It looks increasingly unlikely the Sligo-Armagh All-Ireland quarter-final replay will be part of a double bill with Donegal and Dublin. Both matches are scheduled to be played on Saturday week, August 17th, and it had been assumed that both would be played at Croke Park. An expected announcement on the details of the fixtures was deferred until today by the GAA.
It is quite a conundrum for the Games Administration Committee, which will make the decision. In the initial aftermath of the Sligo-Armagh draw it was speculated the venue would be Clones. Sligo immediately objected to the prospect of facing Armagh in the seat of Ulster football.
When Dublin and Donegal drew a day later a double bill at Croke Park became the obvious solution, but yesterday indications were that such an arrangement was losing favour.
For a start, the demand for tickets would outstrip availability by a considerable margin. Dublin and Donegal only had to share tickets with Cork and Mayo on Monday. Splitting them with Armagh and Sligo would create a major shortage.
Secondly, the local residents have been very opposed to Saturday matches and so far none have been arranged. The GAA hope an exception will be made for an unscheduled event like a replay, but locals are believed to be more willing to tolerate a single match than a double bill.
Another solution considered but which also lost favour was the possibility of staging Sligo-Armagh as a curtain raiser for the All-Ireland hurling semi-final between Tipperary and Kilkenny the following day.
There would be a ticketing problem, as All-Ireland semi-final admission costs more than the quarter-finals - although a similar problem was overcome last month when Cork played Galway in a hurling qualifier on the same bill as the Munster football final.
Such a double bill would also run the risk of offending the hurling community by gate-crashing one of the biggest days of the year, and although the football would be the curtain raiser there would be a risk to the playing surface should the day be wet and the hitherto untested (all the matches to date have been on good days) new surface at Croke Park cut up.
If Croke Park isn't used, it's hard to see what venue can meet the satisfaction of the two counties. There are few enough suitable grounds in the northern half of the country apart from Clones, which is twice as far from Sligo as it is from Armagh. Castlebar, the only other venue with a comparable capacity, is 150 miles from Armagh.
It may also be taken into account that the special congress that accepted the new football championship format specifically refused to grant - as recommended - provincial champions the right to a venue in their home province at the quarter-final stage.
