Seán Moran: Two steps forward followed by one step back in the GAA

Two steps forward and one step back: the meandering way of GAA progress was on display again at the weekend. With glum symbolism, the date that usually presses the button on the final run-in to Christmas, December 8th, will also be the day intercounty teams can return to training.

This festive treat winds forward the end of a closed season that wasn’t originally supposed to expire until January 1st.

Saturday’s Central Council meeting decided to amend plans for next season in two important respects. Firstly, the pre-season provincial competitions were saved from extinction on condition that they all took place in January and secondly collective training was allowed intrude all the way back to more or less the first week in December.

In the light of all the research done by the ESRI into the pressures on intercounty players, this looks like a very regressive step.

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The late Eugene McGee used to say that the GAA always found abolishing competitions exceptionally difficult. He was right. Easier to eradicate Japanese knotweed.

As for training restrictions, we’re nearly a decade and half into attempts to make them stick. At the end of October 2008, in the pleasant Australian sunshine during that year’s international rules series and Páraic Duffy, then the GAA DG, outlined the brave new world of the closed season.

The concept had been prompted by the seminal GAA report on burn-out from earlier that year and a desire to thin demands on players.

“The issue here,” said Duffy, “is burnout and getting players a rest and it is based on the debate at Special Congress back in January. The only agenda here is the protection of players.”

Inevitably though once training was prohibited during those months, it became the most desirable thing in the world for managers and the GAA were forced wearily to declare that they weren’t going to be patrolling roads at night with flash lamps in order to enforce the new dispensation and disobedience flourished.

This original closed season of November and December was eventually abandoned in favour of a stepped approach that allowed teams back on the basis of when their championship season had ended.

The most baffling aspect of the weekend just past is that it effectively extended the intercounty season by a month and at a stage of the year when time off is particularly prized.

Teams require between four and six weeks preparation for an intercounty season. When this year’s Covid-delayed leagues were getting under way in a very constrained fixture schedule, hurling counties were asked did they want an additional week’s training or an extra match and they opted for the latter.

Authorities say there was no major increase in injuries as a result of just three weeks training but allowing that football is slightly different in the strains it exerts, a longer preparation time was deemed appropriate and in any event Croke Park aren’t minded to allow such trade-offs on an ongoing basis.

This minimum pre-season of four weeks was built into the next January 1st recommencement to allow teams be ready for the league, which starts in 2022 on the weekend of January 29th/30th.

By re-instating the secondary provincial competitions – McKenna Cup, Walsh Cup et cetera – to be run in the weeks leading up to the league - the GAA simply created the demand for more weeks training.

The argument ran that teams would be looking for challenge matches if there wasn’t any structured competition but so be it. Challenges are amorphous events in which teams have greater latitude to experiment with limitless replacements and so on.

Anyway, to what effect? Dublin in their pomp used to go on holiday in January, enter a development team in the O’Byrne Cup and by the time the league arrived a couple of weeks later, the average input from the trialled players in the seasons 2018-20 was one starter in the first league match and slightly fewer than two replacements.

Everyone else hadn’t lined out since the previous year’s All-Ireland final. The fact that they could thrive doing this was testament to the panel’s quality but that they could do it without incurring significant injuries was simply down to whatever training got done on holiday despite zero match practice.

Basic fitness shouldn’t be an issue because players are free to train on their own whenever they like. The early imposition of collective training means not just the exertion of the sessions but for many, car journeys which can be arduous and create strain in themselves.

There is another issue. After the success of the split season last year and to the extent that was possible, this year, it’s a shame that already the intercounty game is showing mission creep and starting earlier than initially planned.

The weekend’s decision was a disappointing row-back on what should have been the first trial run of a proper split season with intercounty players allowed to enjoy what has become known as a ‘meaningful’ Christmas.

It’s a feature of the GAA that two steps forwards are frequently followed by one step back. The most positive news at the weekend was the virtual elimination of replays with ‘result on the day’ now applicable to all matches apart from All-Ireland finals.

Those of long memory will recall the first faltering steps taken to curtail draws and replays, which are kryptonite to fixture makers.

First of all, provincial quarter-finals were required to go to extra time. Within a couple of years, a motion reversing that was unexpectedly voted through despite an intervention from then president Christy Cooney asking that it not be accepted.

Now, a decade later everyone’s on the same page.

Change comes eventually but why does it take so long?