Covid19 and What Happens With the GAA

In 2001 the G.A.A. saw part of its playing year closed down for a number of weeks when Ireland was hit with Foot and Mouth disease. Luckily for the G.A.A. at the time the shut down happened in the months of February and March and it was able to play Catch Up after a few weeks where there was no activity.

Nineteen years on the G.A.A. and other sporting groups not just in Ireland but all around the globe have been forced to close down once more because of the Covid19 Virus which most of us will have known about since before last Christmas but only entered Europe in more recent times and in Ireland in the last few weeks.

This time around the G.A.A. and other sporting groups will not be so lucky to playing off its different competitions. Already major sporting events planned for this year – events like the Aintree Grand National and the European Soccer Championships which were to be staged in a number of cities all around Europe including Dublin have been put back twelve months. Announcements will surely be made of other events like The Tour de France, Wimbledon, the different Formula 1 races and the many sporting events that take place in America could all fall by the wayside as well. We are told however that the biggest sporting contest planned for 2020 the Olympic Games will go ahead, but really it is hard to see this go ahead right now.

Of course one major sporting event – The Cheltenham Race Festival has gone ahead. Why it went ahead is mindboggling. It is hard to understand how Boris Johnson and co across the water allowed so many people gather in the one area for a number of days happen. I and I know many others can but think of the title of the BBC Comedy – Only Fools and Horses when you think about the event going ahead. Maybe it was a case of money talks and this is why the event went ahead.

On the world stage when it comes to the G.A.A. what happens to this year’s All-Ireland Hurling and Football Championships in hurling and football as well as in the Ladies Codes will not capture the imagination of many around the world, but they will of people here in Ireland and in areas around the world where Irish people have settled and made their home.

The G.A.A. are often criticised – sometimes rightly and other times wrongly, but they along with their sister associations – The Ladies Football and Camogie Associations deserve praise for announcing so quickly last week after Taoiseach Leo Varadkar while in America ahead of Saint Patrick’s Day announced that schools, colleges, crèches, Libraries were to close, they too announced that they were going to call a halt to all fixtures planned to the end of the month. This was a rough date of when fixtures would be resuming but I think we all know that games will not be resuming in April.

The Waterford G.A.A. County Board to their credit have announced that fixtures planned for April will not go ahead now, suggesting that maybe fixtures at a National Level will not take place either at this point. A number of other counties have also announced that there will be no fixtures in the month of April.

Suppose the Covid19 Virus comes to an end in a month or six weeks and sporting bodies decide to resume hosting fixtures once more, it could mean that the G.A.A. will have some major headaches.

As things stand the National Hurling Leagues are down to the knockout stages. These fixtures could well be completed in three weeks. The G.A.A. could complete them in an even quicker time should they play the quarter and semi finals within three or four days of one another, with one round of games going ahead in the middle of a week, but where would this leave player welfare. It’s safe to say that the G.A.A. would not go down this road, but it is one that is available to them.

In football things are a little more different. Heading into last weekend there was two rounds of fixtures to be played in the all four divisions before the finals were to be played.

In previous years the G.A.A. could have decided to suspend the league competition if they were cleared to play games again in six to eight weeks and go straight into the provincial championships and they could if they so wished have played the remainder of the leagues in late November or December. Another option would be to declare them null and void as things stand.

   But we cannot go straight into the championships in 2020 without playing out the remainder of the leagues especially in football.

Last year as we all know the G.A.A. head a special congress in Cork to get the right to introduce a second tier football championship, where teams that play in Division four of the National League, the teams that finish from third to eight in Division three and the bottom two teams in division two would play for the Tailteann Cup provided they did not reach a provincial final whereby they would compete for the Sam Maguire Cup.

And what makes things interesting when it comes to which championship sides compete in when it comes to football, seven of the eight teams in division two can still win the competition, while Cork who leads Division Three could still miss out on a promotion place if they were to lose their last two games in the group section.

If the G.A.A. were to postpone or declare the remainder of the leagues ‘null and void’ it would mean that an emergency special congress would have to be held to decide a new format for the Tailteann Cup or take a decision to postpone the start up of it for another twelve months and the teams competing in it would be determined by where they would finish in next year’s National League.

And we must not forget that the Club is the most important unit in the association. Whatever about the inter county championships in 2020, if and when games resume the Club Championships at all levels have to come first. Without the clubs we would have no inter county championships as the best available players are picked from the different club championships to represent their county in inter county competition.