GPA chairman Seamus Hickey has confirmed that two teams were not prepared to play their rescheduled fixtures on Bank Holiday Monday.

Five of Sunday's national football league matches as well as all four hurling quarter-finals and the HL2A final were called off due to adverse conditions and nine of the ten fixtures were provisionally refixed for Monday. As it turned out, only three of those nine games actually went ahead as pitches were still unplayable.

Players were understandably upset at being asked to tog out on a Bank Holiday Monday at such short notice and it has been revealed that at least two teams from the twelve who had their games scraped for the second time were not going to fulfil the rearranged fixtures. The teams in question are Louth, Meath, Wicklow, Limerick, Waterford and Leitrim in football and Galway, Wexford, Tipperary, Dublin, Carlow and Westmeath in hurling.

"It wasn't so much strike action as being unable to fulfil fixtures," Limerick full back Hickey - who was himself caught up in the uncertainty - told The Irish Examiner. "They had discussed it internally and with their management teams and they had support from their management teams.

"These teams had players committed to their employers on the Bank Holiday and it would have required annual leave or, in some instances, not being able to get annual leave and they made a decision as a group not to fulfil the fixture."

Tweet

Most Read Stories