA had been adamant as recently as earlier this year that no championship reforms could be entertained if they involved additional matches.

Duffy’s blueprint though is unusual for a GAA proposal in that it is an integrated package and it won’t be discussed in such a way that would allow its component parts be considered separately.

If the additional matches in the All-Ireland stages are to be accepted, then so too will be the condensing of the championship season, which would see the abolition of replays and the tightening of intervals between rounds.

It is unfortunate that the headline provision of the proposal involves extra fixtures for the counties but, accepted as a package, it would benefit clubs and club players, which fundamentally means all players.

smoran@irishtimes.com