No more slumber for successful GAA teams in month of January

Inside Track with John McIntyre

THERE was a time when January was something of a slumber month for the GAA . . . players at club and county level getting some opportunity to recharge their batteries after the exertions of the previous season. Well, that era is well and truly gone as the Association grapples with a burgeoning fixtures schedule.

January has now become arguably the busiest month of the year for GAA activity, and what’s coming down the tracks in 2020 will see another increase in the maze of matches being staged. The pre-national League tournaments like the Walsh Cup and the Connacht FBD League will be in full swing, while action in the continually squeezed Sigerson and Fitzgibbon Cups is also scheduled.

The National Leagues are due to commence on the last weekend of January – Galway is hosting a double header at Pearse Stadium on Sunday the 26th, with the hurlers facing Westmeath and the footballers taking on Monaghan – but now for the first time ever, the All-Ireland club championships will be completed in the first month of 2020.

That results in All-Ireland semi-finals and finals at senior, intermediate and junior level in both hurling and football being run off in often the most hostile month of the year weather wise. It’s scheduling which is asking for trouble and puts players involved with successful club teams under a new kind of pressure and presented with different challenges.

Given the preceding Christmas festive period, it’s most unfair on club players to try and be peaking for critical matches on the first weekend of January. Locally, the Oughterard intermediate footballers have an extra week’s reprieve ahead of their All-Ireland semi-final, but for the hurlers of St Thomas’ and Micheal Breathnach, together with Corofin footballers, they are unlikely to be lashing into the turkey and ham on Christmas Day or liberally toasting their triumphs of 2019.

For the managers operating at senior level – in Galway’s case, Kevin O’Brien of Corofin and Kevin Lally of St Thomas’ – they will have to work around the demands of Christmas in order to have their teams ready for tough assignments against Nemo Rangers and Borris-Ileigh respectively. Perhaps, that process will go smoothly enough, but players won’t really be able to relax or partake fully in the Christmas festivities.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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