Iâm a big fan of Jim but was it not a committee who came up with new rules and Jim as chair ?
Former Wexford manager Tony Dempsey has called for the hurling championship to be restored to the prime summer months and warned that the sport is âunder threatâ.
Since the advent of the split season, the inter-county season has culminated in July, and this year, itâs Wexford, Offaly, Antrim, defending All-Ireland champions Clare and Waterford who see their campaigns end before the start of June following their respective provincial championship exits.
Dempsey, who also previously served as Wexford county board chairman, said that, in his view, the situation was not tenable in the long-term for counties like his own and Waterford.
âWeâre bitterly disappointed because the summer is when young people share the joy of school holidays with being able to watch their elite performers - in our case Lee Chin and Rory OâConnor - and not only to watch them but to enjoy them without the problem of trying to attend school on a Monday,â he told RTĂ Sportâs Pauric Lodge.
"So school holidays will now be a time for Wexford, Waterford and of course Clare and many other counties when the performers will be gone from there. We wonât be able to see them.
âThe reality is we promote and market our games - every sport that does that through the performance of their best elite athletes. We hand over the summer, the best time for an elderly person or a youngster who doesnât have the worry of school to attend and to support and to watch our hurlers and indeed our footballers. So weâve handed it over to other sports.â
Dempsey said the argument that the split season has been brought into give succour and more exposure to the club game is âa nonsenseâ
âYou could start your club championships and play inter-county games at the same time. Itâs happened for over a century,â he said.
Without the situation being addressed, Dempsey offered the view that hurling in certain counties would be in a precarious position.
âHurling is under threat. I read an article, I think it was in the Independent yesterday where one of their sportswriters talked about the possibility of Wexford and Waterford drifting from the mainstream of hurling,â he said.
"I think he might be talking about the Joe McDonagh competition for us or Waterford. Hopefully that wonât happen but there is a danger that it can happen.
"You perform best during summer, you improve your skills, you hone your skills in summer. County teams in Wexford, now thatâs gone. Weâre not in minor, weâre not in under-21, weâre not in senior.
âSo I think itâs possible to have competitions for our clubs and inter-county during the best time of the year.â
Jim has a Chairman Mao type approach to committees.
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Jim was a fan of player power where they discussed the issue at hand and came up with a solution. They kept going until they came to the solution Jim agreed on.
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âIf I had an argument with a player we would sit down for twenty minutes, talk about it and then decide I was right!â
This is gas. Wexford and Fermanagh get a token slot on GAA+ because the cameras are already there while a bunch of far more important games wonât see the light of day bar some terrible Sunday Game highlights.
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3pm of a Saturday is an awful time to be asking Noo York fans to travel to Dublin.
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The coverage is some farce, how is there only one game on RTE?
100 percent but the coverage isnât really related to the actual split season which some fellas struggle to grasp on here.
Waterford are getting more games than they ever did and, for the first time ever, getting two home games a year guaranteed
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They lost 3 games. No team that loses 3 games deserves to be still in a championship
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Waterford need to have a good hard look in the mirror at themselves and stop moaning about the format in the media. We need to look at the managers we are appointing, coaching, why key players have opted out and first and foremost the moribund county board who have absolutely no ambition for the county. Paddy Joe Ryan was the last county board officer who had any bit of go in him.
Clare who have a marginally bigger population than us have won an All Ireland under this format.
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Same as Leitrim.
Small population, poor mouth etc.
We have five times the population of Leitrim.
I know but Iâm just saying that Leitrim play the poor me card also (particularly around population) when they havenât got their house together internally for years.
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100%. Waterford had home games against the All Ireland Champions, the team going for 7 Munsters in a row, and then away games against the league champions and, eh, Tipp. A Waterford team in the 90s would have killed for that.
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Paul Rouse: Split season not ideal but best we can do for club player
The rationale behind the split-season was the incapacity for county and club to work together
SPLIT SEASON: The words of Tony Dempsey, the former Wexford hurling manager, are worthy of serious consideration in respect of the danger to hurling of the âsplit seasonâ. Pic:ŠINPHO/Ken Sutton
Fri, 30 May, 2025 - 06:10
The words of Tony Dempsey, the former Wexford hurling manager, are worthy of serious consideration in respect of the danger to hurling of the âsplit seasonâ.
