Offaly GAA come up with plan B for delayed start to club championships

THE Offaly GAA Competitions Control Committee have come up with a plan B in case the start of the local club championships have to be delayed.

The football championships are scheduled to start on the weekend of July 5 with the hurling fixed for a week later.

However, if Offaly senior footballers or hurlers win one of their big games this weekend, the championships will have to be put back, completely reducing the margin for error as they try and get them finished in time for the Leinster club championships from October on.

Offaly senior footballers play Wicklow in the Tailteann Cup semi-final on Saturday and if they win, they will meet the winners of Down and Fermanagh in the final on July 11. The hurlers play Cork in the All-Ireland Senior Championship quarter-final on Sunday and the winners will play an All-Ireland semi-final on July 4-5.

There is a bigger chance of Offaly being in the Tailteann Cup final than the All-Ireland semi-final but you never know in the modern games and the Competitions Control Committee discussed both possibilities when they met on Tuesday evening to assess their options.

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They 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 means that if Offaly qualify in either or both football and hurling, the football championships will commence on July 16 with the senior on the weekend of July 18-19 and the hurling will start on the weekend of July 25-26.

The fixed first round games will be postponed and they will proceed with the second round fixtures as originally fixed. The first round games will then be fitted in after August 23 – in the case of senior, the plan will be 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.

There will have to be adjustments to the knockout stages if this happens and depending on dates, there is a possibility that clubs will have to consent to some finals being winner on the day rather than a replay as currently stipulated in the Offaly GAA regulations.

Clubs won't like that but it would be an extraordinary situation and Offaly have to have their champions in place for Leinster club competitions – there will be no case for going to Leinster Council looking for delays and they would be quite right not to grant any as Offaly planned their championships knowing full well the dates for the Tailteann Cup final and the All-Ireland semi-finals.

There may be one more problem in it. Traditionally, the higher grade championships are started first to make sure that junior, intermediate and senior B clubs don't face a senior club who may be able to play players from in the lower grade first and then lose them. That is fair but it may not be possible in every case now and some of the lower grade championships may have to start before senior etc. That isn't ideal but clubs may just have to take their medicine on this occasion and get on with it – the message from all this for Offaly GAA and clubs going forward is very clear:

While it is a very pleasant dilemma for Offaly GAA to have to face and hopefully, a new fixture list will have to be issued because of the progress of both teams, 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.