A 30-week inter-county season is a workable compromise, says GAA director general Tom Ryan.
A motion put forward by a work group headed by Ryan’s predecessor Páraic Duffy calls for the last of the All-Ireland finals to take place in early August from 2027.
If passed, it would likely mean the All-Ireland SFC final will be staged on August 9 next year and the All-Ireland SHC will conclude on July 26, ensuring a two-week gap between the games as opposed to the seven-day turnaround now.
As part of the agreement, the pre-season competitions would be discontinued, which has been opposed by the likes of the Connacht and Ulster councils. While dual counties such as Galway and Tipperary do not want to see the inter-county season extended beyond July.
Ryan is hoping the slight amendment to the split season will be supported by counties at Congress on February 28. “I like the idea and I think the compromise is worth making,” he wrote in his annual report.
Elaborating at the press conference in Croke Park on Wednesday, he said: “There’s a motion going to solidify the season as 30 weeks. So, it’s a question for us then of working out how best to use those 30 weeks.
“There has been discussion about the timing of the All-Ireland finals and what that means and the pressures that that creates and the shortcomings about promotion and all those things.
“I think sometimes they’re a little bit overstated but at the same time there’s a clear imperative to move things back a little bit and put in a little bit of breathing space.
“If you’re going to do that, you can’t ask players to perform earlier at one end of the year and later at the other. Something has to give. The most important people are the players and we have to make sure that players get a break.”
Ryan said the sequence of the All-Ireland SFC final following the hurling decider is “not sacrosanct. There’s no reason that it has to be like that, but you’d need to have a look at what the absolute benefits would be of switching them, I’m not entirely sure.”
Interestingly, the viewing figures for last year’s All-Ireland SHC were higher than the football championship – over 7.8 million to football’s 7m plus. The average viewership for the Tipperary-Cork decider was 980,000 (excluding 400,646 on the RTÉ Player) to the Kerry-Donegal football figure of 933,000 (378,229 on the RTÉ Player).
Ryan is also backing the amateur status review committee’s motion to introduce a GAA certification framework initially at inter-county level and their rewording of the amateur status rule in the Official Guide.
“I believe that these proposals can be the first steps to modernising GAA governance in this context. We can achieve a framework of significant protections for the GAA’s amateur status.
“I realise that these proposals may not eliminate all issues of concern immediately (such as unethical payments from third parties that violate the existing amateur status rule), but they are certainly an important first step for us in preserving what is possibly our most treasured value.”
Ryan suggested the hand-pass in hurling should be reviewed. “I think the hand-pass still merits some thought, and I wonder too if the trend towards even higher scoring rates in matches might need to be checked at some stage.” And that it could be curbed in football at under-age level. “It might be worth considering some handpass restrictions at underage level in order to change the mindset.”
Nevertheless, Ryan declared the Football Review Committee rules changes as a veritable success. “For my own part, I must admit some degree of trepidation on the eve of the first round of Allianz League games back in January. The sheer scale and extent of change posed undoubted challenges.
“But referees, players and managers all rose to that challenge. There was a real sense of a generational opportunity – and duty – to restore the best of our game. When issues arose, or when refinements were required during the season, everybody just redoubled their efforts and got on with the job in hand.”
Regarding Casement Park, Ryan stressed planning permission which runs out in July this year “must be protected” as the GAA assesses alternative configurations for the stadium.
He expanded: “We want to deliver a stadium that doesn’t involve any debt. We want to deliver a stadium that doesn’t involve any challenges with regard to its ongoing running costs.
“We now know we have a significant amount of funding available to us (€196m). We’ll be able to build a really remarkable stadium. There is a potential for a further piece of funding out there, but I think what we have available to us and guaranteed will be more than sufficient.”
