David Jennings
THE PROSPECT of pencilling in two rounds of the Mayo senior football league for the June Bank Holiday weekend has been met with widespread resistance from players and managers across the county.
The Mayo News understands that the County Board’s ‘proposal’ to play two rounds of the Division 1A and Division 1B campaigns over a 48-hour period next month will be shelved due to a lack of support from clubs.
Speaking to this newspaper last night, Ballinrobe manager Norman O’Brien branded the idea as ‘degrading’ while Garrymore forward Jimmy Killeen believes there is no way his club could cope with such an intensive programme.
“I’m not in favour of it and it’s degrading to the league,” said O’Brien. “You also have the issue of player welfare with the games being so close together and I think it’s an idea that could have major consequences.”
According to the former Kilmaine goalkeeper, the problem surfaced due to the competition starting so late and he feels the old league schedule which used to start in March is the way forward.
“It should have started in March around Paddy’s weekend like it used to. Mayo’s run to the league final was great but I think we should still play league games when they are in action.
“They could easily balance the fixtures so that teams with a lot of county representatives could play each other so that one team wouldn’t have a distinct advantage over another.
“For instance, if Ballina had four players on the county team and Ballintubber just had one it wouldn’t be fair but you should pit together teams that have roughly the same number of players missing.
“Sligo and Galway seem to be able to run off their leagues without too many problems so I don’t see why we can’t.”
With the prospect of the Mayo SFL season now running into the end of the year, Norman O’Brien feels the only option to prevent that is to play a some midweek games.
“If you had an odd game on a Wednesday night during the summer it wouldn’t be too bad, and then maybe play again on the Sunday. That way you would have a four-day break which would give players time to recover.”
For Garrymore, playing two matches on the June Bank Holiday weekend simply isn’t an option according to their talisman Jimmy Killeen, as they don’t have the resources to cope with the demands.
“It’s certainly not an option for us. There is no way that we could play two games like that so close together. We are a small rural club with a small pick and we have lads working in Dublin and to ask them to come back and maybe play a game on a Friday night or a Saturday, and then again on the Monday just isn’t on.
“Maybe the bigger clubs who have a bigger panel of players to pick from could do it, but we certainly couldn’t.”
This certainly isn’t the first time that the league fixture list has come in for criticism and The Mayo News/O’Neills Club Stars award winner is well used to being frustrated by it.
“I’m 12 years playing senior football with Garrymore and it’s an ongoing problem,” he said.
“I’ve never seen the league start as late as it did this year though and it seems to be that they will just try and run it off now as quickly as they can. We’ve had very few games to prepare for the championship and that’s what the league should be for.
“And as for a social life, it’s impossible to plan anything,” he added. “We’ve no guarantee about when we will be playing and we can’t plan a holiday or anything like that. The whole thing is very frustrating and something needs to be done.
“But the June Banking Holiday idea is certainly not a runner for us.”
The CCC of the Mayo GAA Board were due to meet last night (Monday) to make a final decision on the issue.
