GAA pundit, Darragh Ó Sé, has said Donegal are ‘100 percent right’ to be annoyed at having a six-day turnaround in the All-Ireland Championship.
“When you sit down and think about it for a minute, it’s a ridiculous decision,” he said.
“Any sense of fair play had to mean that both Donegal and Galway should be playing on Sunday.”
As it stands, Donegal will play a rising Monaghan side in the first quarter final in Croke Park at 4pm on Saturday evening, just six days after defeating Louth in Ballybofey last Sunday.
Donegal GAA made their feelings known on Monday night, having said they formally requested a Sunday fixture before the CCCC planned the schedule, with a statement saying “the welfare of our players was not adequately considered in the decision-making process”.
Yesterday, the Gaelic Players’ Association (GPA) also gave their backing to the county over their concerns.
Writing in today’s Irish Times, Ó Sé gave Jim McGuinness his backing, but believes neither the GAA nor the Central Competitions Control Committee (CCCC) are ‘out to get’ Donegal.
“It isn’t that the fixture-makers don’t make allowances for the demands of the Donegal players, it’s that they don’t make allowances for any players, anywhere,” he added.
“When they sat down with the four games in front of them, they weren’t thinking about Michael Murphy, Paul Conroy or David Clifford. They were thinking about numbers, plain and simple… It’s because that (Donegal v Monaghan and Galway v Meath on Sunday) would have meant Armagh v Kerry and Dublin v Tyrone both being on Saturday. So, you’d have a full house on Saturday and probably about 50,000 or so on Sunday…it’s all about bums on seats.”
Read Darragh Ó Sé’s column in full in today’s Irish Times.
Tags:
