Age-old tug-of-war between intercounty and university teams hasn’t gone away

Benny Hurl sighs at the question, which he says arises like clockwork every year.

“Groundhog week where some manager comes out and says, my player got injured and why don’t you play this before Christmas? This debate has been going on for a long, long time. Semesterisation and exams before Christmas – that’s one reason why it wouldn’t work.”

Prominent last year as the lead on the GAA National Demographics Committee, which reported last December, Hurl is also chair of the Higher Education Authority. It supervises, among other competitions, the Fitzgibbon and Sigerson Cups – the oldest non-intercounty trophies in Gaelic games.

There are tensions every year, as young players are stretched between their colleges or universities and their county at a time when that latter career can be embryonic. For counties, the pressure is to make early impact in the national leagues and managers want access to the players, regardless of third-level commitments.

Hurl wasn’t wrong in his timing either, as Kilkenny manager Derek Lyng made just such a suggestion earlier this week, arguing pre-Christmas scheduling would be “ideal”.

“Some lads, we’ve had to not consider for the weekend because that would be their third game in seven days and it just wouldn’t be fair.

“You’re looking at injury breakdown. I see players pulling up on hamstrings and things like that now. That’s just disappointing for them because they’re after putting in a huge effort preseason, but you can only do so much.”

As well as semesterisation, Hurl argues that other issues make the pre-Christmas rescheduling impossible.

“There are club championships that go on through September, October, November and December. Clubs are still playing either club championships or on the under-21 roster in their own counties.”

He also references warm-weather training weeks, which are increasingly taking place in December, and questions whether the primary purpose of higher education is being respected.

“Students go through the gate of the university to get one thing. It’s not Sigerson or a Fitzgibbon medal. It’s a degree and I think we have lost sight of that a bit. I’m not sure county managers look at that aspect of it.”

Lyng, though, is correct about injuries. Fitzgibbon favourites University of Limerick just about survived their Fitzgibbon semi-final against the University of Galway. They were missing Limerick’s Cathal O’Neill and Adam English, who was injured in last week’s league match in Waterford.

John Conneally couldn’t play, having had to be replaced in Clare’s win in Antrim, whereas ironically his UL teammates Diarmuid Stritch and Jack O’Neill had been omitted because of their Fitzgibbon exposure. Overall, UL had nine players injured.

Having to switch between teams operating at different points of the competitive cycle is one contributing factor and another identified is the need to play on different surfaces – grass and synthetic.

An obvious suggestion would be to ringfence all third-level players while their team is still involved, but given the importance of the national league in both codes – and especially football, where it can determine championship status – there has been no apparent willingness to take on that issue.

That may be about to change. Last November’s report of the Amateur Status Review Committee explicitly mentions third-level players in the section marked Certification/Governance/Oversight.

“The regulation of third-level players is of the utmost importance. The most straightforward proposal is that those players eligible to play for their universities/colleges in third-level competitions should be available to exclusively do so until their university/college exits the competition (parameters to be agreed) in question, eg Sigerson or Fitzgibbon Cup.”

Whether this obvious remedy can be piloted through remains to be seen.

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