Club players still getting raw deal and Croke Park offers little help

With only the Ballycumber v St Rynagh's tie yet to be played from the first two rounds of the Offaly senior hurling and football championships, the senior club players within the county now go their separate ways. The county players join up with the Offaly panels while the club players disappear into the shadows for over two months, with nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs and patiently wait for the action to resume later in the year, when they can either build on their early success or else redeem their slow start. As somebody who was partial to both maths and accountancy in secondary school, this writer is very familiar with the frustration of a situation where everything doesn't add up to a nice, neatly balanced total. The task of a fixtures committee in a dual county is not easy, and certainly there is little help coming down from on high, where the powers-that-be continue to take ridiculous decisions like reinstating replays for provincial games and restoring league semi-finals. Nonetheless a system that forces clubs to play without their minor players in championship fixtures, or in some cases asks these same minors to play two championship matches in 24 hours, is not working for the players it is meant to serve. A system which asks students in the middle of exams and under-fire employees worried about their job security to leave Dublin, Galway, Limerick and other big cities at 4pm of a weekday afternoon in order to travel down for a midweek championship match is certainly not looking after club players whatsoever. Above all, a system that expects club players to train for a mini-season of two games before going back into semi-hibernation is very much broken. The Offaly county board have done all that they can here in that there are league games ongoing throughout the quiet spell, however some really hard decisions need to be taken by all sides if real improvements can be made. Firstly, the inter-county season has to be shortened. There is no logic to provincial knockout championships taking over eight weeks to be run off. Ulster's tradition of one game per week is great for neutral supporters, however it means that there are long gaps between games for most teams. If the inter-county season could shave off three or four weeks, the practice of playing two games in late April and early May could be discarded. Where games are to follow in quick succession, they should at least be in the same code so players get to work together and build up some continuity. This past Sunday, Shamrocks hurlers had to face Coolderry, before on Tuesday night, Shamrocks footballers played Walsh Island. Bad and all as a two day break is, there is a fundamental unfairness in the fact that they were playing two single code clubs who didn't have to deal with this issue. There is something badly wrong where any club is scheduled to play two such games this close together, but at least if they were training and preparing for the same sport and playing against another club who were doing exactly the same thing, there would be some kind of inherent fairness. Realistically the dual player will always have to pay a price and the old traditions of getting a club football game called off because a player was on a county hurling panel the same weekend simply couldn't continue. In Offaly this is one of the really hard decisions that need to be made - how much leeway can be given to the dual player. The club games so far this year have generally drawn very small crowds, which is disappointing in light of some of the high profile fixtures that have taken place, particularly in the hurling. However, playing these games on Tuesday and Wednesday nights sends out all the wrong signals, and the championships will never grab hold of the communities until they take centre stage again. Offaly v Kildare One championship fixture that should certainly catch the imagination, however, is the Leinster minor football quarter-final taking place tomorrow evening in O'Connor Park at 7pm. A well-fancied Kildare team are the visitors for this do-or die clash and in one sense this is an excellent draw for Offaly. There is no point limping along and going through the difficulty of training and playing throughout the Leaving Cert if the potential is not there for bigger things - and certainly Kildare will be a good test of that potential. Neither side scores highly on the traditional measure of minor teams - how many returning players there are from the previous season - however both counties have shown some good form this year and whoever comes through from this fixture could yet be in for a long summer. Offaly put in some solid performances in the Leinster Minor Football League, they are backboned by several members of the All-Ireland winning Gallen Community School team and they have performed well in the run up to this game, despite injuries to key players Eamonn McCabe and Brian Grehan who both started against Wicklow. Kildare dominated their first round tie against Longford, a Longford team that subsequently went on to beat Westmeath and Wicklow comfortably, while they have lots of players with Leinster Colleges "A" football experience. A really engaging and high quality match is in store here and if Offaly can continue their trend of scoring goals, then they should give themselves every chance of prolonging this campaign.