Everything seems grand until you think about the players who will actually be playing.
But the GAA didn’t seem to spend too much time thinking about them.
It all seemed to fit in seamlessly with their grand fixture plan for 2018 to have the under-20 championship taking place at the end of May and into June.
The April club month was introduced this year and we know how important that baby was to the GAA. They even called off National League games to save face and to make it look like it worked. It definitely didn’t work as horror stories from counties all over Ireland have showed in recent weeks. For example, Kilkenny used to get three club games played in April, this year they only got one played and players are now not sure when they will be out again.
For the last few years, the under-21 championship took place in March and April before it finished up in May with the All-Ireland final taking place on the first weekend usually.
This year, the GAA dropped the age to under-20 and delayed the beginning of the competition until June.
The beginning of June is the beginning of the Leaving Cert every year. This doesn’t change and it shouldn’t be news to anybody. Neither does the fact that 18, 19 and 20-year-olds are Leaving Cert students – the same lads who are eligible for this under-20 grade.
Now don’t get us wrong. We’d campaign all day long for players to stay involved with their GAA teams in the build-up to exams. Exercise is beneficial for players and we all know that a healthy mind is a healthy body.
But for God’s sake, you don’t organise an inter-county championship game just days before Leaving Cert exams. A club manager would be lynched if he did that but that’s exactly what the GAA have done.
So now we will have provincial under-20 championship games taking place one, two and three nights before Leaving Cert exams – nights where, let’s face it, the majority of these students would be better served getting in that crucial last minute cramming.
Laois under-20 manager Billy O’Loughlin joined Colm Parkinson on Monday’s GAA Hour Show and he helped to explain the mess by focusing on the debacle facing many of his players.
“We play Wicklow on June 4 which is a day and a half before four or five players will sit the English Leaving Certificate Paper One. That’s three and a half hours of writing…They go into an exam, a critical part of their career in terms of education, and they throw an under-20 championship on top of that,” he said.
“Some of these lads are going for over 500 points. That’s hard for them, trying to make an under-20 team and do their Leaving Cert at the same time and get the points as well. It’s completely congested, there’s no regard for player welfare here whatsoever.
“In the most critical part of their lives, to do the leaving to try and get the points and to try break into an inter-county football team, they’re asked to do it all at the one period of time.”
Roscommon manager Shane Curran was also on Monday’s GAA Hour Show and the situation facing his county, and indeed all the counties in the Connacht Championship, is even worse.
“The Leaving Cert is one issue but it’s by no means the only issue. There are a myriad of issues here. The Connacht Championship has been shoehorned into a two week tournament in June which makes no sense whatsoever. It’s straight knockout.
“Basically, you’re preparing a team for one game, maximum three games in a two week period with absolutely no rest right smack bang in the middle of the Leaving Cert. You couldn’t make this up if you tried now, this is beyond incredulity,” he said.
And this is all for a competition where the best players mightn’t even be able to play in it. That’s because if they play for their county’s seniors in the Championship, they can’t play under-20.
“Another point is that a player who is on a senior panel is not allowed play under-20 if he plays championship. I was on the phone to Brendan Keogh from Wexford, and he has 11 players on the Wexford senior football panel who are under-20,” added O’Loughlin.
“They invent a competition, and then take all of the best players out of it.”
Where’s the sense in that?
You can listen to this discussion and much more from Monday’s GAA Hour Show right here.
