Rabbitt hits out at the prospect of provincial club games

GALWAY senior ladies football manager Tim Rabbitt has expressed his frustration over the Connacht club championships now been shoehorned into the shortened LGFA fixtures calendar, affording county teams little or no time to prepare collectively for the All-Ireland series.

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the three Gaelic games Associations – GAA, Camogie and LGFA – had clearly set out periods for county and inter-county competitions but, in a surprise move, the LGFA has now also thrown the provincial club championships into the mix.

It means that once Galway clubs conclude their respective county championships on September 19, they will be straight into a provincial series that will run into October – and possibly up to the week before inter-county action returns on October 17. The decision has angered Galway manager Tim Rabbitt.

“September 14t is the start date for the inter-county season (when teams can return to training) but at least two of those weeks will now be taken up with the club provincials, if that is the way it is going to proceed,” he said. “So, obviously, we wouldn’t find that acceptable at all.

“We would be giving the clubs the time to play their season, and we wouldn’t be cutting across them in any way, nor should we, but we would expect from September 14 that the players, for their own sake, would be allowed to concentrate on the inter-county scene.

“If we are to progress on to an All-Ireland semi-final, we would need those couple of weeks of preparation as a group together. So, it seems strange to me. Everyone has had to make some compromises this year and, obviously, we have compromised with a two-game competition, albeit with the chance of another two games after that.”

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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