NUIG may be forced to quit championship

A tradition which stretches back for over a century may be brought to an end next year as NUI Galway find it almost impossible to field a team in the county senior football championship due to a massive migration of third-level students to the USA for the summer.

NUI Galway are due to open their championship campaign against outright favourites Corofin at Pearse Stadium next Sunday evening (6pm), but the team management will struggle to field a team due to the absence of so many key players.

The GAA Development Officer at the College, Michael O’Connor, admits that the whole future of the College team’s participation in the championship will have to be looked at because so many players are spending the summer months in America this year.

“We really haven’t a clue who we will have available until two days, or even two hours, before the game,” said O’Connor. “There is a massive amount of students gone overseas this year, particularly on J-1 visas to the USA. Over the past couple of weeks, all we have been doing is trying to find out what players are available.

“In fairness, the Galway Football Board have been really good to us. They have fixed our game for Sunday evening to allow our players to fulfil Intermediate fixtures with their clubs or to come back from other counties. But I’ve never seen so many players unavailable and it will have to be looked at in the future, whether it’s viable for us to continue in this competition.”

NUI Galway received a ‘bye’ from the first two rounds of the championship – and are safe from the threat of relegation – and O’Connor said it would be a shame to end a tradition of participation in the county championship which goes back for over a century.

But the number of players spending the summer in the US, UK, or Canada has grown each year since the economic crisis began in 2008.

The team which represents the College on Sunday will not bear any resemblance to the NUI Galway side who competed in the Sigerson Cup, the inter-varsities competition, back in early February or the FBD Connacht League in January, losing all four senior games.

For a preview of this coming weekend’s fixtures see this week’s Sentinel