The GAA’s commercial director Peter McKenna says a behind closed doors Championship remains on the table.
However, he says that it is the “least preferential” option open, with GAA president John Horan and director general Tom Ryan having been notably reluctant to get behind the idea over the past number of months.
The GAA and other sporting bodies were dealt a blow yesterday when it emerged that Phase 4 of the Government’s Covid-19 roadmap had been pushed back to August 10, meaning that numbers permitted at outdoor gatherings will not increase from 200 to 500 from next Monday as originally planned.
That will have a significant impact on the staging of club games in the coming weeks though the GAA is hopeful that crowds will be able to attend matches in larger numbers by the time the rescheduled inter-county Championship gets underway as planned in October.
"Everyone is hopeful for games to start again in October,” McKenna told the Today show on RTE Radio One.
“We are prepared for them to start again. Obviously the 200 limit is still continuing and that would make a huge challenge but I’d be hopeful that we are responding very well as a nation to what NPHET are putting down.
"I think once you start to unravel the restrictions you will see slightly bigger crowds within the stadium. At two metres distancing we are probably at around 7,000 capacity within the stadium. That is very, very small really.
"At one metre we are probably at around 22,000 and if we are allowed a degree of brush off – by which I mean people walking by each other in the same row – we could probably get up to 28,000.
"You’d be hopeful that come October we might be allowed 30% or 40% capacity in the stadium. But it is very much dependent on where NPHET see our progress as a nation."
McKenna doubles up as the Croke Park stadium director and has been exploring how matchday protocols would have to be adapted to the current climate.
He added: "We’ll look at regulated entry into the stadium so people need to come earlier and take their seat earlier. It isn’t so much about how people interact in the stadium, it is on the roads outside.
"You don’t want people coming at the one time. We need to careful and watchful of that and public transport and how people get to Dublin, depending on what teams are playing.
"We will do that liaising closely with the National Transport Authority, working with the Gardai and just putting [regulations] in place."
