Well with the super league over and Castlebar Celtic has reclaim there crown. There will lay a more important issue once the league is dusted, where we all can take stock what is good or where can we improve on the game we call football.
Don’t get me wrong it was a brave decision under the Chairman of Donal Benson to introduce Summer Football in 1984, for all the right reasons. We the Clubs in Mayo League took the view under the leadership of Donal Benson that it was in the interest of promoting Summer Soccer.
So what was to be gain from summer football?
We would play on better surfaces.
Hope other leagues would follow
No postponements
Clubs would no longer rely duel players
Better attendances
Play at different times of the day or mid week
Now while all this sounds positive, it’s brought its own problems. For instance it wasn’t realised that the Clubs would be playing all year round. It has to be noted, that clubs are now finding it hard to get commitment from players... Who can blame them, when you see every other league at leased has a well earned brake.
As for attendances they become non existence, with so much more happening in the summer months. It even got to the stage when teams just wanted to play on Saturday evenings, so they could either attend another sporting occasion or some other social advent. One other major problem for clubs is holidays, weddings, and Stag nights or even weekends away.
The other misconception was that Mayo lead and others follow. This was a cu-d sac of our own making, which no other Junior League followed.
The Eircom League is now playing, but they will have a rethink at some stage. The one area which is causing them concern is the drop in attendances. Which at the end of the day will dictate as to whether? They continue to play from March –November.
Of course should we return to winter football mid week games won’t be taking place unless Clubs choose to floodlit there grounds, but then again playing in winter means our season starts in August and ends in May. Instead of all year round.
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There are positives which we can now take from our 12 years away from our tradition football season that is we can now boast that we have come along way in upgrading our football grounds to highest standards. That should we return we would reduce the number of postponements and compete at the highest level and our clubs would be able to take brakes and keep our players. While during the summer months we would be able to restore our pitches in the growing season.
Another irony would be sorted out and that would allow players to play with U-21 teams without causing too much unrest which we had to put up with.
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