Hopes for annual International Rules series suffer setback

Hopes that the International Rules series between Ireland and Australia might be able to revert to an annual event have not been realised. Last Saturday’s Central Council meeting agreed that the series would take place in both 2017 in Australia and in Ireland in 2019, and that the two-test format would be reintroduced, but there were no further references to either a resumption of annual contests or to the idea of staging a series in the US.

After the 2014 one-off test in Perth, GAA and AFL officials appeared to embrace the idea of restoring the original formats of two tests and agreed that the countries should meet again in 2015 for a single test but look at restoring the second match for future years.

The anticipated series this year was cancelled in May amid doubts that the Australians could muster the type of strong selection that had been central to the success of the 2014 and 2015 matches.

Commitment

Attracting the best players has always been more of a problem for the AFL than the GAA, and although strenuous efforts were made in the past two years to ensure that the Australian team was representative of the best players, it was always open to question whether such high-profile commitment would be possible on an annual basis.

“That’s certainly part of it,” according to Feargal McGill, the GAA’s head of games administration. “There is a difficulty for the AFL who are dealing with professional athletes who have to use holiday time to take part in the series and that is an issue when the series takes place every year.

“We were happy though to be able to agree a series of two tests for two of the next three years.”

There was reassurance from the AFL’s general manager of football operations Mark Evans that Australia would still be placing an emphasis on the quality of their teams.

“Restricting selection to only a player who has earned All Australian selection through his AFL career has ensured the prestige of playing in the International Rules series and we look forward to hosting the Irish side again next year.”

Speaking about the idea of staging an international in the US, which greatly interested the Australians, McGill said:

Third country

“There is also the potential to stage an exhibition match in a third country in the gap year but we haven’t been able to nail that down. Discussions between ourselves and the AFL will be ongoing. I think we saw the potential for events like the rugby international in Chicago but it wouldn’t have to be in the US. There might also be potential in the Middle East (this year’s All Star match takes place on Friday in Abu Dhabi) or England, which would also have potential.”

The GAA’s master plan for 2017 fixtures was also confirmed. Most eye-catching of the proposals is the decision to use a sudden-death format for the knockout stages of the Alliance Hurling League. Quarter-finals and semi-finals will be decided on a free-taking competition if the teams are level after two separate periods of extra time.

As agreed previously there will be no semi-finals in the Alliance Football League and both the football and hurling league finals will be staged two weeks earlier in order to free dates for club activity.

The mark will be introduced into football from the beginning of 2017, as agreed at this year’s congress in Carlow. It has been trialled in Higher Education League Division One matches.

Finally Central Council decided to cater for the withdrawal of Fingal from the hurling league by abolishing relegation from Division Three A as well as from the Rackard Cup.