by Declan Rooney

Galway’s club delegates will tonight get their first chance to air their views on the independent financial audit carried out into the health of Galway GAA’s finances.

Delegates were presented with the financial report carried out on behalf of Croke Park at last Tuesday’s county board meeting, and tonight’s county convention will be their first chance to question officials after digesting the report for the last week.

The report has advised a restructuring of Galway GAA’s leadership, with a new operations manager set to be hired, while the paid secretary position vacated by John Hynes in recent months looks likely to become a voluntary role.

Meanwhile, the Galway convention will hear tonight that the county’s clubs must get used to planning their club competitions around the summer dominated inter-county game.

In 2018 there was no hurling club championship played in the county for 20 weeks in a spell from April to September, and the competition finished on 18 November with St Thomas’s crowned the county champions.

In his report to the convention on behalf of the hurling committee, former chairman and current hurling committee secretary John Fahey says that it is something the county clubs must work around in order to run off their competition in an efficient manner as possible.

“On the domestic front the new inter-county format not alone dictated how and when we ran our premier competitions but also has a huge impact on the very survival of some clubs with adult club players having to wait up to 20 weeks for one championship round to the next,” Mr Fahey said in his report to convention.

“We must acknowledge that these structures are in place for the foreseeable future and with the upcoming Review Report make the necessary changes that this body bring forward to help have a more streamlined fixtures programme going forward.”

“We will all reference the long-lost summer where no championship game took place in the period April 22nd to September 2nd, but as already shown in inter-county involvement at senior U-21 and minor unfortunately with the inter-county programme this situation will remain.”

On the footballing front, secretary Marie Ni Breithiun echoed Fahey’s calls for clubs to stick to the schedule outlined in order to run off their competitions as per the calendar.

“In 2019 there will be more club championship games and the same number of weeks in which to get them played so it will be vitally important that the games are played when scheduled,” said Ms Ni Breithiun in her report.

“If we want to complete our leagues before the latter stages of our championship we need to start them earlier and play the games as fixed with no rescheduling of games so that we can get them fixed. Hopefully all clubs will commit to fulfilling their fixtures in 2019.”

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