Long wait is nearly over as clubs fine tune for championship battle

All over the country GAA club teams are putting the final touches to their preparations for county championship campaigns which earlier in the summer looked poised to be one of the casualties of the global Covid-19 pandemic. There was widespread gloom and despair over the toll the coronavirus was having on the sports calendar a few months ago, but the various stakeholders had their sense of perspective kept well in check due to the hundreds of Irish people who were losing their lives from the disease.

Ireland is far from out of the woods yet, especially as global figures for new infections are reaching daily records, but some form of normality has returned over recent weeks even if the economic scars of Covid-19 will be felt for many years to come. In the interim, every Irish citizen has a duty of care and to act responsibility to avoid the virus flaring up badly again on these shores.

Though the GAA, like other sporting organisations, has had to seriously restructure its fixtures calendar, we must be grateful for small mercies. The Inter-county scene will be a throwback to the era where one off day was enough to end the championship aspirations of Gaelic football teams, but their hurling brethren have, at least, been spared the ‘one strike and you’re out’ scenario.

At club level, there is also less of everything. Championship groups have been reduced in number and teams can hardly risk pacing themselves. It will be all about hitting the ground running. In Galway, the local GAA administrators have done an excellent job in coming up with championship structures which are admirably equitable in the circumstances.

There are fewer margins for error but one defeat in the group arena won’t necessarily be fatal. It will also eliminate any element of shadow boxing and should guarantee matches with a real cut and thrust nature to them, bar those when there is a big disparity in standard between the teams.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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