CPA Fixture Proposals

dr.kenneth noisewater

Didnt see a thread so said I'd start one! Some interesting proposals here, main suggestions are:

• Month of April for club games(no inter-county training or games allowed)
• Season finishes in the calendar including clubs all-Irelands
• Month of December to be free of any games to give all players recovery time

Main plans being put forward are called Green and Purple 

There was also an interesting discussion on Off the Ball last night which goes into more details

Jayop

I had a quick look at the green proposal but I'd need a lot more specifics than what's on the PDF on the CPA website.

For me their three core principles are very wise.

-April free for clubs, great chance to have a firm date so players, managers etc can target fitness build up etc. No distractions so you can run off 4 full rounds of fixtures for every club.
- Season finishing in calendar year. I agree with this although the club finals in Paddy's day is a nice day.
- December free just makes sense. Give the lads a bit of down time to do some wintering.

munchkin_utd

I've yet to have a look at it properly , but the first thing that strikes me is the idea of a club window in April which I'd support. Even with the current championship you could squeeze in 3 or 4 weeks to get a start on the club championship.

Whilst I dont find it an issue, many would likely criticise having knockout championship in April which would "leave lads nothing to play for" for the rest of the year. Some already have this attitude with regards to the Dublin championship which is ran that way.
Of course, training like a maniac all year, to play championship at an undetermined time sometime in the autumn whenever the county board decides to fix it with a weeks notice, and then frantically play games on weekends and midweeks in order to get a champion in time for the provincial championship is also not the best for players !!

What is missing though in the proposals is college fixtures.
How would you introduce an intercounty competition starting in February which decides your championship fate without dealing with what happens to the county players playing college football/ hurling at the same time? Those finals currently happen in mid to late February
The league "is only the league" nowadays which means the college players are let off to do their thing, but if you make round robin games in February decide whether your county plays top level football or hurlng that year then it'd cause havoc with the college competitions with county managers demanding lads tog out for the county first.
The solution for the colleges would be to have the qualifiers for the sigerson/ fitzgibbon before christmas (i.e. before December) and then have the college final weekends in parallel with the county preseason sometime in January. But, that should also go into the spreadsheet.

This goes against the calendar year principle, but a college year is from September to May so theres not much you can do really unless you want to change the college year, and school year, to a calendar year too. Realistically, school and college competitions need to happen before and after christmas, and thats just a reality of the matter

dr.kenneth noisewater

munchkin_utd wrote: »

I've yet to have a look at it properly , but the first thing that strikes me is the idea of a club window in April which I'd support. Even with the current championship you could squeeze in 3 or 4 weeks to get a start on the club championship.

Whilst I dont find it an issue, many would likely criticise having knockout championship in April which would "leave lads nothing to play for" for the rest of the year. Some already have this attitude with regards to the Dublin championship which is ran that way.
Of course, training like a maniac all year, to play championship at an undetermined time sometime in the autumn whenever the county board decides to fix it with a weeks notice, and then frantically play games on weekends and midweeks in order to get a champion in time for the provincial championship is also not the best for players !!

What is missing though in the proposals is college fixtures.
How would you introduce an intercounty competition starting in February which decides your championship fate without dealing with what happens to the county players playing college football/ hurling at the same time? Those finals currently happen in mid to late February
The league "is only the league" nowadays which means the college players are let off to do their thing, but if you make round robin games in February decide whether your county plays top level football or hurlng that year then it'd cause havoc with the college competitions with county managers demanding lads tog out for the county first.
The solution for the colleges would be to have the qualifiers for the sigerson/ fitzgibbon before christmas (i.e. before December) and then have the college final weekends in parallel with the county preseason sometime in January.  But, that should also go into the spreadsheet.

This goes against the calendar year principle, but a college year is from September to May so theres not much you can do really unless you want to change the college year, and school year, to a calendar year too. Realistically, school and college competitions need to happen before and after christmas, and thats just a reality of the matter

What they said on OTB last night was that its up to each county to run their own club championship. If CB knew they have more amount of time to run it they might change it from straight knockout to groups or back door systems.
As for colleges, I would assume it would be ran in January before the season starts but there doesn't seem to be any mention from what I saw/heard

PTH2009

There's a few other sporting events that may disrupt this new GAA season calender

The soccer World cup is on next summer from 14 June- 15 July

Overseas Rugby internationals take place in June

For fans of all sports everything could come together and there will be weeks with no real sport on

Mehapoy

The April left free for clubs is a good idea but counties have to buy into it, none of this training behind closed doors or challenge matches in the back of beyond away from authorities, I also think county's will have to standardise championship formats in each county ie. if you've 16 senior clubs 4 groups of 4 or if you've 21 clubs another standard format...so players can play in April but every club still has something to play for in September when inter county is over.

Also it needs championship formats at inter county where counties aren't out 4 months before other counties, there needs to be graded championships run in parallel and counties seasons broadly the same length, give or take a month difference for a short and sharp knock out series...

Dirty Dingus McGee

Jayop wrote: »

I had a quick look at the green proposal but I'd need a lot more specifics than what's on the PDF on the CPA website.

For me their three core principles are very wise.

-April free for clubs, great chance to have a firm date so players, managers etc can target fitness build up etc. No distractions so you can run off 4 full rounds of fixtures for every club.
- Season finishing in calendar year. I agree with this although the club finals in Paddy's day is a nice day.
- December free just makes sense. Give the lads a bit of down time to do some wintering.

I think it's aterrible diea precisely for the reaosn you point out.

It will ruin the AI club finals as an occassion.It's connection with St Patricks day is what makes it such a big event.

I'd also imagine club players would prefer time off to celbrate a county win rather than going straight into playing in the provinical championships.A better ida would be to postpone the AI club until the new year and keep the club finals on st patricks day.

PTH2009

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

I think it's aterrible diea precisely for the reaosn you point out.

It will ruin the AI club finals as an occassion.It's connection with St Patricks day is what makes it such a big event.

I'd also imagine club players would prefer time off to celbrate a county win rather than going straight into playing in the provinical championships.A better ida would be to postpone the AI club until the new year and keep the club finals on st patricks day.

its a tradition that will be destroyed just like the First sunday in September and the Third sunday in September :(:(

watching the club finals on TV before going to the pub on paddys day is a nice tradition of mine