GAA cutting out bureaucracy but will there be any games played?

Inside Track by John McIntyre

IT’S a sign of the seriousness of the situation when the GAA abandons its traditional methodical approach to big decision-making when handing the association’s Management Committee emergency powers to deal with the fallout of the Covid-19 crisis.

The GAA held a Special Congress last Friday in response to the major impact the coronavirus is already having on fixtures at all levels of Gaelic games. Even that was a surreal experience as delegates dealt remotely with the proposal to fast-track the association’s response to the Government’s current restrictions.

The net result is that the GAA’s Management Committee will now have the authority to make quick decisions should championship matches get the green light without having to resort to a Special Congress and the laborious build-up to it. The required changes to fixture scheduling and systems of running off the various title races won’t be a hostage to bureaucracy.

In reality, the GAA had no other choice. The last thing any player, mentor or supporter would want in the current environment of uncertainty would be endless meetings about what to do if the go-ahead is eventually given to proceed with the hurling and football championships.

It is already accepted that the round-robin nature of the provincial campaigns has fallen by the wayside, while it may even prove difficult to give defeated teams a second chance depending on time constraints if, as is now generally accepted, the championships will revert to a knock-out system.

The elephant in the room, however, is whether any sport which attracts big crowds takes place at all in 2020? Health Minister Simon Harris admitted over the weekend that it was unlikely that massed gatherings would be permitted for the rest of the year – a scenario which just wouldn’t be a massive blow to sport, but all major events such as the Galway Arts Festival.

Frankly, this outcome doesn’t bear thinking about but there is no doubt that Ireland – and rightly so – will not jeopardise all the country’s sterling efforts so far to limit the impact of the virus by risking a second wave of infections by reverting to normality too soon. And in the overall scheme of things where so many families have already been bereaved, sport, concerts, festivals and the pub are but a minor detail.

Yet, we are entitled to live in hope; that the overall situation down the road will allow the Government to relax restrictions quicker than is currently envisaged. In the meantime, everything is guesswork. We just don’t know how long Covid-19 will continue to throw our daily lives into such disorder.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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