Ciarán Murphy: Split season’s shortcomings leave GAA space to tend to local grassroots

Watching Evan Ferguson score a first hat-trick in the Premier League by a teenager in 25 years last Saturday evening was genuinely one of the most thrilling things I’d seen in Irish sport in years.

Like watching any truly exceptional young sportsperson, the thrill is doubly satisfying. You enjoy both the sensational performance you’re currently watching, but you also simultaneously experience the anticipation of getting to watch them do it time and time and time again for the rest of their career.

And so wherever Ferguson is going to be for the next 15 years, it’s a fairly good chance we’ll be watching – whether that’s at Brighton, or at the host of big clubs immediately linked with him in the aftermath of his extraordinary performance – and certainly when he’s lining out for Ireland.

That was exactly what we were looking forward to doing this weekend too, until a knee injury Ferguson picked up after he had already scored his third goal on Saturday would ultimately rule him out of our games against France in Paris tonight and at home to the Netherlands on Sunday.

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If our belief in Stephen Kenny’s men getting a couple of positive results only briefly flickered before being cruelly extinguished with that injury bulletin delivered on Tuesday, the foundation for many people’s belief in our rugby team doing something special at the World Cup in France is built on rather more solid foundations.

Either way the thoughts of watching – on consecutive nights – Evan Ferguson against Kylian M’bappé, the hosts against New Zealand in the State de France on the opening night of the Rugby World Cup, followed by Ireland’s opening game of that tournament, with a Ferguson dessert course to finish the weekend, was an extraordinary combination of sports events to look forward to. Ah well.

So how could the GAA ever hope to compete with such international riches? The key in such situations, when it seems like you’re fighting a losing battle, is to pick an entirely different battle altogether.

And so instead of having an All-Ireland hurling final going head-to-head with such metropolitan excitements as our international teams can muster, I was watching action from the Cork Premier Junior hurling championship on Friday evening via Cork GAA TV.

This was the fifth tier of hurling in the county, but the game nevertheless had two All-Ireland winners on co-commentary (Mark Landers and Kieran “Fraggy” Murphy), with not one but two RTÉ Sport commentators sharing presenting duties, Liam Aherne and Pat Mulcahy. It was an extraordinary spread of broadcasting talent, let alone hurling ability, on show.

Now I should say that I had a friend managing one of the teams in action, so it’s not like I am necessarily going to make a habit of such acts of lunacy, but it was indicative of what August and September now means for GAA people.

We have nothing that comes close to Evan Ferguson or Jonny Sexton, and even an All-Ireland final would struggle to hold its own on a weekend such as the one coming up.

But what we had instead last weekend (and this weekend, if the weather holds up) was GAA action that might have been an inch wide, but a mile deep.

Thousands upon thousands of club players were straining every sinew in beautiful weather with their season on the line . . . and maybe all that many people saw of it was another David Clifford wonder-goal.

There is no one making the argument that Kilbrittain against Ballygarvan in the Cork Premier Junior hurling championship is going to hold a candle to global sporting events . . . but it did for those with an emotional stake in it.

It is all a little pointless to keep litigating the split season, as people seem intent on doing. In future years the All-Ireland football final may be moved back to the start of August, according to RTÉ Sport this week, and that might be enough for most people.

But when I was writing here about the Kerry women’s football team a few weeks back, I spoke to a few people in the county about their progress, and about the uptick in support that they had experienced.

We talked about the weekend of the All-Ireland women’s football quarter-finals, which this year saw eight very evenly matched teams play out four really entertaining, intense games – a programme of games which was nevertheless overshadowed by the men’s football semi-finals also played that weekend.

I started making the point that maybe if camogie and women’s football were willing to delay their championship by a month, then they could fill the void left by the split season.

The person on the other end of the line just immediately shut me down. Female players love the split season too. They’d rather just play their games, instead of casting about for media or public attention which can be fickle at the best of times in any case. I was trying to wage a battle on their behalf that they had no interest in fighting.

The split season’s shortcomings are there in black and white when coverage of the GAA is pushed to the margins on weeks like this. But there were plenty of people willing to make the Iliad from a local row last weekend. That’s important too.