JOHNNY MCINTOSH: A tough one to call

THE big game this weekend is the meeting of Sleacht Néill and Cushendall in the Ulster Senior Club Championship semi-final.

It’s a repeat of last year’s final – Cushendall were full value for their 0-20 to 2-10 success – and they’re expected by the bookies to repeat the trick and book their spot in the decider against Portaferry in early December.

Not to get ahead of myself, but I actually worry for Portaferry a little bit. They’ve had a lengthy lay-off since their Down Championship win as it is and they’re received a bye into the Ulster final, and I think that could ultimately do them more harm than good.

But I digress. Cushendall are in a good place heading into this Saturday evening’s game, which I’m glad to hear will be broadcast live on RTÉ.

I don’t hear any talk of injuries and they delivered a strong performance in atrocious conditions against Dunloy to retain their Antrim title, so they’re a hardened side at this stage.

They haven’t met Sleacht Néill all that often, but they’ve always been fit for them and I think that’s because the Ruairí Ógs are a big, strong physical team who are well fit to meet fire with fire.

In saying that, the bookies have Sleacht Néill as surprisingly big outsiders and I’m not so taken in by that one. I think it’s quite unfair actually and I wouldn’t be surprised if they make life difficult for Cushendall.

One of the things that might work in Sleacht Neill’s favour is that their full focus has been on thehuring for longer than usual having bowed out of the Derry SFC Championship at the semi-final stage. They’ve never complained about their lot but it surely can’t have been easy for the majority of their players juggling football and hurling across provincial competitions and they’ll be quietly confident that they can upset the odds this weekend.

On the flipside, they’ve tended to have fairly facile runs through the Derry Championship and I think that’s testament to Sleacht Neill’s strength and ability rather than any sort of slight on the quality of their opposition.

So it should be a good battle and whoever emerges will really fancy their chances of pushing on. Portaferry are a really good team in their own right and they should’ve beaten Cushendall last year, they were five points up going into injury time but the Ruairí Ógs pushed them back and got a goal and it ended up going to extra-time.

By that stage Portaferry had picked up a few injuries and the wheels had come off the wagon a bit, and Cushendall ended up winning and it really stood to them when they came up against Sleacht Néill in the final.

As a format, it isn’t really ideal. I’m not a fan of winter hurling, the team that receives a bye is arguably at a disadvantage and even though it’s been tightened up a bit on last year, where it was almost ridiculous, Teams are still waiting around for many weeks to play massive championship matches. As always with these things, there’s no easy solution but I personally didn’t see the harm in the old system climaxing in the traditional St Patrick’s Day finals.

Yes we talk about player burnout but there were so few clubs involved by that stage and I don’t think it interfered with the county teams. The GAA talk about easing things for club players, but I don’t see how it’s any easier. If Cushendall retain their title, for example, they’ll play in an All-Ireland semi-final in the middle of December and if they win that, they’ve an All-Ireland final in the middle of January. And that means training right through Christmas which doesn’t seem fair on players at the end of a busy year.

I read a column from Joe Brolly a while ago that resonated with me, he made a really good point that if the entire season was actually condensed, it wouldn’t just ease the burden on players but it would actually save a lot of money for county boards. Cut the county season back to about five months and you’ll save county boards a significant amount of travel expenses and money on management teams and all the rest of it. Joe said we could have potentially a festival of football or hurling and while no system or schedule is perfect, we need to find a happy medium where players can get a bit of their life back.