The AIB All-Ireland club football and hurling finals will be played on separate days should Derry champions Slaughtneil – “should” being the critical word – qualify for both stages.
They’ve already got one foot in the St Patrick’s Day finals in Croke Park, Slaughtneil’s footballers beating Dublin champions St Vincent’s to set up a March 17th showdown against Dr Crokes of Killarney; their hurlers also play Dublin champions Cuala in an All-Ireland semi-final on Saturday week, and if Slaughtneil win that, will force the GAA to split the finals for the first time since they were scheduled together on St Patrick’s Day.
Slaughtneil share 17 players between their football and hurling panels, with nine typically starting both codes; situated in the foothills of the Sperrin Mountains in south Derry, a small rural community of no more than 300 families, it’s already been an unprecedented journey.
“At the moment we don’t have that situation to contemplate, and I think it would be a little presumptuous to say any more than that,” said Alan Milton, the GAA’s chief of press. The GAA’s Central Competitions Control Commmittee (CCCC) already agreed to split the semi-final dates by two weeks to facilitate the club’s dual status.
Contingency plan
“If or when it becomes an issue, the CCCC will be straight on to it, and you can be rest assured there will be a contingency plan, which they would have discussed among themselves. It an obvious conundrum if it comes to pass but we’re not there yet. It’s closer than it was last Saturday morning, so it’s a live issue, but I think it would be a little unfair on Cuala, and Slaughtneil, if we said any more than that
“But you can assume if it did happen, you couldn’t ask the players to play twice in one day. That’s a given. The question then is do you move one game, both games, and these are questions for the CCCC. But it’s an already been a remarkable journey for Slaughtneil, especially when you think about where they’re coming from.”
Should they reach both finals (again, emphasising the “should”), it’s possible the CCCC will decide to fix both finals for neutral venues, rather than Croke Park, most likely two weeks apart, to afford the dual players a suitable recovery period.
Slaughtneil continue to make club history, winning the Derry double in hurling and football in each of the past three years, plus senior camogie titles in the last two seasons; last year, they won a treble of Ulster titles, dual star Chrissy McKaigue captaining the hurlers when they became the first ever Derry club to win an Ulster hurling crown.
