Split season hawks have floor as nostalgics tune out

Provided it's not withdrawn at a late hour, the motion to push the All-Ireland finals into August will go to a vote on Saturday and there is great suspicion in the air.

Clearly, the split season hawks in the club community do not trust the media's bona fides on this topic.

Last weekend was a case in point.

Niall McCoy's news story on the likely fate of the motion was received by many of our readers as a full endorsement of the plan to extend the inter-county season.

"This RTÉ headline & story illustrates manoeuvres behind August All Ireland & why it is a media generated idea," wrote one reader. "RTÉ don't give two damns about GAA players or clubs."

Former Meath footballer - and Club Players' Association spokesman - Anthony Moyles wondered why it was coming up again and branded it "media driven BS".

'The Premier View' Tipperary supporters forum remarked that the "lads in D4" were "pushing hard and it's not for the clubs".

Quite where they managed to divine this campaigning intent in the article is a mystery since it was hardly apparent in the text itself.

The article was a report on which way various county boards were leaning - ironically most of it nothing but good news for proponents of the status quo.

But it's one of the hallmarks of any culture war that the media will be indicted as cheerleaders on one side of the argument.

And obviously, no one was ever stuck for applause or retweets after lashing out at the 'lads in D4', which is fine.

It's, of course, true that some high-profile pundits have been staunch critics of the condensed inter-county calendar.

Donal Óg Cusack has spoken in withering terms of the 'microwaved hurling championship' in his Friday morning 'Hurling Nation' column.

Pat Spillane, formerly of RTÉ, has blamed the split season for almost every ill going, from early season injury epidemics, to spend on inter-county teams, to a potential drop-off in sponsorship revenue (though Pat has been pacified of late since the FRC saved his sport - he was quoting Napoleon Bonaparte approvingly last week).

Elsewhere, a couple of recalcitrant newspaper columnists still regard the All-Ireland final not being in September as a sacrilege and an affront to God - akin to renaming Croke Park the Tonybet Stadium.

Many of these lads are so bereft at the absence of inter-county action in August and September that arguments about the unsustainability of the old calendar simply do not register with them.

They insist on seeing the change as a gratuitous piece of crapification perpetrated on them for no apparent reason.

The All-Ireland hurling and football finals being on successive weekends don't allow either as much room to breathe - though as opponents of the motion insist, this can be altered by a change to the structure rather than extending the season.

It's also true that the dramatic expansion in the number of football championship games, concertinaed into a relatively tight period, with no accompanying change to the pre-existing TV rights deal (which runs out in 2027), had created some issues in the last couple of seasons.

Meath supporters, for instance, took it as a grievous snub that so few of their games prior to the quarter-final were on television.

Having continued to show the Dublin-Meath Leinster championship fixture years after it stopped being competitive, RTÉ were caught slightly unawares by it abruptly becoming competitive again last year. Their surprise group-stage win over Kerry wasn't televised either on RTÉ or GAA+.

It's not just the media, either.

From our own admittedly limited engagement with Joe Public, it does seem to be a widespread enough lament that All-Ireland finals are no longer in September, like they were in the old days.

Not that this should count for too much.

The views of the players hold the greatest weight. They certainly should trump the opinions of maudlin sentimentalists who still haven't been able to reconcile themselves emotionally to the idea of an All-Ireland final before September.

Three days out from Congress, only one side of the argument is making the case.

Opponents of the motion look to have all the momentum, both among the voting delegates and in the media.

One suspects that many of the loudest advocates of returning the All-Ireland finals to its September date are not currently paying close attention.

Possibly because this cohort contains a higher proportion of casual supporters who are not minded to fret about the fate of the various motions before Congress.

Maybe because the compromise proposal to nudge the All-Ireland finals into the first half of August isn't enough for them?

In all likelihood, the drumbeat of annoyance from this constituency that the All-Ireland finals are still in late July is only likely to reach a deafening pitch in July itself.

The same community tends to only get up to speed on the championship format while it's being played out in real-time. (We have jokingly proposed an 'Are they out now, or what?' helpline where punters could call up and be answered in the negative or the affirmative.)

While the players are reported to be heavily in favour of the split season, the GPA are backing this proposal to push back the All-Ireland finals.

The players' body were anxious that this be tied to the removal of the pre-season competitions - to be gone again after one year back - to ensure the inter-county season wasn't lengthened as a result.

As it happens, this may have further weakened its chances of success, given that both Ulster and Connacht are very insistent on retaining their pre-season tournaments, especially the former.

Offaly's Michael Duignan observed on the RTÉ GAA podcast that the bigger counties are the most strident, while the smaller ones, that may be less likely to wind up in an All-Ireland final, are more inclined to endorse the motion.

Cork and Galway - two big dual counties with well-attended club championships to run off - are especially anxious to kill the proposal to expand the season, even by a fortnight.

So confident are they of success that they are keen that the motion isn't withdrawn this Saturday, so they can bury it once and for all.

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