Club Players Association to tackle GAA ‘fixture chaos’

The Club Players Association (CPA), which will be officially launched on Monday, aims to stand up and speak out for the 230,000 GAA club players who feel as though their voices are not being heard, condense the inter-county season, and amend the ‘fixture chaos’.

A spokesperson for the CPA says; “The fixtures chaos within the GAA is causing players of all ages to become disillusioned with our games.

“If we want to keep our players then we must fix the fixtures!

“Ireland has 2319 GAA clubs. Logic suggests fixture schedule should serve the 2319 clubs first and 32 county teams secondly.

The CPA have launched a campaign to get GAA players to join together to ‘fix the fixtures’, and shared the above passage on Twitter as a ‘call to action’.

This passage resonates with the hundreds of thousands of GAA players across Ireland, who are often hailed as the ‘lifeblood of the association’ yet most of the time feel like a ‘whipping boy’.

Speaking to the Mirror, Derry’s Chrissy McKaigue says; “At the end of the day, everyone’s a club player or everyone’s a club member so the Club Players Association’s driving motive is not to recreate the wheel or anything like that.

“It’s to sort out a few burning issues and I think if you talk to any player, the fixture calendar is not efficient in any way.

“It doesn’t make sense a lot of the time. It needs condensing, and if it is, it’s going to promote club and county – it’s going to inspire and motivate more players, there’s going to be less disillusionment.

“The biggest problem is the inter-county season needs to be condensed to give the club player a better chance to compete and prepare better for their domestic club championship.

“Condense the intercounty season and there will be more room for manoeuvre.”

To learn more about the CPA you can visit their website, Facebook and Twitter.