Imagine Meath weren’t put out of the football championship on June 9.
Even with a first round qualifier exit, the Royal county can barely finish their own season on time and, as a result, clubs have been informed of a new, condensed fixture schedule over the next four months.
It will see the Meath hurling championship return on July 22 with the football coming the following week with eight successive weeks of either football or hurling championships being asked of dual players. One of those weeks sees the junior football championship take place on the same weekend as the hurling and the only respite in the calendar is before the respective semi-finals.
Of course, during that free weekend on September 15, intermediate and junior football championship games will take place so, really, the schedule for a dual player in Meath from July 22 is nothing short of a joke.
And the solution, according to Meath CCC, is for clubs to look after player welfare themselves. It is not the responsibility of Meath CCC.
In an email sent to clubs on Monday night, the instruction was, “if a club considers that a player is receiving too much game time, the club shall decide if the player should be rested.”
With three more rounds of hurling and football championships to complete before quarter-finals and preliminary quarter-finals, you have to wonder what the hell the play would’ve been if Meath had advanced a little further in the inter-county series.
Now, from July 22 until October 14, it is going to be bedlam for dual clubs.
July 22 – Hurling championship Round 3
July 29 – Football championship Round 3
August 5 – Hurling championship Round 4/JFC
August 12 – Football championship Round 4
August 19 – Hurling championship Round 5/JFC
August 26 – Football championship Round 5
September 2/3 – Hurling championship QF/Football championship prelim QF
September 8/9 – Football championship QF
September 15/16 – IFC/JFC
September 22/23 – Hurling championship SF
September 29/30 – Football championship SF
October 7 – Hurling championship final
October 14 – Football championship final
The Leinster intermediate hurling championship (where the Meath senior champs compete) begins on November 3 whilst the first round of the Leinster football campaign is on October 28.
A game every week might be doable alright but this is championship we’re talking about – no let-up. It’s also a championship game per week for 13 weeks with league fixtures to be slotted in there, other competitions, and let’s not even thinking about the poor under-21 player.
Anthony Moyles of the Club Players Association commented that he expects to see more of this carry on.
“Expect more of this from plenty of other counties over next 4-8 weeks,” he wrote on Twitter.
“Hilarious thing is that a ]group] of [forward] thinking Meath Gaels got together last year and put a massive amount of time into devising new champ structures to avoid this [very] thing.
“Of course, it was shot down.”
