Decision to postpone Cork games may cost GAA

Cork’s games in the National Football League and Hurling League this weekend have now been postponed to facilitate a resolution in the dispute between the county panels and the county board.
The Leesiders’ players have been on strike action for several weeks now and already they have missed fixtures in this year’s leagues.
Failure to play in this week’s games should have meant automatic dismissal from this year’s competitions but the GAA have elected instead to give more time to the Labour Relations Commission’s chief Executive Kieran Mulvey to broker a deal.
While everyone who enjoys Gaelic games wants to see Cork’s hurling and football stars back on the field of play asap I don’t believe for a second that the GAA would have allowed one of the country’s minnows to cause the type of fixture congestion which will result from the decision to park the issue for yet another week.
I couldn’t see headquarters being so benign to the Kilkenny footballers or the Wicklow hurlers if they were engaged in a protracted battle with their county boards and wreaking havoc on the fixture list in the process.
I hope Kieran Mulvey can bring the dispute to an end after his meetings with the panels and the county boards as no one wants to see any group of footballers or hurlers out of competitions.
However, the GAA’s decision to accommodate the Cork squads will be seen as a cave-in to the player power of the big counties and by not taking a stand it may well be a decision which will come back to haunt them in the future.