Battle lines drawn over coveted St Patrick’s Day date

The debate about the AIB senior club championships has become more insistent of late.

At the end of last year one of the proposals of the second report of the Football Review Committee was that the club finals be moved forward from their traditional St Patrick’s Day place in the calendar and completed before Christmas.

The proposal was part of the FRC’s attempt to restore harmony between county and club fixtures.

It would force counties to complete their local championships in time and require them to set fixtures for the summer months when increasingly club players have been idle.

The anomaly
It would also remove the anomaly of the provincial champions having to wait for up to three months for their All-Ireland semi-finals and reduce the pressure on county players who must go straight from a club campaign to rejoining the county panel.

The idea of adjusting the calendar received the imprimatur of GAA director general Páraic Duffy in his annual report published last month and last week, association president Liam O’Neill went as far as to speculate how the empty 17th March date might be filled.

The national holiday has for decades been a big day for Gaelic games. It became the annual date for the Railway Cup finals and in the 1950s, crowds of nearly 50,000 thronged Croke Park to watch the provinces in action. For the past 30 years however the stage has belonged to the clubs whose finals have drawn crowds occasionally of more than 40,000 and regularly more than 30,000.

Paul Curran, the Dublin All-Ireland winner, has a long association with the club championship, having reached the football final with Thomas Davis in 1992 and last year he managed Ballymun Kickhams to their first final. He is reluctant to lose the famous date.

Calendar year
"I can see a lot of merit in the idea but I really like the final on Paddy's Day. The national holiday adds to the occasion of the club finals and you'd be losing that if you moved the championship to a calendar year."

He acknowledges the essential daftness of the schedule but believes its drawn-out nature can enhance the championship for clubs.

“Our season started on 15th December 2011 and ran all the way to 17th March 2013. We played nine championship matches, which is ludicrous for that amount of time and then by the end of it, one season is running into another because the Dublin leagues and cups are starting.

“But it’s a magical competition and because it runs for so long, there’s a brilliant buzz around the place because successful clubs are on an extended run . . . If it was simply my decision, I’d leave it as it is. I can’t see how the whole provincial and All-Ireland rounds could be squeezed in by the end of the year . . .”

Joe Kernan is associated with the most successful modern clubs, Crossmaglen Rangers, who have won six All-Irelands since 1997. He acknowledges that he has another agenda as manager of the Ulster football team but he also has practical concerns about the way the championship is currently run.

“The financial cost of bringing it into the following year is heavy. I think the calendar year would be a good idea. County players with successful clubs also get no rest and from the burn-out point of view, it would make sense to finish it by Christmas and rest the players . . .

“Of course I would be sorry to see St Patrick’s Day go. But maybe with my Railway Cup hat on, I could suggest playing the inter-provincials over the holiday period.”

A contemporary voice disagrees. Damien Hayes will be back in Croke Park next month for his fifth All-Ireland club hurling final with Portumna.

“The club All-Irelands on St Patrick’s Day is a massive tradition. As far back as I was a youngster I can remember going up to Croke Park to watch club All-Irelands that day and I can’t see it and I wouldn’t like to see it changed, I think it works very well. I like it on that day, it’s an annual fixture.”

For the time being, anyway.