It is always good to talk together rather than shout through the media and so it has proven with the resolution of a solution to complete the 2020 AIB Camogie All Ireland Club Championships.

The competition had been cancelled on the basis of the complexities of scheduling created by Covid-19 but the clubs involved, including 2019 and therefore reigning champions Sarsfields felt that this was the wrong decision.

There was a hearing scheduled at the GAA Dispute Resolution Authority but more informal mediation talks are understood to have taken place yesterday involving former GAA Ard Stiurthóir Paraic Duffy.

You can imagine a calendar app being open across the different zoom screens and individual windows of opportunity being considered and ruled out until the idea arose that maybe it could be done in the middle of the 2021 run of the competition.

The outcome is that the 2021 County Club Championships will run after the conclusion of the All Ireland Inter-County Championships, starting in September and running through to a likely conclusion in early November.

Then from mid-November through to All Ireland Finals on December 19th, the 2020 competition will come to the fore with the completion of provincial Championships and then All Ireland Semi-Finals and Final.

It works for the clubs, and the sponsors AIB.

It will be hard on the players of the clubs involved who are also playing at inter-county but the adrenalin of playing at the highest level with your club=mates is not one that would be turned down by many.

It is also to the credit of the Camogie Association who have shown themselves willing to listen to criticism and take a solution-based approach to calendar issues that move things along rather than producing a winner and a loser away from the pitch.

There may be some within the Men’s game now that will query whether there should be a review of the 2020 AIB Club Championships in Hurling and Football but with more clubs involved that is, probably, a box that has been locked and the key is thrown away.

 

The Camogie Association and AIB are among more than 250+ members of the Sport for Business network of sporting and business organisations working together across a number of key areas.

 

Sport for Business Partners