Mayo club championship draw perfectly captures GAA fixtures farce that needs to stop

On the same night that the Club Players Association claimed it was denied an opportunity to address GAA Congress, the 2017 Mayo club championship draw highlighted a gaping hole issue.

Club footballers in Mayo discovered, last night, that their championship season will begin on the weekend on May 6 and 7. The second round ties will take place on June 17 and 18. The third round.... let's not get ahead of ourselves. https://twitter.com/MayoGAA/status/834156543029440512 Clubs competing in the championship in Mayo will have to hold off until the inter-county team's latest quest for Sam Maguire comes to a conclusion. Last year, Mayo lost an All-Ireland Football Final replay to Dublin on October 1. Mayo have reached the All-Ireland final three times over the previous five seasons, the earliest of which was held on September 22 [in 2013]. Club footballers who know the lay of the land can pretty much strike off hopes of playing a championship game during July and August. Needless to say, the confirmed dates did little to ease an increasingly fractious and farcical club vs. county debate: https://twitter.com/LaobhaoiseNihE/status/834186166719094784 https://twitter.com/raff_8_7/status/834158593754673153 https://twitter.com/Kearns1010/status/834177427689594881 Not everybody was losing out, however... https://twitter.com/conorheneghan1/status/834159727160520704 Meanwhile, with the GAA set to debate the option of introducing a 'Super Eight' element to the senior inter-county football championship, the CPA claims it has been denied the opportunity to express its views and the views of its 20,000 members. In a statement, CPA chairman Micheál Briody declared:

"We wrote to the President [Aogán Ó Fearghaíl] as required under rule 3.35 to formally request the right to speak at Congress on behalf of over 20,000 members. He has replied denying us the opportunity to speak stating it would be inappropriate. "The Uachtarán in doing this has ignored the will of more than 20,000 CPA players. This was not unexpected, it is disappointing, but it doesn’t change our single minded approach in representing all our members."

The impasse remains an impassable.