I have to say the one good thing coming out of this COVID crisis is the fact that county boards have acted decisively in getting games streamed out to the many fans who want to see the games but are unable to attend.
On the last point, I do not understand how we can’t get more spectators into these large grounds while adhering to social distancing.
A limit of 500 persons in total - some of the top teams and management entourages near 500 in the modern age.
We are left with few supporters and the atmosphere is all very eerie.
Everything is catered for on match day squads from specialist water carrier, jersey provider, selectors’ assistant, manager’s assistant, physio, doctor, nurse, stats man.
Don’t forget the psychologist, this person is ensuring that the player is in the ‘green’ zone come throw-in.
A large part of this head diarrhoea is pure nonsense.
I have always believed that you take the bits that make sense from sports psychology and the rest is just filling pages in a manual somewhere for someone to justify its logic.
But even the psychologist is struggling to understand the logic in supporters being denied access to club games when clearly venues could easily facilitate larger numbers, at a social distance and with proper PPE equipment.
There are greater risks in Tesco’s.
I have enjoyed watching the club championship games on RTÉ and those on TG4.
Down County Board have an excellent streaming service and put it to good use with one of the most widely anticipated games of the club championship, Burren and Warrenpoint facing off in a first round.
Burren are a widely recognised club as previous Ulster and All-Ireland champions, albeit this was in the late eighties and with a few titles at the start of the last decade, they are never far away in Down.
Two years ago Burren did wrestle the O’Hare Cup from Kilcoo.
But Kilcoo put that right last season and almost followed in Burren’s footsteps by claiming an All-Ireland title.
However it is Warrenpoint whom have impressed me the most in the last few seasons, more than any other team.
My own club Saval had punched above our weight for a significant number of years, without having the population of other clubs to pick from.
We are rural based and have no set village to pick from, just a series of households and of players whose DNA can be traced back to its formation.
Warrenpoint were rivals for some of my playing years with the club but had dropped into intermediate football and Division Two. We associated their ‘town’ mentality with a weakness that is often cast up to typically urban based teams.
Soccer was popular there also and inroads into the Irish Premiership had brought teams such as Linfield and Glentoran to the Seasiders.
About ten years ago, Warrenpoint put together a blueprint and devised a strategy to return a Senior Championship to the town within eight years.
The club has not wavered from the principles within that document, with a lack of commitment from players going unrewarded right from underage level up, no matter how talented they are.
With a young manager in Niall McAleenan (I see him as a future Down senior manager by the way), Warrenpoint will not be far away in the next few seasons.
It is great to see young managers like McAleenan getting jobs with such clubs.
In Tyrone, Dromore’s Colm McCullough has the management reins in his own club and if he is as good a manager as he was a player, Colm will be successful.
I suppose what is refreshing about watching Warrenpoint though is that they attack and have a very fluid system of pressing, as well as a great mix of players knowing when to play a short passing game and when to be more direct.
When you watch Kilcoo, they are a fantastic running team, with a different style based on everyone attacking and everyone defending added into a short passing game predominantly.
Clubs all over Down have tried (unsuccessfully) to model themselves on it, but as yet Kilcoo retain their dominance.
Crossmaglen did it for years in Armagh.
The ‘Cross’ style was no secret, they just had better players, characters throughout and a humility, key elements of any successful team.
I am a big advocate of a club having a blueprint in how they want to play – what defines them as a club.
For example, Donegal has always been known as a short passing team while Down teams much more direct in style.
At club level, I still find it incredible, that something so simply devised at committee level remains absent from many football and hurling structures – no documents, no blueprints.
How a club plans to coach underage teams?
Who coaches them?
How well equipped and skilled are these people?
And how do we, as a club, want to be defined?
Significantly for many clubs, they limp from one management structure to another at senior level and because their management expenses can be quite significant, committees up and down the country expect and almost demand instant success.
Throwing good money after bad.
With management structures one typically associates with an intercounty set-up now prevalent in many club teams, committees now are increasingly feeling the pressure of appointing such grandeur without really knowing what it is they want or expect.
Clubs such as Warrenpoint have resisted this strategy and instead focused on underage structures, commitment levels, culture and coaching.
Kilcoo are no different, neither were Crossmaglen.
Corofin are famous for it, which is why it appears that their management teams come and go without results really ever changing.
It is strange to be talking about club football at a time of the year when we should be enjoying the finale of our football and hurling season.
But things are changing and it could be a case, if the GPA and the GAA agree, that there will be a clear six-month season dedicated solely to the respective intercounty and club game.
Each cohort will want a ‘me first’.
While I agree with my fellow columnist Enda McGinley’s assertions last week that an end-of-year feast of inter-county football would be great to see over a turkey and ham dinner, I cannot see any intercounty manager allowing or facilitating a ‘club-only’ six-month lead-in time without over-training county players and leaving us back in the same place, with the same concerns that a split calendar is supposed to be solving.
The intercounty game, given its status as the primary income generating unit of the GAA, will always have precedence and it is likely that the intercounty game will have first ‘call’ with an All-Ireland final most likely in July if proposed.
Imagine that. It would have been almost unbelievable a few years ago, that it is even being discussed or considered.
May we live in interesting times.
