MAYO MANAGER John O’Mahony has called on the GAA to enforce the rules on the close season before the restriction falls into disrepute. The former All-Ireland winning Galway manager said yesterday that teams breaching the regulations were securing a particularly unfair advantage this year, as bad weather has greatly restricted the opportunities for counties to acclimatise in the official pre-season.

“The word is that some counties are training collectively during the close season – and I believe that this is the case. I’m not going to speculate on who, because I’m not the regulatory authority.

“Croke Park have insisted that action will be taken against counties in breach of the close season rules and if nothing happens before February this will be the second year of these rules without anyone being punished for breaking them. The result will be that next year no one will observe them. It’s particularly unfair this year because teams who have trained in November and December will benefit disproportionately.

“Players have been on weights programmes as usual during the close season and January would be normally used to concentrate on football, in our case give games to 35 guys every weekend whether practice or FBD league.”

O’Mahony added that he wasn’t opposed to the closed-season as long as it applied across the board.

“Some managers suggest that teams who go out of the championship in June or July or teams with new managers aren’t very well suited by the rules. I don’t have a huge issue with them as long as everyone is in the same boat.

“The double-month close season has had a bigger effect this season, as we haven’t been able to go back training as quickly. We did get some football on the Lacken pitch, which is by the sea, but apart from that we’ve had to train at the Breaffy complex.

“That’s very good in that it’s a very big arena with room enough for a running track and we’ve been able to do some football drills but we’re short of practice. Last week’s match was called off and we’re just hoping that it gets off the ground this weekend.

“It’s three weeks to the start of the National League and for a side in the top division it hasn’t been ideal preparation. The consolation is that by and large everyone’s been in the same boat although our Dublin-based players have been able to do some training outdoors.”

Meanwhile, last night’s McGrath Cup football matches in Munster have all – Tipperary v UL, Kerry v IT Tralee and Limerick v Waterford IT – been called off and are listed to be played tomorrow.

Should the weather again intervene – the Tipp-UL match has been called off three times – the fixtures will move to Sunday with the semi-finals scheduled for that day moving to next Wednesday.

Finally, Gaelic games in Trinity College Dublin received a boost yesterday with the announcement that a set of training posts for College Park had been acquired to facilitate training on campus.

Football and hurling have traditionally been played on the college’s sports grounds in Santry but it is now hoped that training sessions can take place at the city-centre venue.

It won’t be the first time that Gaelic games have been played there. In December 1993, Dublin University rugby club allowed that year’s colours match between UCD and Trinity go ahead on their pitch in a 13-a-side (to reflect the smaller dimensions of the rugby markings) meeting.

Unusually Trinity won, against a UCD line-up featuring Meath’s future footballer of the year Trevor Giles.