Offaly GAA CCC to consider emergency contingency plan for championships
Club championships will have to be pushed out if Offaly continue to make progress
THE Offaly GAA Competitions Control Committee will meet next week to consider contingency plans for the start of the local club championships in the event of the Offaly senior football and hurling teams making continued progress.
The football championships are scheduled to start on the first week of July with the hurling a week later. However, if Offaly stay on the road in either code, those plans will be up on the air.
Offaly senior footballers play Wexford in the Tailteann Cup quarter-final this Saturday in Tullamore and the hurlers will meet Cork in the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship quarter-final a week later.
The Tailteann Cup semi-final will also be on the weekend of June 20-21 and there will then be a three week gap to the final on July 12. There is definitely decent prospects of Offaly making the final while the hurlers will be complete outsiders for their tussle with Cork – the All-Ireland semi-finals are on July 4-5 with the final on July 19.
The chances of Offaly surviving the Cork game are remote but the Offaly GAA will have to account for that possibility when they meet next week – they will wait and see how Offaly footballers fare against Wexford before coming up with potential alternative arrangements.
If Offaly did reach the Tailteann Cup final, it would affect both football and hurling championships. As things stand, the championships remain as fixed and will only be changed if Offaly's progress makes this necessary.
The CCC will have a major dilemma on their hands if they have to push the championships out by a couple of weeks. They have to have them finished in time for Leinster club championships and they won't have the space to play as planned with football and hurling on alternative weekends to meet these deadlines – that will bring up the possibility of clubs having to play two games in the one week or a very small gap between football and hurling fixtures.
While it would be a great problem to have, it will require some innovative thinking by the Competitions Control Committee – it may be possible to proceed with some fixtures where county players aren't involved but that won't alter the bigger problem with getting them played on time.
It would also probably result in the Senior “B”, Intermediate and Junior Championships being pushed out. A lot of them could go ahead but many clubs won't want that until the higher levels start first – they won't want opponents to have use of eligible players who are likely to play at a higher level.