Still adjusting to the new calendar

IN ALL FAIRNESS

First there were sundials to tell the time, then came the development of clocks for it to be more accurate, but even if neither of them had been invented, people would have found ways of determining the seasons.

It is in this context that I have found this time of the year a little strange in recent years, particularly with the change in the Gaelic Games calendar with the wrapping up on the inter-county seasons a good six weeks earlier than before with next Sunday and the All-Ireland Camogie finals bringing the curtain down for 2026, but for some that has already happened with the football and hurling finals last month.

People have different ways of determining the time of year and I suspect for many like me, the All-Ireland Finals in September felt like the real end of summer. We are still very much in summer mode in August but it feels like it is winding down when it should still be at its peak. Maybe it is just me but the evenings drawing in feel more noticeable than they were before the GAA calendar change.

I’m not for one second advocating a return to the old calendar as the split season, personally speaking, has been a success. Not only does it provide certainty for inter-county as well as club players in terms of when championships start/end, even for unimportant people like me in the media, we can plan as well in terms of when to take time off.

There’ll probably be tweaks going forward, possibly stretching the calendar by a week and maybe having two weeks between the hurling and football finals, but that will be about it, as for all the criticism of the “condensed season” isn’t it better this way than before when sometimes there were three to five weeks between a county playing.

It is also more player-friendly as essentially pre-season training is designed to get players fit to play games whereby they don’t have to do too much training between the matches in the summer where it is largely recovery with short pitch sessions generally focused on game-planning for the next opponent.

I feel a lot of the reticence to the new calendar is because the vast majority of GAA supporters have lived through the old system but as we end the fifth iteration of the split season, more people will become used to it. It’s like any habit; change takes adjusting to but it just takes time.

I accept the argument from those that the GAA is giving up promotional profile value of August and September as they used to but that is in a national context. At a local level, for the vast majority of Tipperary supporters, they will be as engaged with the club championships. Yes, we might not be too bothered about what goes on in other counties until the provincial club championships start in November, but that will be the feeling in all 32 counties.

The profile of sold out Croke Park in August and September is appealing but if the GAA went about compiling attendance figures each weekend this month as the club championship really crank into gear, the cumulative attendances in all 32 counties would likely exceed the capacity of Croke Park. A couple of hundred people here and there all adds up quickly.

The club player has given up a lot in the new calendar. Where previously, club championships started in April here in Tipp and ran through May, June and July, for the vast majority of players it is late now July before any club championship starts, a little earlier in a year Tipp fail to get deep into the championship.

The two things the club player got in return were: certainty of schedule, and also being able to start in good weather because there will be a sting in the air when the county finals are played in October, and a chill when the All-Ireland finals are played in January. Why should the prime summer months be the preserve of the inter-county players? Could you imagine the fall-off in participation at club level if they were told it is a winter sport for you. That’s the way it is in soccer and rugby because that’s their calendar and they are used to is.

For the GAA, the summer was always shared between the club and county game, the only change is they don’t crossover each other like they used to, and even in the latter years of that system, inter-county players weren’t exactly killing themselves at club level if there was a big inter-county match on the horizon.

The national media might find the next couple of months difficult as the club game doesn’t generate the same traction, and that is only natural, but don’t for one second think GAA is quiet at the moment, it’s at its busiest time of the year.