Dónal Óg Cusack makes a passionate plea for more "oxygen" to be pumped into the sport of hurling #RTEgaa pic.twitter.com/zXJYdZsUQE
— The Sunday Game (@TheSundayGame) July 17, 2022
"We're in the shop window in every clubhouse. Every weekend, you go along to the club and we're in the shop window.
"It mightn't be in the likes of Croke Park, alright. But the best of what's about the GAA is happening at the moment. It is in the shop window and it's local.
"It may not be national but it's actually better, I think. I don't buy that we give up this massive promotional activity."
The newspaper columnist lobby may be lukewarm or divided but the players themselves are considerably more enthusiastic.
In July, the GPA reported that their latest survey found 85% of players were supportive of the split season and chairman Tom Parsons warned that any changes to the championship schedule must occur within the split season framework.
Critics have occasionally wondered why it isn't possible to run club championships concurrently with at least the latter stages of the All-Ireland championship, given that the vast majority of counties are long out of the inter-county game at that point.
But Briody asserts that this misses the core advantage of the split season from a players' perspective.
"Club championships are generally starting two weeks after the All-Ireland. Obviously, some teams, a lot of teams, are out of the All-Ireland championship a lot earlier than that.
"But what we tried to fix - and what was coming from club players and inter-county players was the word 'certainty'.
"The one thing they have now is certainty. And that word is lost so much in the media.
"Put yourself in the shoes of the 28-30 year club player and the girlfriend is trying to plan a holiday and he says to her, 'well, sure it depends on the championship, it depends on how Waterford do in the hurling, it depends on whenever we get going.'
"By and large, players are happy. Club players are happy and inter-county players are happy.
"So, why is there noise? There's noise because people will talk about, 'oh, wouldn't it be great in September to have All-Ireland finals now and the kids going back to school and the Cup can tour the school afterwards.'
"It's really a moot point. It's not as important as all your players being happy and having certainty. And that is the overwhelming result of the split season.
"How many players have come out and said 'we want back the April window and we want this hotch-potch of club one week, county the next'?
"None of the inter-county players liked it. None of the club players liked it."
In an interview on the Committee Room on GAAGO last April, GAA President Jarlath Burns offered a glimmer of hope to the traditionalists by floating the idea that the All-Ireland finals could return to September - provided each county adopted a uniform structure in running off their club championship, a caveat so large in rendered the whole thing a near impossibility.
While most observers - aside from the more extreme nostalgics - have accepted that a return to September All-Irelands is likely a non-runner, given the effects of that on the club schedule, it had been assumed that an August compromise could be in the offing.
That to allow the latter stages of the All-Ireland series more room to breathe, the finals would be pushed into early August, which would, theoretically, have minimal impact on the club game. This arrangement appears to be off the table in 2025, the Gallagher brothers already having booked the use of the stadium for 16/17 August next year.
The bigger dual counties such as Cork and Galway, massive advocates of the split season, have taken a very dim view of any attempt to compress the club side of the equation.
Briody allows there may be scope to push out the All-Ireland final - but only by a week.
"There may be small tweaks that can be done for a week or so, under certain conditions," the ex-CPA chief says.
"So, whoever got to the All-Ireland final - and you'd have to get the agreement of four provincial councils - that their club champions would get a bye in the club provincial first round.
"So, they wouldn't be under the same pressure to finish their club championship, let's say by 4 October.
"And that they would get an extra week or some concession and everyone would have to be in agreement.
"That's probably one way. There's a week there to do that. But there's no more than a week.
"Because when you look at the way each county runs their championship - and they all have different ways of doing it - there's generally six-to-eight weeks to run off a senior football or a senior hurling championship and the dual counties need to toggle between those weeks."
The conflation between the split season concept and the championship format debate continues to be an irritant. As regards the perception that the inter-county championships have become too hurried, with the latter stages run off at breakneck pace, Briody insists that's more a question of how the inter-county season itself is organised.
Particularly the number of competitions it attempts to cram into the schedule.
"One of the points that was made by another member of that fixtures committee, and he was very clear, he said 'look, the key to good organisation of fixtures is you decide the time-blocks that are available and you fit the competitions into those time windows.'
"What has happened in the GAA is that we have not lost any competitions. And we're trying to shoehorn everything into the given weeks.
"Yes, there has been a compression of the inter-county season. But we're still going full-tilt with leagues, full-tilt with pre-season competitions, persisting with league finals. And then we're going into the provincials - which is another conversation but I appreciate they are a key traditional component
"There's definitely trimming to be done to create those weeks coming up to the All-Ireland final.
"Like, I don't believe in playing a league final and being out in the first round of the championship the following week. We never put that in any of our plans.
"We just have to change our thinking on that. What's wrong with running league finals and the team that finishes top winning the league? That would create weeks.
"A good part of the early summer is given up to meaningless, one-sided games in the provincials. And then you go into the round robin and when you've three teams coming out of a group of four, you have such a lack of jeopardy. And it's a waste of good weeks.
"The inter-county season needs to be organised better in those windows. That's the big problem. Not the split season."
The idea of the club game being given the run of the pitch in August would have seemed a fairly idealistic, outré concept when the Club Player's Association was formed, in desperation, back in 2016.
The new body was formally launched on 19 October 2016 - for reference, less than three weeks after that year's All-Ireland football championship had concluded.
The idea was a brainchild was former Monaghan selector Declan Brennan, who drafted in Briody, the 40-year old CEO of Silver Hill Farm in Emyvale and a club stalwart with St Brigid's in Meath as its chairman.
Former Crossmaglen and Armagh star Aaron Kernan was also a key member of the committee, seated at the top table for the initial press launch.
That the CPA managed to achieve their ultimate ambition of a split season calendar within six years of their foundation suggests that they may be one of the most successful lobby groups of recent times.
"We would never have thought we would have gotten the split season in so quickly, but I'm not going to stand and take credit for that.
"While we wanted that, the pandemic forced that upon the GAA. It was brilliant that you got a trial period and then people said, 'wasn't that great?' And we said, "We told you, so!"
Does he ever wonder whether we would have reached this point without Covid-19?
"There was change coming. There definitely was. I just don't think it would have been as seismic.
"The (fixtures) committee had looked at the split season and it wasn't the preferred options at that time because people had thought it was too much of a change.
"At that stage, we didn't insist on the split season. It was our preferred choice but we realised to get change, you sometimes have to get incremental change. There was different options back then, with April as a window.
"Ultimately, what we were afraid of was the status quo. The pandemic arrived then in 2020. We'll never know what would have happened. We don't care.
"We always said it's not who's right, it's what's right. And what's right is the split season."
Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
