EARLY APRIL AND Easter weekend.
It may not seem a traditional starting point for the inter-county GAA championships but it is where the first steps are taken on the 2023 road.
Last year was a jolt to the system for many with the April start, this year the throw-in is eight days earlier with yesterday’s games in London, Armagh and New York.
What do those at the heart of inter-county football and hurling camps make of the start on the second weekend of April? The42 canvassed the views of those involved.
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Marty Clarke (Down coach)
“I think as a first-year coaching team, Conor and I both played a lot of national football league and I think as a player you love it, you love the games coming thick and fast. You train, you play.
“But as a management group, there is so much to do in a week, in terms of helping the lads recover, preparing for the next opposition, reviewing the game before and taking the learnings from it.
“It’s certainly a heavy workload, but I do like the games coming thick and fast. I know the players feel the same.
“We are probably fortunate to have that four-week gap now, we might be giving you a different answer if we had a two-week gap or had been in a league final.
“That’s maybe something we could look at. It’s the first year we have gone down this road. We can see how it goes and tweak it as it goes along.
“We have to remember that we are leaving extra room for the club season as well. Yes, maybe it is a wee bit condensed, but it is the same for every team. The prize of this, why it was structured in this way is to give club players a good portion of the season and not having them playing everything in the winter.”
John Cleary (Cork manager)
“It is funny alright. I haven’t been involved at senior level, but the big thing there that the older lads were saying was that there was always a break between league and championship, whereas this is just rolling on again.
“In one respect it is good because you are not wondering how you’ll plan it or will you go get challenge games and things like that. But it just rolled on, and two weeks on from our last league game, we have our first championship game.”
Mickey Graham (Cavan manager)
“It definitely is strange because you remember back in your own playing days, the grass was cut and the sun was out, there was a special feeling to it. You might not get that in April, heavy pitches and it does take a wee bit of the edge off it.
“Even (previously) giving players the time to go back to their clubs for four or five weeks, you are re-energised when they come back fresh. As well, with this condensed season, if you pick up an injury in the league now there is a good chance you could miss the championship.
“It can work for some teams, a team that has got momentum and is coming off the back of some good results, it is great and they want to keep going. But a team coming off the back of a couple of poor defeats, they probably need time to regroup and really look at where they are at.
“I just find talking to other managers, there seems to be a lot more injuries this year compared to previous years. I see it myself, we have not had a full squad all year.
“Just wear and tear, tissue injuries, groins, hamstrings, quads. Players finish with us now and when the championship is over they will go straight in with the club and when the club is over, they are straight back in with us.
“There is no real time for them to recuperate. It is a big demand on them, while the clubs are getting their time and deserve their time, you wonder can you hold on to players consistently for four or five years moving forward with the demand on them now.”
Eoin Cody (Kilkenny forward)
“I grew up watching the Kilkenny team and it was always about the first Sunday in September, it was a great time of the year. But look, with the round robin last year, it was my first year of it because of Covid.
“It was great to play championship matches and plenty of them, there were no complaints that way.
“But the way it has to be run, I am completely okay with it. I think everybody is.
“That traditional thing of the final being the first Sunday of September is gone now. It’s the same as the club finals being on Paddy’s Day, it’s gone. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
Colm Collins (Clare manager)
“It is interesting from someone who is preparing a team point of view. You are saying “God, I would love to have a little more time” and then from the players point of view they are saying “it is great, it is fantastic”, so I have always said if the players like it, that’s it, it can’t be too wrong.
“I think it is going to take a bit of time and then after a few seasons there will be a few tweaks to it. The situation where you could potentially have been in a league final and playing in your championship the following Sunday, I think that was a tough one. Maybe that is something we could get over in the future, that you should be given at least two weeks.
“Listen this is a dinosaur that did not see anything wrong with the old system, except I felt that if the 13/14 day rule was enforced rigidly, I saw nothing wrong with the old system.”
Tom Morrissey (Limerick forward)
“Yeah, you associate the championship with a firm ground and a nice sunny, summer’s day.
“Look, I suppose it doesn’t take away from us, we are looking forward to championship in a few week’s time and towards Sunday.
“There are plenty of times you go down somewhere to play in May, June and July and it might have been raining.
“It hasn’t been something we have noted or discussed. Yes, there has been a lot of rainfall. It’s going to challenge your skillset a bit more, going to play in those conditions. But it’s a challenge there to be embraced.”
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