At around lunchtime on Wednesday afternoon, Croke Park issued an email which was short and to the point: ‘We are recommencing our fixtures bulletin as part of our efforts to promote and publicise the club games taking place in the coming weeks and months. Please find attached GAA Club Senior fixtures for the coming days.’ Attached was a list of games that quite literally covered the length and breadth of the country.
The schedule covered both football and hurling. To anyone with an interest in watching all of those intercounty players who lit up the first half of 2024, who shone in League and Championship, the selection of games on offer was the equivalent of a 10-course tasting menu at a fancy restaurant. The number of club football games in black and white totalled just under 100.
Interested in catching the tail-end of the buzz around Armagh’s emotional All-Ireland senior football win? Why not take in Saturday’s game involving Clann Éireann, the home club of Barry McCambridge who is one of the frontrunners for Footballer of the Year. Or Sunday’s action where Rian O’Neill’s Crossmaglen take on Sarsfields. The Donegal SFC is also underway where, no doubt, Jim McGuinness and his management team will be checking out the form to further build a panel to make an Ulster and All-Ireland tilt in 2025.
In Dublin, All-Ireland club finalists Kilmacud can be found early Saturday evening against St Vincent’s, a game which should have something for any walk-up supporter in the capital interested in Gaelic football. From Kildare to Longford to Sligo, the football championship is in full swing. In hurling, it’s the same.
The list from Croke Park might have been half the size of its football counterpart but it hit all the main bases from top to bottom of this country. O’Donovan Rossa versus Cúchullains Dunloy is a stand-out fixture in Antrim on Sunday while the likes of Shane O’Donnell and John Conlon, just two of the stars of Clare’s All-Ireland winning campaign, are out in action as Éire Óg Ennis take on defending champions Clonlara. Television viewers won’t be disappointed either with that plum hurling tie being covered on GAA Beo by TG4.
Now, remember, the list sent out with over 150 games only concerns the prime senior fixtures. Below that tip of the iceberg lies a whole multiple of that in the shape of a dense weight of intermediate and junior games, not to mention another separate iceberg in terms of underage. And yet, there are none so blind as those who will not see.
The idea that the GAA has ‘given over’ the months of August and September to other sports with the move away from the old tradition of a September All-Ireland finish is a fallacy that has been exposed week-on-week, year-on-year. David Clifford keeps being posited in different quarters as a poster boy for the ‘issues’. Potential burn-out, too many games, so much demand on a generational player who carries such weight of expectation every time he goes out with Kerry or Fossa.
Talk to the player himself though and he cheerfully keeps repeating that he wouldn’t want to be in any other position. Reaching All-Irelands or going deep into summer with his county. Reaching county finals or club All-Irelands and going deep into the autumn or winter because of the success of Fossa.
A guy who brings such joie de vivre to Gaelic football that he continues to produce memorable moments week-on-week, the overhead kicked pass while on the ground just the latest. His delight was evident in a recent interview along with brother Paudie, the pair singing off the same hymn sheet. ‘The beauty of the club season is while you’re putting 110 per cent and everything into Fossa, you can still of course do things that maybe you wouldn’t be able to do in the Kerry season.
You can go on holidays midweek and be back for a game at the weekend, or maybe go out with the team after the game when you mightn’t be doing that for every game with Kerry. ‘While there’s more action, and it’s busier, I just think you can still live a bit of your life while you’re involved with a club team, whereas it’s just a bit more fullon with the county scene. That’s the simple fact of it.
’ As Paudie chimed: ‘It’s a better life balance the way it is now with the split season definitely.’ This weekend, club streaming platform Clubber again has its own separate tasting menu for the armchair viewer. Offering a mix of hurling and football from nine different counties with 126 different clubs being featured.
So, perhaps, it’s time to rethink how we look at the GAA season. Perhaps ‘split’ season doesn’t really cut it. It’s a word with age-old connotations, mainly negative.
Just look at the definition. 1. break or cause to break forcibly into parts, especially into halves or along the grain: ‘the ice cracked and split’ 2.
(with reference to a group of people) divide into two or more groups: ‘once again the family was split up’ Now neither of those two examples that spring up first to meet the dictionary definition would be regarded as positive. Split suggests a negative, a crack, a divide. But there is no divide for players like the Cliffords who are merely reunited with their clubs.
And happy to be. It’s not a split season, it’s a unified season. The season has rightly been amended to unify the club and county campaigns so that they are regarded in tandem with each other.
The calendar now is mapped out to include a fairer portion for clubs rather than being subsumed by an inter-county season that basically extended for 10 months and left club and county players alike disenchanted. Where you can watch Kerry hurler and back-to-back Poc Fada champion Fionan Mackessy prove that talent has no borders after his club transfer to O’Loughlin Gaels in Kilkenny. The towering player was named Man of the Match in the recent win over Mullinavat.
Or look at county goalkeeper Enda Rowland scoring 1-2 – from goals – earlier this month in the Laois championship. Or tune in or go to watch any of those games this weekend where county stars will be in action locally. So maybe it’s time to reframe it as a ‘unified’ season, not a ‘split’ season.
Which would emphasise to those who cannot see that the two are just different sides of the same coin..
