County managers must be careful as GAA starts to lay down the law

WHEN there are no penalties for breaking regulations, it’s a licence for people to do almost anything that they want. The GAA is the latest organisation forced to grapple with the flouting of guidelines and it’s largely the Association’s own fault. What’s the point in introducing rules, if there are no sanctions or punishments?

After the GAA publicly unveiled its roadmap for the return to action at inter-county level, there was an immediate negative response from team managers, particularly over a ban on any resumption of collective training in advance of September 14. Instead, the initial focus was going to be on the club scene.

For those of us who belief that the level of inter-county preparations has become a runaway juggernaut, this schedule in response to the major impact of Covid-19 on the fixtures calendar is a welcome development. The county hurling and football championships would now be taken centre stage at a time of the year when clubs are usually lying idle.

The inter-county arena would be parked until mid-October, with truncated hurling and football campaigns at elite level clearing the way for pre-Christmas All-Ireland finals. Given that the GAA has lost nearly five months of its season, some serious sacrifices simply had to be made and while it was never going to be easy to placate all its stakeholders, the GAA made a reasonable fist of fitting in as much in a reduced fixtures timeframe.

The only stick waved against inter-county teams resuming training ahead of mid-September was that players wouldn’t be covered by insurance. It was never going to be enough to deter managers who have become accustomed to total access to their players whenever they wanted or, in the view of some, the continued opportunity of flogging their teams to death!

With plenty of anecdotal tales of county teams jumping the gun – notably the Wexford hurlers – and some clubs being denied access to their top players, the GAA quickly came under increasing pressure to flex its muscle. And by the end of last week, Croke Park had stepped up to the plate: introducing a clampdown on any breaches of the ‘return to play’ guidelines.

Clubs are now requested to report any incidents of their players being requisitioned for county training, while breaches of the ban on inter-county sessions carries the prospect of punishments ranging from the suspension of individuals, fines and expulsion from the championship. However, it is likely that sanctions will be more directed at county officers and team managers.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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