Scrapping pre-season competitions is a foolish move. Here's why . . .

FORGET ALL THE other bits and pieces that filtered out of the GAA Management Committee meeting on Saturday, and focus on the absolute bonkers decision made to postpone (ie scrap) the pre-season tournaments in 2025. Because this decision has no discernible benefit. And it has caught an unbelievable number of GAA administrators, players and managers by complete surprise.

Now, it wasn’t done with the cloak of darkness. This is something that the Gaelic Player’s Association have been advocating for a while now. But it felt like a dog barking outside the door.



At some point, you tune out of that frequency. They did consult their own members. At the GPA AGM in Portlaoise last October, the vote to get rid of the pre-season tournaments received 90%.

And they got their wish. The thing is, once a competition is ‘suspended’ for a year, it is gone. The chances of a resurrection at this stage seem slim.

You wonder though about the wisdom of such a move. The most obvious factor is why make a change right now, when the Football Review Committee are due to announce their latest updates on Tuesday morning. Whatever decisions are landed upon, the first chance for the general public to see what Gaelic football Version 2.

0 as decided by Jim Gavin and his hugely-respected committee, is an Inter-Provincial tournament played on October 18 and 19 . The four provinces will resume the Railway Cup battles of yore, although we probably won’t be allowed to call it that. They will play two games on the Friday evening, with a final and a Shield final on the Saturday.

This particular revolution, will be televised. The general public will get to see the games on the box, with all the new potential new rules in place, such as the most eye-catching two points for a successful point outside of a certain range. But after that, it will be a three month wait to see them in action again.

Imagine the confusion ahead. Life’s complicated enough! Having the new rules in place for pre-season tournaments would have been an ideal way of educating the public on how the game will look like across the 2025 season. Another thing is this; while the GPA vote to abolish the pre-season tournaments, the vote was taken by GPA reps within counties.

Typically, GPA representatives in counties are long-established figures within the team. They are usually assured of their place in the line-up. Where does it leave the young hopefuls coming into a panel? Such competitions were acutely aware of their place in the world.

They were petri-dishes of sorts. They provided a chance for managers to run the eye over newcomers to a panel, to give them a competitive game in a county team, in front of a big crowd. For some that ultimately would not make it, it would be nonetheless a huge achievement; a chance to pull on the county jersey.

A source of immense pride for families. It’s become tough for counties to hang on to players who are on the fringes. There’s a growing trend for players down the depth chart to remain with the county and benefit from the coaching and training, but once the club season starts, jump ship and know they will be able to play regular football with their club in the leagues.

Without the carrot of a match or two in January, their place in the world will become crystal clear from early on. Take it to the logical conclusion. If, as seems certain, Malachy O’Rourke is taking the Tyrone manager role on Tuesday night, he is robbed of three, perhaps five games, to assess his panel.

Instead, the first meaningful game he gets to see a Tyrone team in, will be the league. Drawn away to Kerry or a Dublin for the league opener, you don’t take chances with kids. From a coaching point of view, it is a retrograde step.

It might have been voted on by players, but it is resolutely anti-player. I’m trying really hard to resist the turkeys voting for Christmas line but God Dammit, it’s sneaked its’ way in. Some of the justification since has centred around it being a cost-saving measure.

Right. So now teams will be scrambling to organise challenge matches. They will not want to play teams in their own league.

They will be behind closed doors affairs, with Wild West rules. And they will cost more money. Nobody ever feels a huge amount of sympathy for match officials, but the likes of the Waterford Crystal, the McGrath Cup, the FBD leagues and so on was a chance for them to get up to speed and some match fitness.

To iron out the kinks of a good Christmas. Instead, just watch as the first League Sunday programme shows a few clips of a Mayo-Dublin game and the easy pot-shots on referees if they failed to determine if Brian Fenton was inside or outside the two-point mark for a shot that went over? Should Cork’s winning point have been allowed, because they didn’t have enough players up the field when the shot was made? We all carry our own biases. Being from Ulster, the pre-season competition that this writer identifies with is the Dr McKenna Cup.

It provided a service more than just Gaelic football matches. It was an opportunity for spectators to emerge from long winters, blinking in the terraces and getting back into some good routine. It was, as the catchline claimed, the best thing about January.

It drew crowds that on occasion, outstripped championship matches. This year’s Dr McKenna Cup final between Derry – riding high at the time under Mickey Harte – and a Donegal flush with excitement at the second coming of Jim McGuinness, brought a crowd of 4,825. With it gone, it puts a significant hole in the accounts of the Ulster Council.

One estimate puts the figure at £150,000. Where will that money come out of? Coaching and games promotion? Staffing levels? Some of the worthy cultural projects they roll out, such as the Cuchulainns Cup that mixes in schoolchildren of different faiths? It’s our old friend at work here again; The Law of Unintended Consequences. And the consequences are brutal.

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