League over for another season, most counties not in championship action until the end of this month at the earliest, the majority of inter-county hurlers have been released back into the bosom of their clubs for a few weeks, getting ready for club action.
We can assume that most county managers aren’t too happy about this and small blame to them for that. Those counties going well, such as Dublin and Limerick, celebrating their respective Allianz Hurling League wins last weekend in Division 1 and Division 2, won’t want their positive rhythm broken. Those who are suffering would probably like to have as much time as possible to fix that which they perceive to be broken.
The call, however, should not be with those county managers – even the most benign of them; not now, not ever.
Important as success is at the top level it’s even more important that the GAA should continue to flourish at its base, its foundation – the club.
Little by little over the last few decades, as counties became more and more desperate for All-Ireland success, the old values of the GAA have been eroded. Lip service, and lip service only, has been paid to the game at club level, but more and more the GAA powers have focused on the inter-county scene.
It wasn’t just the extra Saturdays and Sundays taken from the summer months through all the extra qualifier games. That was fine, necessary even, to give teams a second bite, at least, at the cherry that is the All-Ireland title. It was the way that individual county boards handed over the power to decide when club championships should be held – their power – to the individual county team managers.
The needs of clubs and club players were completely ignored. Liam MacCarthy and Sam Maguire didn’t just become the Holy Grail, they became the Only Grail, county championships subsumed, squeezed into a few weeks in early autumn when the ground was already cutting up badly, the evenings darkening, the summer long gone.
Croke Park facilitated all this, sat by in smug satisfaction, cash being coined at the stiles as the inter-county championships grew and grew. In their myopia, their new Utopia, money became the new God.
The talk was of income, revenue streams, hurling and football at inter-county level their ‘product’, TV the purchaser, all else trampled down in the name of commerce. Well, Croke Park is wrong.
It’s not just a cliché, the club Is the lifeblood of the GAA, its heart and its soul? The club player is the sinew, the bone and gristly muscle, and yes, even the fat, us old junior D boys, also needed to sustain life.
It was centre-stage originally, and the first few decades of the All-Ireland championship was based around the club. The growth of the inter-county championships was, and remains, a welcome development, and long may that growth continue. But, not at the expense of the club game.
That is why the inter-county players must be released back to their clubs at regular intervals during the season, that is why the inter-county players must be shared with the club during the season for games and for training. Even as things stand, that doesn’t happen often enough, and it doesn’t happen widely enough.
The GAA authorities in Croke Park should mandate that regular rounds of all county championships are played during the summer, regardless of how the county team is progressing in the championship; it should further mandate that all inter-county players are released back to their clubs in preparation for and to play in those games.
Liam and Sam will remain centre-stage, and that’s as it should be, but county championships should no longer be treated as annoyances to be got rid of as quickly as possible before and after that inter-county action.
Hurling, especially, is a summer game, but a summer game for all, not just for the elite. It’s time the GAA came back to the people.
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/3j0wNuCDHEU/post.aspx
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