Fixtures......or lack of

[Blue and White]

This may turn into a bit of a rant so apologies in advance. I feel that the county board are due some heavy critisicm having shown total incompetence with regard to being able to come up with a strategy to best serve the majority of its members.
Firstly I am a huge supported of the Offaly football team and travel home and away through rain and shine and rain to support them. I feel that county players need time to rest before big games and should be looked after given the huge committments they give.

BUT Senior club football teams in Offaly started training in late January/ February and have trained for 3/ 4 nights a week since then. In the 7 months since some teams have had 1 senior championship match. This is LUNACY. The county team is being wrapped in cotton wool and for what?
If championship games had been played the Sunday before the Laois game could they have played any worse. I doubt it. Of course players risk injury but injuries have occured in Offaly training sessions held the week up to a match and they can occur crossing the street, picking up a bag of cement, kama sutra....

A lot of club players sacrifice holidays, family and work during the summer not knowing when the next game will be played. Teams have to start training early to get over the April game and then must adjust the training to peak again toward the tail of the summer. Motivationally this is a huge hurdle for the clubman. After the April game we were told it would be 6 weeks to the next game, then another 4 weeks, then another....that's madness. Players are being lost to Rugby and Soccer and I know that they have a different representative system but its just about a few bright fellas coming together and organising it.

Look at the state of our senior football championship. The standard is awful with one standout team. Surely a more concerted effort could result in more players interested for a start. A higher level of competition with teams peaking at the SAME time.

I'd be interested in hearing what other footballers/ hurlers think. There are going to be those who say don't be such a *&@£$ and get behind the team etc and to those I'd refer back to the opening paragraphing adding that I pay membership, I pay into county and club games, I buy €100 tickets to build stands and buy stickers for my car. I give up drink and holidays and listen to the wife.

All I want...is to play football on a regular basis.

[Lone Shark]

I don't think anyone disagrees with this, or would blame you for bringing it up. I've done a wee piece on this before - you can read it here: The Summer is Long, Let's Share it Round

The general gist is that if there were seperate seasons, May-July for counties, Aug - Oct for clubs, with a small overlap for successful counties, clubs could leave the start of training till March, play league during the summer without county players and have the main men back for the championship.

Granted Offaly is particularly lunatic with playing a championship game back in April - that makes no sense. [/url]

[As Such Ger]

While we are on the issue of clubs, can someone please say why there is a full round of club games on this weekend? For the last number of years the August Bank holiday weekend has always been a free weekend. It is probably the only weekend of the summer that you could plan ahead and book holidays etc.

If they intended changing this rule this year, why werent clubs notified months ago, so people could organise holidays, trips away etc.
Or perhaps they did make this known. Treasurer would you know if this was ever discussed this year?

[Treasurer]

Yep it was decided at start of year that June would be free of championships and the free bank holiday weekend would no longer apply.

[mykneehurts]

Why was Ferbane's match against Edenderry whaich was fixed for the Thursday after the Leinster Final cancelled when neither of us have any county players? The fact that Ross Brady was on the minors wouldn't have made a difference because the minors would have been out that weekend anyway.

What really annoyed me was seeing Reynolds and Meehan starting for Clara senior hurlers against Belmont. I think Tommo was on the subs too. If these lads were allowed play hurling why couldn't we play our match?

Bah!