THE All-Ireland minor hurling final replay between Galway and Tipperary has been postponed for seven days and will now serve as the curtain-raiser to next Sunday week's All-Ireland football final replay.
The decision, which was taken by the GAA's Games Administration Committee (GAC) last night, will intensify the demand for tickets from the four competing counties and has already come in for some criticism.
"It's preposterous bringing Galway and Tipperary back to Croke Park at increased ticket prices for their supporters while creating more hardship for Meath and Mayo people looking for tickets," said Meath PRO Brendan Cummins.
"We were hoping that this wouldn't happen," said Mayo county secretary Sean Feeney. "It wouldn't have been right to deny the minors the chance of playing before a senior All-Ireland, but the ticket allocation is going to be affected.
"It may not get any worse than it was before last Sunday - but we expect it would have been better if the minor game wasn't put on along with it," he added.
The decision has also disappointed the women's Gaelic football association. They were hoping that their showpiece game, the All-Ireland senior final between Monaghan and Laois - which was scheduled for Sunday week - would have been retained and used as a curtain-raiser to the main event.
The women's final has now been put back to Sunday, October 6th. The minor game is fixed for 1.30 while the senior game is scheduled for 3.30.
"We are happy that if the minor game ends in a draw the extra-time will be concluded before 3.30, said GAA PRO Danny Lynch.
He agreed that the doubleheader would put more pressure on tickets but said that both hurling counties would welcome the "bigger stage in front of a bigger crowd. If it went ahead in Ennis you'd have had a minor final in front of six or seven thousand people as opposed to 6,000," he explained.
The GAA was not legally obliged to hold a curtain raiser before the big game, he added, but it was "a general tradition" within the GAA. "People tend to come in earlier when there is a curtain-raiser and they do get more value for money, he stated.
Lynch revealed that Mayo and Meath would get precisely the same allocation of tickets they had received for the drawn game - somewhere between nine and 10 thousand each. Brendan Cummins stressed, however, that the GAC's decision was a setback to Meath supporters anxious to attend the replay. "People in Meath were hoping that there would be some easing up in the ticket situation, but now it's going to be even worse.
"We're dumbfounded by this decision. We think it's very unfair to Mayo and Meath, who've already had real hardship in getting tickets. I'm surprised that Tipperary and Galway have agreed to this because it's going to cost their supporters a lot of extra money," he said.
Galway minor hurling manager Noel Lane has also expressed reservations about the rescheduling of their game. "We were geared up for next Sunday, we had set our agenda and fixed our schedule for the coming week. It's also going to create problems over tickets so we would have preferred it if the game went ahead as planned on Sunday."
Meanwhile, both Meath and Mayo had light workouts in Pairc Tailteann, Navan, and Enniscrone last evening. A few of the Meath players were nursing various knocks while the Mayo players trained on the beach at Enniscrone - followed by a visit to the nearby seaweed baths to relax tired muscles.
Former Dublin star Ciaran Duff is considering legal action following an incident during a tournament game in which he received facial injuries. Duff was playing for his club side, Fingallians against St Margaret's when the incident occurred. He suffered a broken nose and needed six. stitches to a facial cut sustained in the second half.
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