Radically condensed championship calendar creates its own problems

The unseasonal cold makes it all the more discordant that the championship is upon us.

Incrementally over just a few years, the first big provincial matches have rewound from late May to mid-April. Add to that the urgency of All-Irelands coming down the line in three months and it’s understandable why the GAA world is in a bit of a spin.

There is a sense of disorientation about this new alignment: not merely, “oh this is different”, but “this doesn’t feel right” or more fretfully, “I hope they know what they’re doing, here”.

We’ll have an All-Ireland in July for the first time in 114 years – the 1907 Dublin-Cork football final, played in Tipperary on July 5th a year later, back in the days when the championship hopped randomly around the calendar – appropriately enough in a contemporary context.

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Within the space of two years, this coming July, All-Irelands will have been played in July, August, September and December. Yes, in extenuating circumstances but it’s likely the GAA of a century ago would say the same thing.

Once again, it’s worth emphasising that this calendar is a trial. Should its completion over a tightly-packed schedule prove too difficult to implement, it will have to be looked at and evaluated again.

What are its chances?

The intention behind these changes is to create space for club activities in order to allow the broadly recreational schedules to breathe more freely and not to be under pressure from the intercounty calendar.

This has been a huge departure for the GAA. By chopping two months off the intercounty season, the association is discarding the advantage of a bigger window to promote itself and in the words of those who disagree, “abandoning August and September to other sports”.

Not alone that but whereas competing in August and September was relatively easy given the early stages of the rugby and soccer seasons, allowing for the slight disruption of a quadrennial Rugby World Cup, the championship will now compete with the climax to both the season’s Premier League and European Cup.

Former president Nickey Brennan perceptively outlined in these pages the problem for media and by extension the GAA when activating its major competitions at this time of the year.

“You’re going to get condensed coverage when the provincial round-robins and the football start. Media have only so much space. It’s happening at the climax to the Premiership season and the European Cup in rugby. Golf is at its height. I feel sorry for national journalists because it’s feast and then famine from the end of July.”

Digital era

Any argument that the digital era eliminates problems of space doesn’t take into account that there are still finite resources of energy, personnel and focus available to cover sporting events. If there’s an overload, everything suffers to some extent.

The GAA underwent its own conversion on this matter, reasoning that to continue squeezing the club game and denying it a distinct and sufficient schedule just for the sake of preserving the old calendar was ultimately self-defeating. After all what use is a ‘promotional window’ if the very thing you’re trying to promote is undermined by it?

Equally it’s difficult to run promotional campaigns for something like a sports competition, no matter how traditionally embedded, when it keeps changing and constantly demands fresh explanation as to how it works.

By next year when the new championship is installed for a further trial period (the structure rather than the calendar), Gaelic games will have changed its marquee formats five times in seven years.

What’s the alternative when the flaws in the old system desperately need attention and there’s no consensus on what remedy will work and therefore proposals have to be taken on probation?

So much effort went into coming up with a calendar and format that will create sustainability for the clubs that the question of what’s sustainable for intercounty teams has got a little lost.

There is agreement that the championship season needs more matches and fewer training sessions but a radically condensed calendar creates its own problems.

There is virtually no room for hold-ups along the way – certainly without extending the intercounty window like last year because of Covid and given the rationale behind the new format, that is self-defeating.

The pressure of matches coming at greatly increased frequency exerts its own pressure on players. When the provincial round-robins in hurling got under way four years ago, the impact on players who had been out in three successive weekends was noticeable and prompted a greater spacing of fixtures.

Football’s now discontinued Super 8s also intensified the demands on players.

In 2019, the last year the format was run, there were 71 matches in 132 days, a frequency of 1.8, which compared with twice that 25 years previously.

The 1994 championship ran for longer with less activity and so had a far more relaxed match frequency: 34 fixtures in 126 days, an average of a match every 3.7 days. This year, barring replays, there will be 60 matches spread over 105 days, a frequency of 1.75.

Facilitate clubs

Next year when the approved football championship format kicks in with its round-robin matches in both tiers, Sam Maguire and Tailteann Cup, the number of fixtures will rise to 99 in the same time frame, a frequency of 1.06 – three times the intensity of the old knockout competition.

Fatigue, injuries and suspension are sure to play a disproportionate role the tighter the calendar gets.

Understandably the GAA wants a condensed season to facilitate clubs but may also need more room for county players to recover in what is a furious schedule. One of the emerging messages at the end of the season could well be that there may simply have to be fewer matches.

e: smoran@irishtimes.com