Year begins to stir as football league resumes

The first stirrings of the GAA year can be seen this weekend with the resumption of the nine-team, Section D in the Church & General National Football League and the Railway Cup replay in Clones. There are also signs of life on the club front as that other hardy annual, the All-Ireland club championships, home into view.

Dunloy, the Ulster champions, will attempt in a fortnight to beat Sarsfields of Galway and reach their third final in four years. But this weekend they travel to Rosslare for a couple of days' preparation, which will include a challenge match against the county team tomorrow morning.

Wexford are in a club humour at the moment and will play Munster representatives Clarecastle this morning. Meanwhile, the president of the GAA, Joe McDonagh, launched the Comhairle programme in leadership and administration for GAA officers - the biggest programme of its type undertaken by a sporting organisation in Ireland.

"Essentially, the course is a recognition of the necessity to provide clubs with the means of recruiting and training administrators," McDonagh said. "To that end, we have identified weaknesses in our club structure in relation to their management and the efficiency with which they operate.

"By doing this, we hope to assist clubs in carrying out an analysis of their structure, assess it and set targets for the future. The policy and planning committee have been developing these modules, and we must now deliver them nationally. The target is to deliver to all of the association's roughly 2,000 clubs before the year 2000. This is a recognition of the club as a bedrock, or first tier of the GAA."

McDonagh says that the course is about enabling club administrations to carry out various programmes as devised at national level, a necessity that he identified in relation to coaching. In other words, there was a greatly reduced point in devising extravagant developmental plans if the capacity to implement them wasn't there.

"From a personal perspective, I first realised this need when I was involved in coaching schemes at provincial, county and club level," he said. "There was an administrative demand created by coaching programmes that wasn't always satisfied. There was a lack of appreciation amongst club officers of what was being done, and this illustrated the need for a structured, co-ordinated programme of administration."

Plans are under way in Kilkenny to build a memorial to former goalkeeper and manager Ollie Walsh, who died suddenly nearly two years ago. The project will be located in Walsh's home place, Mill Street, Thomastown. Spearheaded by the local club, the memorial plans are expected to culminate in a statue or other suitable monument and a budget of £30,000 has been allocated.

Walsh won five All-Ireland medals as a player and was also Texaco Hurler of the Year. As a manager, he led Kilkenny to All-Ireland success at minor, junior and, in 1992 and '93, senior level.

Dual player Peter Queally has been selected on both Waterford teams who are in competitive action tomorrow afternoon. He is named at right half forward on the football team to play Tipperary in the league at Stradbally. He is also selected at left half back on the hurling side to face Cork in the South East league at Dungarvan.

Although the times of the matches are staggered, with the football tie scheduled for 1.0 and the hurling for 90 minutes later, it is not expected that he will line out in both. A decision is expected to be made later today as to which team he will play with.

The football team for the game against Tipperary, whom Waterford defeated in the McGrath Cup by a point after extra time three weeks ago, shows two changes from that game. Michael Fenton and Liam Dalton have been recalled while a vacancy has been left at full forward.

Finally, the Fitzgibbon Cup starts in earnest this afternoon with six preliminary round matches. UCC have already advanced after defeating Carlow RTC last Wednesday, and today DIT (v Tralee RTC), DCU (v Cork RTC), WIT (v Limerick RTC), UCD (v NUI Maynooth) and Galway RTC (v TCD) are taken, with varying degrees of conviction, to join them.