The split season

Pre or post split season the Leinster hurling round robin for example would be 5 games over 6 weeks, it's just 3 or 4 weeks earlier with the April club month gone. Intercounty hurling isn't any more rushed now than it was in 2018&19 the pre covid runs of the round robin, the answer was given categorically at Congress on extending the intercounty season, basically in counties where there are a high portion of dual club players it could be a disaster.

What difference does it make to the atmosphere if Croke Park is packed in July or in August? What's so special about August vs. July?

I get you, there is a tradionalism and nostalgia about playing the finals in August / September. But the championship structure at IC level is very different now with far more games being played. It would be workable to move the finals back to Aug / Sep but it would also probably mean a return to straight knockout competitions and the 4 provinical winners going into the AI semi finals. And maybe the 2 provincial finalists going to the semis for the hurling.

We can't have it all and the split season appears to be the best compromise we have come up with so far.

Yeah it’s definitely a difficult one to make everyone happy. I’m just saying I can see both sides of the argument and plenty of people fall somewhere in between . A person can have played club hurling or football , understand the frustrations of fixture uncertainty and still feel that the current championship structure has lost something .

I suppose the key question for some isn’t whether club players deserve certainty… of course they do. The question is whether the current version of the split season is the only way to achieve that certainty.

You can acknowledge the benefits… club championship is more predictable, club players aren’t left waiting months for fixtures, County boards can plan more effectively…. etc … and still argue that ….. the intercounty season is too compressed, championship can feel over before summer has really begun or that the GAA’s biggest showcase games no longer occupy the traditional summer sporting calendar.

Like I said, I don’t have the answers but those positions aren’t contradictory.

Pat spillane and donal og are very much involved in the club scene. Im surprised you don't know that.

Brehony and Curtis i don't know, but probably not.

Spillane's suggestion which he's threw out more than once of running intercounty hurling alongside club football and vice versa shows he hasn't a clue on the dynamics of running a GAA calendar. Donal Og wants a drawn out intercounty season for his own interests as a pundit on RTE.

Just to return to this after a couple of days away.

I entered this discussion last week in direct response to a poster who worried "you're going to see a big fall off of interest with the casual GAA fan" if the current split season calendar remains in place. My point remains that I wouldn't go changing things for the sake of such people when there are many other far more important stakeholders instead.

Since then, the discussion has gradually morphed into whether or not the inter-county portion of the split season could be extended somewhat. That's a whole other matter. My view that the split season shouldn't be abandoned for the sake of the 'casual fan' doesn't imply that I wouldn't be open to exploring the possibility of if the split season could be tweaked somehow.

Finally, and this is possibly somewhat flippant, but it occurs to me it could be argued that the current split season calendar is actually for the benefit of the 'casual fan', by having all the biggest games of the year (All-Ireland semi-finals and finals in both codes) during July.

If a 'casual fan' sits down in front of the TV some Sunday in July and starts browsing through channels, they'll land upon the hurling or football and likely stay there, because there's little else on.

But if they sit down from about middle of August onwards, they could land upon something like Liverpool v Arsenal or Manchester United v Chelsea, and choose to watch that instead….