The GAA on Thursday unveiled the 2021 intercounty programme at a remote media briefing. It was much as flagged with fixtures beginning on the weekend of May 9th for the top two divisions in the hurling league and the football commencing a week later.
It will run all of the way to late August when the All-Ireland hurling final is scheduled for the weekend of August 21st/22nd and the football climax due to take place a week later.
Training for county panels is permitted from April 19th.
Larry McCarthy, president of the GAA, was asked was he optimistic that the whole programme would be completed.
“I’m confident we can run the whole thing as laid out. The CCCC find it to be a good programme. We’ve ‘concertinaed’ from 27 into 20 [weeks] so with the cooperation with everybody, I’d be very confident we can run it off.”
The next step will be the publication of a fixtures calendar in a couple of weeks’ time, as soon as the provincial championship draws are made the week after next.
None of the overseas teams will be taking part in the championship so London and New York will not be involved in the Connacht senior football championship. London, Warwickshire and Lancashire will similarly not take their places in the Ring, Rackard and Meagher Cups, respectively.
Formats are fairly similar to last year. There will be no All-Ireland qualifiers in football and the second-tier championship, the Tailteann Cup, will not be given its inaugural run – having been introduced by special congress in October 2019.
Feargal McGill, director of player, club and games administration, explained that there simply hadn’t been time for any expansion to the football season.
More important
“You needed another three weeks – it’s as simple as that. Otherwise, you would have been piling the games on top of each other. There were two things that influenced it: you were going to have to take that time off the club season which you didn’t want to do or you were going to have to shorten the league season further.
“To the vast majority of counties in football the league is the more important competition. There were three things up for grabs – the qualifiers or Tailteann Cup or the other two, which was to maintain the number of games in the league and then protect the club window. That’s what it came down to. I wouldn’t say it was close.”
The football league has already rationalised its structures with each of the four divisions broken into two smaller pools of four, arranged for geographical proximity. The bottom two counties in each pool will play out relegation semi-finals with the two losers demoted. The top two counties in each pool will play off in divisional semi-finals with the finals scheduled for June 19th and 20th.
This is dependent on the two finalists not having a championship match the following week in which case the title will be shared. This is in order to give a break before championship starts.
Hurling will be organised on the same championship format as last year with All-Ireland qualifiers giving teams at least two matches. The losing quarter-finalists in the six-team Leinster championship will play off in a preliminary qualifier round with the winners going into the All-Ireland qualifiers and the losers dropping to next season’s McDonagh Cup.
The hurling league is a big difference from last year in that it was mostly completed before the 2020 lockdown. This summer’s competition guarantees five matches, based on the current Division 1A and 1B with the top counties in both sharing the league title unless they meet at some point in the championship, which will then double as the league final - as was the case last year with Clare and Limerick.
The hurling league relegation play-off between the bottom teams in Divisions 1A and 1B will be played as a curtain raiser to one of the All-Ireland senior semi-finals in August. This is to prevent any congestion in the championship.
There is still no clarity in relation to the underage grades.
“In terms of 17’s and 20’s, it’s a question of figures and vaccine roll-outs and a question of all those things. When the time is time is right and we are told we can do that, we’ll just have to live with whatever time we’ve been given.”
Key dates
Start of hurling league, May 8th/9th
Start of football league, May 15th/16th
Leinster SHC final, July 17th
Munster SHC final, July 18th
Connacht SFC final, July 24th/25th
Leinster/Ulster SFC final, July 31st/August 1st
All-Ireland SHC semi-finals August 7th/8th
All-Ireland SHC semi-finals August 14th/15th
