Cork will vote against the proposed two-week extension to the inter-county season at Congress later this month.
At Tuesday’s behind-closed-doors Cork County Board meeting, club delegates voted against the proposed changes to the GAA calendar.
The 90-60 result against the two-week extension means Cork’s Congress attendees will not support the motion that favours redrawing the split-season, when it is voted on at Croke Park the weekend after next.
Cork GAA CEO Kevin O’Donovan was part of the Croke Park sub-committee, chaired by former Director General Páraic Duffy, that recommended the two-week extension and moving the All-Ireland finals to either side of the August Bank Holiday weekend from 2027 onward.
Furthermore, Cork chairman Pat Horgan had revealed to the last September that the county would support the proposal, but only on the grounds that there be no further encroachment into August in the years after and there being no return to collective training until December, at the earliest.
“We are at our limit with the proposed two-week extension. Reluctantly, I’d say we will support it on the basis that it is just about doable, but certainly, two weeks and no further. That will be our position,” Horgan remarked at the time.
The preference of Cork club delegates ran counter to this view at Tuesday’s meeting.
“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,” GAA Director General Tom Ryan said last week.
“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. So, we’ll just ask people to assess that in the round, which works better for the association? What we have in January or what we could have in August? I think it’s August.”
Galway and Tipperary are two more dual counties expected to join Cork in opposing the motion.
Cork will vote in favour of returning the All-Ireland minor finals to Croke Park as curtain-raisers to the senior decider.
