COLM O’Shaughnessy had possibly the shortest playing season of any inter-county footballer in Ireland last year.
Tipperary played 12 league and championship games. He played in all 12, seeing every minute of it barring the last handful of their Tailteann Cup tie with Down.
Beaten in the Munster semi-final, they were in the first tranche of teams eliminated from Tailteann Cup on June 3.
The club championship in Tipperary didn’t begin until two months later on August 3.
O’Shaughnessy’s club, Ardfinnan, were knocked out at the end of the group stages on September 2, four weeks later.
The Tailteann Cup lasted another six weeks beyond Tipp’s demise, and the county final between Clonmel Commercials and JK Brackens was held on October 22, seven weeks and a day after Ardfinnan’s year ended.
So he had not one summer holiday this year, but two.
A few days in Ibiza with the Tipperary lads and then a bit of quality time in Malta with his girlfriend, all fitted in between the county season ending and the club campaign beginning.
“When you put those numbers to it, it was very short alright like,” he says.
“We got a really long break for summer before the club championship really kicked off. I got two holidays out of it alright, so in terms of that I was happy enough, but obviously it would have been nice to have been playing later into the championship.
“Just the simple fact of knowing we had that summer holiday period, we knew when it was going to be and we could book holidays, that was a big positive.”
The last time Ardfinnan reached a county final in 2018, he found himself in bother with John Evans, who had been drafted in to take over after they’d been thumped by Clonmel in the first group game that April.
Just as in the All-Ireland semi-final two years previous, Tipperary’s summer was ended again by Mayo. This was a time when Tipp were pushing up the hill, unsure of how deep their summers would take them.
Trying to fit a break in, he took a stab that they might make the Super 8s. They didn’t. The Tipperary championship resumed in mid-August and he was only just home.
“I got in a bit of trouble for booking a holiday and then I was back the week before the club championship,” says O’Shaughnessy.
“The timing of it wasn’t great on my part but it worked out not too badly in the long run, we got to the county final that year.
“One of the other years we got knocked out earlier, the club championship then started earlier and I had to cancel a holiday then.
“I’ve had other close shaves. I found it really hard to schedule a holiday before the split season.”
Bear in mind this is not a part-time club footballer talking. O’Shaughnessy has been a mainstay of the Tipperary defence going back to 2015, helping them to a rare Munster title in 2020.
That was the year everything changed.
The previous December, after months of trying to come up with solutions amid public pressure from the now-defunct Club Players’ Association, the GAA’s Fixture Task Force released its report.
“Having considered, at some length, the implications of split season scheduling, the Task Force concluded that it would not be the best solution for the fixture challenges faced by the GAA,” it read.
The All-Ireland final was already being incrementally brought forward, having taken place on the first weekend of September in 2018 and 2019.
Then Covid struck. As things moved tentatively towards a return, it was decided to flip the season and put the club game in first in the hope that by the time the inter-county season began, some crowds would be allowed in.
Dublin would beat Mayo in the All-Ireland final with virtually nobody there to see it.
Things weren’t fully back to normal by mid-2021.
By the end of that year, the GAA found its penicillin in the petri dish.
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KEVIN Johnson was managing Ballintubber then, taking them to successive Mayo titles in 2018 and ‘19.
He is about to begin his third year in Corofin, having guided them back to the top of the tree in Galway and taken them to a Connacht final where they were beaten by a St Brigid’s team unlucky not to win an All-Ireland.
That Connacht final was held on December 2. The Corofin players took two months off and haven’t hit the pitch yet.
Their 2024 campaign begins in the middle of March and if things go well again, the county final is set for October 27.
In hell or high water, they will play every two weeks, alternating with a hurling scene that did produce the All-Ireland champions in St Thomas’.
Pre-season competitions have been scrapped in favour of having just a league and championship.
Football clubs will have nine league games, a possible league final, a championship group stage and then the knockout rounds.
Two weeks ago, the clubs were sent the dates for the year. There’s an in-built contingency should Galway reach an All-Ireland final.
“I think it’s provided a lot more clarity to the county board in terms of fixtures, to managers and players,” says Johnson.
His first two years in Ballintubber, their opening championship game was in early April.
Some counties operated that system and some didn’t. Everyone had to cut their own cloth. But where group stages were concerned, it was almost impossible to fit it all in without that April fixture.
“What I found difficult [in Ballintubber] was that first round of championship in April and the importance of those two points.
“That was very difficult for players, managers, county managers. Then four months break. Then other competitions after the championship, you had to fulfil fixtures to finish leagues in November and December. That, in my view, didn’t support the club player,” says the Corofin boss.
“You could not plan, not only for the club but for the player and the county manager.
“Between round two and three [in the National League], there was a full round of intermediate and senior championship club games where there was always going to be an injury or two picked up.
