Football

Potentially flipping season depends on government roadmap: McGill

GAA Director of Player, Club, and Games Administration, Feargal McGill
GAA Director of Player, Club, and Games Administration, Feargal McGill GAA Director of Player, Club, and Games Administration, Feargal McGill

THE GAA remains confident that both club and inter-county seasons will happen in 2021 – but the possibility of flipping them will be determined by the Irish government’s roadmap.

Since the surprise news earlier in the week that inter-county football and hurling were no longer classified as ‘elite’ sports, and therefore covered by the exemption allowing sport to continue during level five restrictions, concern has grown over how the fixtures calendar will look.

The idea of swapping the current plans by putting club games before inter-county, as happened with a great degree of success last year, has been floated again in recent days.

The GAA’s Director of Player, Club, and Games Administration Feargal McGill told The Irish News that whenever the governments north and south allow for club games will be what determines their thinking.

The Irish government are due to publish an updated roadmap for society the week after next, and that will be used as the major signpost by the GAA in terms of future planning.

“There’d be absolutely no point considering that until we know when club can go.

“For example, say the government said from Easter onwards you can have inter-county but we think it’ll be May or June before you can have club, that would put us in a certain direction because there’s no point in wasting another two months.

“If that were to be the case, it would be more likely that county would go first. It will literally depend on where we’re allowed to do various things.”

Despite having placed their own ban on all forms of training or games, the GAA did so from the perspective of protecting public health and was still operating under the assumption that they were classed as elite.

McGill concedes it “was news to us” to discover on Monday that inter-county activity was no longer permitted, but said that the association had no major qualms with the decision.

“We are in the middle of a pandemic and we accept that,” said the Leitrim native.

“To be fair to the government, there seems to have been a little bit of a misunderstanding from others that seemed to think the government don’t now officially consider inter-county GAA as being elite.

“That’s not the case at all, it’s of the moment and in the context of where the country finds itself at the moment.

“We said all along we’ll abide by public health guidelines and if those guidelines state we can’t return to training or playing at the moment, that’s fine, we’ll work on that.

“We’d expect that the Living With Covid plan will make things a lot clearer for us as to when go back, not just to inter-county but also club.”

Whether the inter-county season will contain the Allianz Leagues is now also a central part of the debate.

With the window for both club and county to have adequate time to run off championships already shortened, the already-abridged and regionalised leagues are under increasing threat.

“We have absolutely ruled nothing in or out,” said McGill.

“There’s a huge amount of advantages to playing the National League, as I’m sure you will appreciate, in terms of trying to avoid a situation where the inter-county season is coming back and going straight into championship with no preparation whatsoever.

“Our intention would be to play as many of the competitions as we originally intended to play. That will be our starting point – what can we retain?”

“I don’t want to make us a hostage to fortune but one thing I would be confident of is that we will have a meaningful inter-county and a meaningful club season.

“I’m quite sure of that, that we’ll have both. You can’t tell the future but all things being equal, I don’t see why we wouldn’t be able to do something meaningful for both.”

Asked whether club or county would take priority in the event of there not being time for both, McGill added: “We’ve taken no decisions on any of that whatsoever.

“Personally, if you’re asking me for one wish, the thing I’d like to see more than anything else is particularly in the months of July, August and September that our pitches around the country are full of people.

“I’d like to see mass activity in those good months. Those are the months you want to play for your club. My hope is that we have as many people on the pitches around the country during those months as possible.”