Tyrone to fight exclusion

Tyrone have launched a final attempt to save their under-21 football title. County secretary Dominic McCaughey wrote to Croke Park yesterday asking if the foot-and-mouth regulations used to prohibit the county from further involvement in both the championship and the National Football League could be relaxed.

The matter will have to be heard by the GAA's Management Committee but given that the Ulster representatives aren't due to play their All-Ireland under-21 semi-final until Saturday week there would still be time to see if a solution could be found.

The league is a different proposition: the semi-final pairings - without Tyrone - are already fixed for this weekend.

"We have asked Management to review policy," said McCaughey. "We see two possibilities - one, whether a county could participate without its players in the exclusion zone and two, if that can't be revised, to look at deferring dates for the under-21 and National Football League semi-finals."

The GAA's Central Council decided some weeks ago that any county with an outbreak of foot-and-mouth could not field a team for 30 days afterwards. So far this has affected London, Armagh, Louth and, this weekend, Tyrone and Antrim - all of whom had to drop out of the league. For Tyrone the under-21 championship is a particularly serious proposition, given that the current cohort are defending champions and favourites to retain the title.

McCaughey says that the league is of equal concern to the county. "It's not often that we get as far as the knockout stages and we've never won a senior national title. This arose because of events beyond our control and we feel it's a special situation."

It's not certain to what extent the Central Council procedures - agreed with the Department of Agriculture - can be reviewed. "You can't have different rules for different counties," said one Croke Park source yesterday. But Louth did receive a dispensation to play their Leinster Vocational Schools' final against Offaly - provided they didn't field any players from the exclusion zone.

Tyrone would operate within the same restrictions were they to be allowed re-enter the championship. The problem is thought to be less the players than the supporters who would inevitably follow if the county were to be playing an Ulster final or an All-Ireland semi-final. The option of playing such matches behind closed doors could lead to no spectators seeing most of the remaining matches in the championship.

McCaughey accepts the argument about supporters but points out that anyone from within an exclusion zone can go to a match in an adjoining county without the local GAA authorities being able to do anything about it. He sees other anomalies in the current situation.

"A neighbouring county can play without players from the exclusion zone but the county in question can't play at all despite the fact they might have fewer players in that same exclusion zone. Most of the clubs in the neighbouring county might be closer to the exclusion zone than most of the clubs in the county affected.

"I'm not sure the regulations were fully thought through. They might have seemed right at the time but they mightn't be the right ones to continue."

The broader issue of the senior championships will come into focus this week when the Ulster Council meets tomorrow to consider the issue.

"There's not really much flexibility in our programme," says provincial secretary Danny Murphy. "We have to play five matches in three weeks once we call off the first two (Derry-Antrim and Tyrone-Armagh scheduled for May 13th and 20th). There's a deadline of June 3rd if we're going to be ready for the first-round qualifier on the 9th."

Ulster's problems will have wider application even if foot-and-mouth doesn't spread any further south. This is the first year of the new football championship that allows defeated teams to re-enter All-Ireland qualifying rounds. With the first round due on June 9th, any outbreaks beyond the beginning of May will cast serious doubt on the viability of the new structure.

The GAA's recent annual congress passed a motion giving Central Council the power to reorganise the championships if necessary in the light of the outbreak.

The Irish under-17 International Rules team will be eager for better fortunes in the final Test with Australia in Perth tomorrow. The second Test in Melbourne on Monday ended in a 121-25 defeat. Fitness levels apart, the kicking and catching skills of the Australians were vastly superior. Injuries to key players, Patrick Brady (Cavan) and Iomar Barrett (Galway), did not help the Irish.

Australia led 56-7 at half-time, and 89-10 at the end of the third quarter. Joe Sheridan of Meath and Dublin's Declan O'Mahony managed to produce two goals for Ireland but otherwise the performance was disheartening.

In the first Test, Ireland led going into the final quarter but winning the Test series outright tomorrow seems beyond them.