Fixtures chaos causing major problems at all levels in Offaly

The hoary old chestnut of fixture clashes once again raised its head last Thursday evening in Tullamore when Offaly under-21 manager Padraig Horan highlighted how the lack of joined up thinking means that several players have seen too much hurling while several others have seen too little. Offaly has been particularly haunted by issues of scheduling in 2008 and a variety of incidents have highlighted how the season"s structure must be re-examined, with a clear overall plan laid out that would best serve the counties, clubs and most of all the players. The most glaring instances have been: (1) The county"s senior and under-21 hurlers being forced to play three crucial games within a period of eleven days, a number that could have risen to four games in fourteen days if Offaly seniors had beaten Waterford and advanced to an All-Ireland hurling quarter-final. (2) Offaly"s club players having one championship outing at the end of April before twiddling their thumbs throughout the bulk of the summer. (3) The club under-21 championship being run off at lightning pace over the space of three weeks. (4) Birr"s engagement in the All-Ireland Club Championship for almost the entire league campaign, meaning that Joe Dooley played most of the league at a severe handicap. To add salt to the wounds, from the 24th of March to the 24th of May, Offaly did not play a single match of any significance while Birr played one championship match against Tullamore. Understandably, Horan was most perturbed by how the structures impeded on his attempts to guide the under-21 hurlers to a first Leinster title in eight years. 'I felt we were trying to get ready for a Leinster under-21 final, which I thought was the most important thing for Offaly hurling. I found out that it wasn"t. Once there was a sniff of success at senior level the under-21 was an obstacle that had to be removed,' he said. Horan added: 'Unless we can get back and start getting club hurling going at the right time of the year, then we"re at nothing. People would ask was it of value to have a dozen lads on the senior panel. We saw this evening how valuable it was. Some of those boys mustn"t have hit a ball in anger in six months. It"s an advantage to one or two, but they were dead this evening and the lads that had been getting no hurling were even deader. If you look at the Kilkenny panel they had only two players in with the seniors, but Mick Walsh (Kilkenny under-21 manager) had the use of them. We hadn"t.' 'People will think that it"s sour grapes and throwing blame around but the simple fact is that you can"t train a team if you haven"t got them. There is too much talk about lads getting too many games. A lot of our lads showed that they were getting no games. That was a bigger problem.' The lack of co-ordinated thinking among the various management teams was also an issue for Horan as he felt that the senior management didn"t help the cause of his team. 'The biggest disappointment for me was that senior management started talking about this game being postponed without ever consulting us. In fairness to Pat Teehan (county chairman), he did and made sure we were consulted.' 'Last year we went to a Leinster final and we were short Cathal Parlon, Michael Verney, Eamonn Lee and Kevin Grogan, none of whom were injured playing under-21. With twenty minutes to go down in Limerick what did we do? We brought on under-21s. No one thought of it. 'I thought there should be more emphasis on underage, that"s why I got involved, but you would wonder why you even waste your time.' Horan"s comments were an understandable reaction to a disappointing defeat, but they do highlight the disparity of esteem that different players are held in Offaly. In rugby and soccer at the highest level there have been extensive studies regarding the minimum and maximum number of games that players should play in any given year. Rugby and soccer players do have the advantage of not being committed to several different teams, but just as there needs to be an examination of the number of games that a player like Diarmuid Horan is playing, equally there must be an examination of how many games are being played by players who do not have the same range of commitments across both codes and various age groups. 2008 will be remembered as a year of several highs and lows on the playing field, but for the sake of Offaly hurling and Offaly GAA in general, it must also be remembered as the year when the dishevelled mess that is the fixture list reached boiling point and when action was finally taken to address the imbalances that exist.