Club championship to proceed on schedule after double Offaly defeats

ONE of the big repercussions of a very disappointing Offaly GAA weekend is that the club championships will now progress on schedule with football starting on the weekend of July 5 and hurling a week later.

The All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Tailteann Cup semi-final loss to Wicklow on Saturday and Sunday's heavy All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship defeat to Cork means that a plan B for deferring the championships won't now be put into operation.

The Offaly GAA Competitions Control Committee had drawn up an alternative schedule last week in the event of Offaly progressing in either code this weekend – they did so knowing full well that the hurlers season would almost certainly be ended by Cork but expecting the footballers to account for Wicklow.

It looked like their plan B would have to be put into action when Offaly led Wicklow by 3-11 to 1-9 at half time but they floundered badly in the second half and suffered a devastating defeat.

If the footballers had won, they would have met Down in the final on July 11 with the all-Ireland hurling semi-finals on July 4-5.

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The CCC notified clubs on Tuesday evening that the programme will be changed as follows if either Offaly team wins:

· All hurling and football fixtures currently fixed between June 30th and July 14th will be postponed.

· All hurling and football fixtures currently fixed between July 16th and August 23rd will proceed as planned.

· Postponed fixtures from June 30th to July 14th, will be scheduled after August 23rd and the necessary adjustments will be made to the knock-out stages of Championships.

· The U20 Hurling Championship will continue to be played, with some adjustments to proposed dates.

If required, a revised fixture list will issue week commencing June 30th.

If Offaly lose both games, this weekend, all fixtures will proceed as per fixtures programme.In layman's terms this meant that if Offaly qualify in either or both football and hurling, the football championships would have commenced on July 16 with the senior on the weekend of July 18-19 and the hurling on July 25-26.

The fixed first round games would have been postponed and they would have went ahead with the second round fixtures as originally fixed. The first round games would then be fitted in after August 23 – in the case of senior, the plan was to play the first round games after the original fourth round (now the third) and then conclude the group stages with the original fifth round: Effectively the first round will be played as the fourth round.

The reason for this is that there is a home and away format in championships with the final round in them at neutral venues and this will have to remain sacrosanct with qualification for the knockout stages at stakes.

Offaly's defeats meant that several issues with the revised schedule have been avoided but there are important lessons to take from the whole thing: in future they will have to legislate for all possibilities when planning their championship and don't take risks or presume that Offaly won't make their way through to July action.