AIB presented its #TheToughest Club Player of the year awards yesterday amidst increasing clamour over a proposed move to bring forward the club Championship Finals they sponsor to December from their traditional spot in the sporting calendar on St Patrick’s Day.
The awards were presented to a hurler, footballer and camogie player from each of the provinces and included Kieran Donaghy from Austin Stacks in Kerry, Ger Brennan from St Vincents in Dublin, Anna Geary from Milford and TJ Reid from Ballyhale Shamrocks.
The proposal going forward to the GAA Congress at the end of next month is that the Club Finals take place in December as opposed to in March and that to accommodate this more efficient use of the summer for Club games, the All Ireland finals should all move forward by two weeks.
It’s a proposal which makes sense from a club perspective meaning that all bar two of the hurling counties and four of the football counties will have ended their involvement by the start of August, freeing up more time for clubs to play their Championship matches.
It also calls for the London Championship to be incorporated into the main provincial structure thereby removing the anomaly of five teams advancing to the Quarter finals and requiring one additional round.
AIB have not passed comment on their view of the changes though it should be noted that it will shorten and switch around substantially the windows in which they gain significant time and space for promotion of the club games at a local and national level.
The bank won an award for the Best Digital sponsorship at the 2014 Irish Sponsorship Awards and Director Brian Keating spoke in glowing terms about how important they see the Championships as being among their staff and customers when speaking at the Digital Sport Conference in Dublin last November.
Right up to the moment the sponsorship was yesterday voted as the most effective of 2014 by an industry survey conducted by Onside Sponsorship.
