Waterford football final fiasco a microcosm of GAA fixtures chaos

Waterford football manager Tom McGlinchey is frustrated at the unwillingness of the GAA to address its most pressing issues.

It's hardly a unique state of mind but is of particular relevance in the county where the football final between Stradbally and Ballinacourty takes place on Friday evening with the winners having to face the might of Nemo Rangers less than 24 hours later in the Munster championship.

This mad dash takes place little less than five months after McGlinchey’s team exited the football championship. As ever there are reasons and the Waterford manager is reluctant simply to blame the county board.

“A friend asked me about that this afternoon. How did that happen? I’ve sympathy for organisers and county officers. Once the intercounty schedules are finalised in the next week or two they’ll set out their plan for the club fixtures.

“Last year in fairness to the Waterford secretary Timmy O’Keeffe, last December he gave me the club fixtures plan. It was on the premise that the national league was going to be over at a certain time in April – hurling and football. Then the hurlers got on their run and won the league.

Club hurling

“As a result in a county like Waterford where I’d say 90 per cent of my football panel play senior club hurling, it had a huge knock-on effect as the year wore on. But it’s still not an excuse that it was all crammed into the last few weeks. I’m sure there were times during the year when games could have been played.

"Clubs have to look at themselves too in that they look for postponements or not getting games played when they should be played. I think it's collective responsibility because it's all very easy to blame county officials but I think we all have anecdotes in every county in Ireland about matches being called off for one reason or another.

“I think it shouldn’t have happened in that they’re squeezing the championship but they were unfortunate in that it was a three-way play-off and some teams wouldn’t agree to go into a hat and so there was a play-off situation and that extended the thing out for another two weeks.”

The situation is particularly unfortunate given the really competitive presence that Waterford clubs have had in the club championship. Over the past decade or so three of the county’s champions have reached the provincial final, including the two in action in Dungarvan this evening. A year ago Austin Stacks from Kerry struggled to put away The Nire.

"This is something that Ephie Fitzgerald (the experienced coach from Cork who has joined up with the Waterford footballers for next season) has commented on and has said that from being involved at the coalface with Nemo Rangers the Waterford teams were very hard to beat. I saw that reflected in the McGrath Cup (Munster's pre-season competition, won by Waterford earlier this year for the first time since 1981).

This weekend’s crazy scheduling makes it impossible that whoever emerges with the title will have a decent shot at Nemo but McGlinchey says that the clubs still wanted the opportunity to have a cut at it.

“I know the Waterford clubs would have been disappointed not to be in the Munster championship, especially when The Nire were in a position to win it last year and Stradbally and Ballinacourty before. They are strong and it’s unfortunate that they’re out on Friday night and again on Saturday.”

“This is a problem that we have every year and every year we’re talking about it. I have no doubt that next year somewhere there’ll be some team this will happen too again.

“I think it’s a failing we have in the GAA – and I know that’s what they’re trying to do in introducing a standardised year – (not) sticking to our fixtures unless something seismic happens.

"I was reading Páraic Duffy's report (the GAA director general's paper on overtraining, burnout and the fixtures' calendar) and the need for better scheduling. I mean before I joined up with Waterford I was involved last year with Cahir in Tipperary and the county final replay was held on St Stephen's Day. This weekend the Waterford champions have to play in Munster 24 hours after the county final and that's already happened in Laois.

Good things

“For all the good things that the GAA do – and we’re very slow to praise ourselves sometimes – I feel we’re constantly defending the bad things when we could do a lot more to get our house in order. If there wasn’t as much reluctance to change it could be run off better.”

He believes that there are many good proposals in Duffy’s discussion document which was released earlier this week and has spoken about the need to restructure the championship so that weaker counties are better catered for but is pessimistic about the likelihood of change coming from the current debate on proposals submitted to Central Council for reforming the football championship.

“Is the will there to change in the GAA community? I think we’re afraid to accept change or to give change a chance. I’ve often made reference to the hooter time-keeping system, which passed but was only trialled in the Sigerson before being thrown out the window.

“Yet there wasn’t a week that went by this year in league or championship that there hasn’t been some controversy over the timing of matches. A simple solution was there and yet we were afraid to give it a go.

“I think it will be the same with these championship proposals. There’ll be solutions brought forward and yet there’ll be resistance to change, which I think is unfortunate.”