El Presidente takes aim at managerial skulduggery, Friday Night Lights debate rolls on and a very tasty looking GAA cake.
Dummy run again
Maybe we’re missing something but we don’t get the big deal about dummy teams. The tradition of AN Other and the like has been going on for years and making late switches to a team often named five days in advance is always a possibility.
Some may feel that Liam Dunne went too far with the Wexford team he named for the first game with Dublin, and it did include six changes of personnel and 13 positional switches. And yes, while it is a bit annoying that the programme in your hand is different to the team lined out on the pitch, you soon get the hang of who is who and where they are.
But GAA President Liam O’Neill has decided to crusade against this issue, saying in the Daily Star: “I’m not very happy with it. I think that the supporters deserve when they buy a programme and the team is lined out, they expect to see it. I can understand difficulties when people cry off late because of injury and illness and that is fine.
“But other than that I think people should be treated more fairly than some of our managers are doing at the moment.”
And he has decided to hit the men responsible, the managers, where it hurts, the pocket.
“We decided at a central council meeting last Saturday that we would have a review of it at the end of the Championships.
“We will take whatever steps that have to be taken to put penalties into rule that would make people comply.
“We’re not interested in giving fines to county boards. There is no use in adding insult to injury to county boards strapped for money.
“Whoever offends a match regulation should take the consequence, him or herself.
“We will try to move to a situation where the penalties will be imposed on those that don’t comply. It will be our plan to implement this and was my suggestion to do it.”
We’d guess that there are about 766 things more important than dummy teams for the GAA to fix but this seems to be the one he has chosen to focus on. Sigh…
Hard Day’s Night for Laois and Carlow
The debate over the merits of playing a Championship match on a Friday night continues but one thing is for sure, they players won’t be getting any money for being discommoded.
Jim McGuinness and Jim Gavin both called for the players to get a few bob but that man O’Neill has confirmed that no rules will be bent, despite the late schedule change.
We shouldn’t be surprised really…
Now that’s what we call a cake
Scrolling through the #GAA is not always the most interesting thing to do to pass the time, clogged as it is by various things from local raffle results to some poor Americans using it for who knows what reason.
But occasionally it will serve up an unexpected treat, like this cracking GAA birthday cake posted by @cakesbyshaunagh, a Cork cake maker.
As Homer might say, ‘hmmm hurley-licious’.