When talking to RTĂâs Pauric Lodge, he said that the reality was that the GAA was handing over the summer to other sports, principally because so many counties were finished their season by the end of May.
He makes the further point: âYou perform best during summer, you improve your skills, you hone your skills in summer.â
This is true. To say that hurling is a different game in June and July to the one played in February or March is for sure the case. And perhaps the GAA could restructure the hurling championship to ensure more counties are hurling until the end of June, for example.
The problem is where the argument went next. Tony said that the idea that the split-season had been brought in for the benefit of the club game was âa nonsenseâ. He continued: âYou could start your club championships and play inter-county games at the same time. Itâs happened for over a century,â
The thing is that this is not the way things were in the decades before the split-season was introduced. Indeed, the idea that you could run club and county beside each other through the year had been rendered impossible by the approach of most people involved in running teams at inter-county level.
It meant that for years and years clubs were unable to field players who were involved in county set-ups, let alone have them come to training.
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This, in turn, meant that club championships were in too many counties, reduced to being played in the dog-days of autumn and winter, and run off almost as blitzes.
The rationale behind the split-season was the incapacity to find a way to change that as no amending of the schedule or laying down of protocols had made a meaningful impact.
If by some extraordinary turn of events, principles were somehow adopted and protocols agreed and adhered to which ensured that club and county could share playing time in a proportionate way, then the rationale for the split season would collapse.
The basic reality is that it is difficult to find anyone who believes that can successfully be achieved. And the historical evidence is that all attempts at it have failed conclusively.
It is worth remembering that the inter-county season now extends from December (when training is officially permitted to start, but of course it starts before then in plenty of places) to the end of July. Eight months.
If we cannot manage to allow our clubs four months of a run at things then we are completely useless and failing in the basic obligation to our members.
The essential purpose of every sports organisation is to provide a calendar of games for its members â it is what defines its existence. It is also what usually defines its success or failure in the long run.
It would appear that some county boards are still failing to run their club competitions properly. That is unacceptable â but the answer to that is not to abandon the split-season.
And then there is the second argument: the issue of the ceding of the propaganda (âexposureâ) space to other sports. it is a moot point as to the value of propaganda to the GAA and to when that propaganda might be maximised. National and international sport continues all the time â the show, in all its variety, never stops. This means that there will always be clashes between GAA matches and other sporting competitions. Similarly, there will always be times when there are no major GAA matches to compete with those sports.
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But so what?
What is the point of more exposure? Surely it must have a purpose? Or is the purpose just exposure for the sake of exposure? Is it primarily to construct hurling and Gaelic football as a television product?
Or if the purpose is that you want to attract more people to play your games, then why would you construct a system where the majority of those people who do play it have to sit around endlessly waiting for inter-county teams to finish in order to play meaningful matches? That makes no sense for an amateur organisation. As a premise, it lacks basic logic.
Indeed, more than that, it is contrary to the expressed purpose of the GAA as an organisation that is dedicated to the provision of games for all.
There is a further point. Inter-county players are now on the record as saying that they welcome the split season. It means that they can plan their lives and actually have holidays, knowing when their games will be played. Crucially, they can also manage their playing load and not be pulled in two directions between county and club.
Resolution of these issues was something that was laid out with clarity in the ESRIâs 2018 report âPlaying Senior Inter-County Gaelic Games: Experiences, Realities and Consequencesâ (Elish Kelly, Joanne Banks, Seamus McGuinness and Dorothy Watson). It was repeated again in the following yearâs âSafeguarding amateur values: An examination of player welfare among senior inter-county Gaelic playersâ (Elish Kelly, Conor Keegan, Brendan Walsh).
The level of preparation that is demanded of players now is huge. To walk back from the split-season would be a retrograde step on this point alone.
The GAA could not continue with the way it was doing things before it introduced the split-season. What it amounted to was county players training interminably for irregular matches and club players languishing offstage.
There is no doubt but that the split season is an imperfect solution. It would be interesting to see a workable, clear alternative, however, that is demonstrably better.
Such an alternative must respect all playing members and must carry clarity of purpose that extends beyond impressionistic rhetoric.
Paul Rouse is professor of history at University College Dublin.
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The last four championships that didnât have a round robin Waterford ended up in two finals and two semi finals.
I think it is five round robins and they havenât advanced in the top three once.
Some disparity.
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Thereâs a saying about correlation and causation
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