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Inter-Provincial Football Championship

  • 03-10-2006 01:00PM
    #1
    cruiserweight
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,307 ✭✭✭


    The inter-provincial football championship semi-finals are on this weekend! The managers are unhappy about the fixtures, and they have a point!
    THE scheduling of the Martin Donnelly-sponsored Inter-provincial football series has taken a hammering from the four managers involved.

    With semi-finals parked up on the one of the busiest weekends of club activity and the final being staged in Boston just six nights before the first International Rules test in Galway, the managers are hard pressed to field teams that will make the games attractive to the public.

    After what Leinster manager Val Andrews described as an "embryonic revival" of the competition in 2005 - the football decider between Ulster and Leinster was played under lights in Parnell Park before a near-packed house in November - Andrews senses that moving back to October has "put it back a bit".

    The sponsor, Martin Donnelly, said he remained committed to the competition for the foreseeable future but hinted that if it wasn't given the respect it deserved he would look to "spend the money elsewhere".

    Ó Sé wedding

    The Connacht-Munster semi-final will take place on Friday night in Ballyforan on the Galway/Roscommon border to facilitate the wedding of Darragh Ó Sé on Saturday. But with key club matches in Kerry on Sunday, Munster manager Gerry O'Sullivan from Cork expects only six to seven from the All-Ireland champions.

    Kieran Donaghy and Colm Cooper are among those who won't be available, according to O'Sullivan, because of club commitments and, in Donaghy's case, International Rules duty.

    "I don't think Colm Cooper and Kieran Donaghy will be available and that's a pity because you want to get people out to see these games. I think people would travel to see the likes of Kieran Donaghy and, if Munster were lucky enough to beat Connacht, wouldn't it be a great advertisement for the GAA in Boston to have someone like him coming over," said O'Sullivan.

    Clashing

    The GAA calendar faces a potential makeover in less than two weeks' time when a series of proposals go before a special Congress to compress the inter-county season and allow more time for clubs. For the four provincial managers that can't come quickly enough. They also see spin-off effects for the inter-pros.

    "Martin Donnelly puts in a lot of time and effort into this competition and perhaps we're not giving it the right place on the schedule. I thought last year the players resurrected the competition and we had an embryonic revival but this year we're after putting it back a bit, clashing with the International Rules," said Andrews.

    "You probably could go early January because it would be a nice way to kick off the season. Players love the competition. I wasn't involved until last year and I thought we'd have to beat players out to play but all it took was a phonecall. If they take pride in the competition then we should take pride in it too. There are too many obstacles this year," he added.

    "We should find a place and leave it there. In relation to the championship schedule, there are 32 teams in Ireland, five rounds, three weeks between them, totaling 15 weeks. You should be able to run a championship in less than three-and-a-half-months. We have to look at the schedule and ask are we using weekends properly? It's not rocket science; five rounds, 32 teams, but we won't double-bill, we won't allow clashes because of financial issues. If we're really serious about the clubs, maybe we should be sacrificing a few pounds at the top level." Connacht manager John O'Mahony says he would go further than the proposals before the special Congress.

    "Something needed to be done; the proposals in front of special Congress are an effort to improve. I think they could go a bit further. I think the National League could be started earlier. The secondary competitions (McKenna, O'Byrne, McGrath Cups and FBD leagues) need to be pushed aside. There were 20,000 at a McKenna Cup match but those crowds would be at a league match if there were league matches instead, two weeks earlier or the last two weeks in January.

    "I would also play the U21 championship alongside the early league matches and wouldn't allow U21 players to play with the senior team until they were out of the U21 championship. By all of that you could free up four or five extra Sundays for the clubs and the situation we might have here now is that we might have more players available."

    Donnelly also feels club activity could essentially be wrapped up earlier to allow a "window" for inter-pros.

    "When I got involved first, I knew these problems were there. We did work a long way towards improving it. Some of the games in recent years were held in places like Nenagh with 20 people at them and were just run off the calendar.

    "To a degree it has been revived. It's going to take more than three or four years but if special Congress has the desired effect and club fixtures are sorted out I think this competition will grow."

    The football final takes place on Sunday, October 22 in Canton, Boston with the hurling decider pencilled in as the curtain-raiser for the first International Rules test in Galway's Pearse Stadium six days later.


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