Liam Sheedy certainly didn’t mince his words on last night's League Sunday when asked by Joanne Cantwell about the hurling landscape at the moment.
It was a night to reflect on how the game is being supported outside of the elite counties. However, Sheedy had strong words about how the split season is impacting the sport in his own county.
The two-time All-Ireland-winning manager with Tipperary believes that we have the product, but we need to have more competitive games and look after the volunteers who have helped get to the stage we’re currently at.
“People are so passionate about the GAA and what it has given me over my lifetime and what it has given to my parish in Portroe. It is incredible; organisations are working all of the time to try and find the breakthrough product we have. It is hurling. We have a longevity of 140 years, but we haven’t really grown it, and we have seriously gotten to a stage where we have to broaden it and how often it plays,” Sheedy said.
“We do some things well in the GAA. In my view, I think the functions that we have are incredible. Why are they there? It's because of the volunteers. All the work, time and energy they give is incredible, and we must ensure that we look after them.”
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Liam Sheedy: 'If we don’t have competition, we won't attract people.'
This past Thursday, GAA director general Tom Ryan was highly complementary of the GAA split season, saying in his annual report:
“I think the momentum and sentiment is such that we will not be reverting to the old arrangement any time soon.”
Sheedy, however, believes that the main reason hurling isn’t thriving is the split season, as he sees the training/playing balance wrong, as he explained with his club, Portroe.
"There's a disconnect between what's spoken about nationally and the clubs on the ground. One of the things on the strategic plan is the game-to-training ratio,” Sheedy said.
“If you take my own county in Tipperary, you have teams back already training in January, and the first round of the senior and premier intermediate starts at the end of July. There are 32 teams, and within four weeks, 16 teams are knocked out of the championship after four weeks so we can talk about a games-to-training ratio. We have club training for seven months, and with all the costs involved with running a club, you could be knocked out in four weeks,
“Then, you look at the meaningful games in participation. If you’re an under-13 in Portroe, you’re away with it. You’ll play 20 games, be awash with games, roll that on, and get to the senior team and get two or three games in a month. If you don’t win them, you’re gone, and if you look at our under-21 team, five lads only had one game this year, and our juniors were gone a few weeks before our seniors, so you only had 14 to 15 lads training, so for me, the split season isn’t working. How can a split season work if clubs are only getting two to four weeks?”
Finally, the RTÉ pundit added that if we don’t fix the split season sooner rather than later, we will only make the bigger clubs bigger and drive the smaller competitors out of our game, which will dwindle the playing population.
“I agree with the concept of the split season, as players are looking for certainty, but we don’t have the option model. All we are doing is creating super clubs. Some of the bigger clubs are getting bigger, and we don’t need an association where it's all about domination as opposed to competition. Slaughtneil 11 in a row, Ballygunner 10 in a row, Naas 5 in a row, St Thomas 7 out of the last 9. If we don’t have competition, we won't attract people.”
