Opinion: GAA calendar changes could cause more headaches than it solves

Fitter and leaner, but will it make the GAA championships at club and county levels better?

County board secretaries and chairman across Ireland have been poring over the details of the additional workload they might face in 2016 if new GAA fixture proposals actually happen. The headline-grabbing aspect of the report from a sub-committee tasked with changing the GAA schedule is to move the All-Irelands back by a week and that the club finals will now take place in December. That would mean the All-Ireland hurling final being played on August 28 next year and the football finale moved to the second Sunday in September. But will the proposal actually work and what will club players make of it all with a now 15-month season condensed into the space of just 12? The most common complaint you hear from GAA people at this time of year, or even at any time, is 'what about the club player?' and this plan aims to try and help out clubs and those players by having their inter-county colleagues involved more often locally. The idea is also to at least give teams some kind of 'off-season' which up to now was pretty much non-existent if a club or inter-county side was any way successful. This places the pressure very much on county boards getting their house in order and sorting out the various competitions taking place under their remit. Already, counties such as Clare have massive difficulties in trying to sort out when they can play games due to the amount of dual players involved for various clubs like Cratloe, St Joseph's Doorabarefield and Eire Óg. It means that club competitions locally will have to be sorted out first and any flexibility that county boards may have had previously will be gone. A fixture plan will be set in stone - which for players will be good but for county boards who have to deal with replays or appeals it may not be. The GAA has gone for a half-hearted attempt at changing the championship by messing around with the calendar but ultimately it still doesn't deal with the problem of three of the four provincial series being one or two-horse races. The football championship of 2014 was stale until the the drama of Kerry-Mayo and Donegal-Dublin and that was in August, a full three months after the race for Sam Maguire got underway. Moving the All-Ireland hurling final to August won't bother Brian Cody or Ger Cunningham or any players either. It's a date, it's a game and there is a title to be won. Brian Cody would play for Liam McCarthy in the snows of winter if he had to.. They have moved it before and the public will adapt. If the GAA really wanted to change up its calendar then there was room to trial a new championship structure or to at least try and cut out the gaps of weeks upon weeks for the Munster and Connacht football champions where Cork/Kerry or Galway/Mayo may have to wait six weeks between games. Where is the sense in that? It's interesting to see the recommendations emerge in the days after Joe Brolly's 'indentured slaves' comments and it would be interesting to hear his comments on such a proposal. Counties will be given the chance to discuss the plan and if adopted it may be brought in for an initial two-year period. The plan below shows how the GAA calendar would work out: H/T to GAA