Letter: Common sense should have prevailed before postponement of Armagh football final

Andy Watters’ article yesterday quoted the agreed opinion of both managers involved in the Armagh Senior Football Championship final.

The opinion was that common sense had prevailed in postponing the match. Those of us who were present in Armagh will testify that a football spectacle was never likely in such conditions. That, unfortunately, was not the main talking point.

Forecasting weather is no longer a matter of standing on Achill Island and ringing around the rest of the country with the bad news. It is a science. It is based on almost flawless information gathered from space.

Weather apps and national media outlets had forecast for days in advance that a storm would be in full swing at 4pm on Sunday. The same storm that prompted the timely postponements in Tyrone and Fermanagh.

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Armagh are All-Ireland champions, and it is therefore reasonable to assume that our county board is a supportive group made up of intelligent people working on behalf of all GAA supporters. I applaud their contribution to our success this year. But on this occasion, they failed. There were many impacts, too many to list, stretching far beyond the simple postponement of a football match.

In short, common sense did not prevail on Sunday at 3.30pm.

Friday lunchtime was the time for it to prevail.

Raymond Murray, Lurgan, Co Armagh

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