GAA club players left in the lurch again as return date is unknown

TYNAN'S TAKE BY STUART TYNAN

THE Return to Play roadmap announced by GAA just over a week ago has finally given some sense of direction in terms of the fixture list for our games.

Hurling returns on the weekend of May 8/9, Gaelic football resumes the following week, and the draw for the provincial championships should be done by the time you read this column.

But that's at senior-county level. What about the club players, who make up 98% of the people who play? Who knows.

While we know that the club championships won't begin until August or September, and there may be a chance of action even in regional competitions earlier if Mayo suffer an early knockout from the All-Ireland championship (a real possibility given the competitiveness of the Connaught SFC), no date has even been tentatively announced.

It essentially means that players up and down the county may soon be doing some sort of training without any real sense of direction. For anyone struggling for motivation, this certainly isn't going to help.

It's going to be tough on the Mayo County Board to plan for any club season, and my sympathy is with them. Mayo's season could, fingers crossed, end with them lifting Sam at the end of August. Or it could be all done for another year by the end of June.

I personally would like to see the Mayo senior leagues return after not being played last year. They provide much-needed competitiveness in games that the likes of the Michael Walsh League or other secondary competitions simply do not provide.

But it's all ifs, buts and maybes at the moment. For club players, that is not good enough, and the blame lies directly at the feet of the top decision-makers in the game and government.

*You can read Stuart's full column every Tuesday in our print edition.