Fionnuala Carr – Widening gap between club and county

Antrim played in the Tommy Murphy Cup in the mid 2000s

This pre-season has probably been the strangest pre-season that I have ever had –largely due in part to not actually being in pre-season!

Most people dread the cold nights and the winter slog but for some reason I always enjoyed it, most pre-seasons set the tone for the year ahead and if the attitude is right it can be the start of a great year.

The thing about pre-seasons is that they are starting earlier and earlier….most counties are training from the late autumn and winter of the previous year believing that this will give them a head start on other teams.

Each team club or county will start the year with different goals few will have realistic chances of winning the All Ireland but for others progression and raising standards on the previous year is an achievable target.

The GAA recently published a proposal whereby they introduce a B or second tier championship for teams that play in the fourth division in the league.

By trying to address the standard of these teams to me, what they are actually doing is creating a further divide.

This goes against one of the core values to what the GAA is all about – inclusiveness, it is creating further elitism between counties.

Pat Daly the Director of the GAA’s games research and development has stated that the GAA needs to develop the ethical basis of its coaching philosophy if it wants to tackle the problem of players dropping out before adulthood.

This can also apply to adults particularly those in the “weaker counties” or the club players. The way the GAA look at the fixtures and competitiveness of the championship can be mirrored in the way a team approaches pre season training.

The strength of a squad is determined not by one player but by the collective group. Bringing the least fittest person in the group in January (more often than not me, I usually winter quite well) up to the same level as the fittest player means that overall the squad is in a competitive healthy state.

Likewise the strength of the GAA isn’t one team it’s a group of teams all challenging and playing at the same level. If the GAA had, for example, Wicklow or Louth competing at the same level as Dublin year in year out then the games during the summer would be fantastic and certainly much better than the games we had last year.

Creating a second level or second tier competition shouldn’t be one of the biggest items on the GAA agenda, creating a fair, balanced and healthy fixture list should be. I don’t know the actual figures but the games to training ratio from January to the end of the league is in stark comparison to the games to training ratio in the summer months.

This is supported by the number of games that are being played at the minute particularly for college students. At the minute we have the provincial competitions such as the McKenna Cup or the Walsh Cup, so players have at least three games in two weeks followed quickly by the leagues starting in February.

Regular competitive games are exactly what players enjoy and want to be part of. Instead of having drastic measures of creating second tier competitions, should the GAA not be trying to develop each and every county to the same level and apply the same format of the early year competitions to the provincial championships?