“The split season makes sense. It’s not perfect and it’s different for everyone. For the majority, in my experience of it, it’s gone quite well.”
His county contingent were back with the club five weeks before club championship this year, having had just a fortnight to recover after their All-Ireland final loss to Kerry in 2022.
Yet for Tipperary and Colm O’Shaughnessy, their county season ended on the first weekend of June and Paul Kelly was only appointed as their new manager on the first day of November.
“We were kinda late starting up pre-season again, whereas in previous years you would have had a programme to do with your own running as well, there would have been a bit of structure given to you.
“With us not having a manager, there was no real structure on it until November. We were a little bit behind in that sense, trying to do your own bit, but it was up to ourselves to try and do it.
“I think Conor Sweeney or Steven O’Brien put into the WhatsApp to try and get lads to do their own bit while they were off but it was kinda up to ourselves to do it.
“It was a bit of a different year compared to other years. My time was almost completely my own for that period after we finished up.
“To motivate yourself, I found I could do it a lot of the time but it’s probably a bit easier to not do a bit extra. I wouldn’t say I was coming back in 100 per cent fitness compared to other years where you’ve a bit more accountability to everyone.
“That’s down to me a bit really but that’s just how I found it, a little bit easier to maybe take the foot off the gas. I’d have liked nearly to have that shorter gap once we finished.
“It definitely wasn’t ideal. You’d want to be nearly pushing on the fitness over that period where, for me anyway, it just stayed where it was, it didn’t improve I’d say really.”
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IF Tipperary had won the Tailteann Cup or Ardfinnan had won a county title, O’Shaughnessy would probably feel different about it all.
Had Galway reached another All-Ireland final, would the Corofin contingent have been as fresh this time around? That Kieran Molloy, Dylan McHugh and Liam Silke all played so little county football last year but were fresh for the club undoubtedly stood to them.
While the length of Ethan Doherty and Conor Glass’s season with Glen and Derry have been such a focus of debate, the All-Ireland club finals being brought into late-January rather than mid-March has at least given them a better ratio of training to games.
When Crossmaglen were in their pomp, Joe Kernan found himself at loggerheads with Armagh county board to the point that when he made his interest in the county job known, he wasn’t sure how it would be taken.
“The county board wanted the Cross boys to play in the league… As far as I was concerned, spring and summer was county time, autumn and winter was club time. It seemed a fair enough trade-off,” he said in his autobiography, Without A Shadow Of A Doubt.
In his annual report last week, GAA director general Tom Ryan gave the clearest indication that the split season is here to stay.
“I think the momentum and sentiment is such that we will not be reverting to the old arrangements any time soon… I believe the shape and duration of the respective county and club seasons is approaching the right balance,” he wrote.
For every Conor Glass, playing for almost the last 36 months solid, there are even his own Derry team-mates.
Niall Toner’s club season with Lavey ended on October 7, a full fifteen weeks before Glen headed up the Hogan Stand steps.
How does a calendar ever cater for such disparities between team-mates?
Consider how Jack O’Connor has dealt with the Cliffords, giving them both the start of the league off the last couple of years to balance out against their sojourns with both East Kerry and Fossa.
When Dublin won the All-Ireland, Kilmacud’s sole member of the 26, Paul Mannion, sat out their championship opener against St Sylvester’s. Only three of the Dublin panel from last July’s decider – Mannion, Colm Basquel and Ross McGarry – were involved in the county final on October 22, meaning all but one got a decent winter break.
The extreme examples like Glass at one end or O’Shaughnessy at the other are allowed to mask the middleground, where things have largely settled into a pattern that players appreciate.
Some of those that have recently departed the inter-county bubble and gone back to their clubs have quickly found its measure.
“I just wish, from a former player’s perspective, that the template had been there 10 years ago,” said former Tyrone Allstar Colm Cavanagh a while back.
Yet in Tyrone, where county players play more club football than anywhere else, they’re still playing their league finals post-championship.
Trillick completed the league and championship double by beating Carrickmore on December 12. Had the Reds not lost their Ulster semi-final to Scotstown, that would have been delayed further still.
Perfection will always be an enemy to progress in this debate. The variables are just far too great.
Plus everyone has their own angle, their own slant, their own bias.
What odds would another week or two for the county season be to clubs? Ask Galway or Cork or Antrim or any serious dual county.
It is all an act of balancing an elephant on a tightrope.
“The issues arise for very successful teams and very successful club players because they’re the ones expected to go possibly 12 months,” says Kevin Johnson.
“If you asked those players, because they’re successful, they’re enjoying it and I don’t think they find being burnt out because they’re winning and they love what they’re doing.
“It’s a very hard balancing act but the reality is that those who are successful are the players going 12 months of the year.
“The majority of players will be knocked out in October and most inter-county teams will be knocked out before July.
“There’s no norm and that’s why there’s no perfect answer or solution.”
What we have now might be the closest we ever get.