GAA director general Tom Ryan has said that deciding to play games behind closed doors would have been an “out of touch” move.
Ryan outlined how it was something that was considered before yesterday’s announcement that all GAA activity would cease until March 29 in line with the Government’s call for schools, universities and creches to be shut down along with the restriction on mass gatherings earlier in the day.
With the Allianz Leagues near completion, the GAA looked at playing the remaining games of consequence only in the coming weeks without fans but in the end decided to pull the plug completely.
Ryan explained: “Off the top of my head, there were 22/23 games this weekend and out of that list there were 15 or 16 that were critical in terms of where League positions might end up or who might be promoted and so on.
“When we talked ourselves about playing games behind closed doors playing 15 or 16 games out of 22 and then looking at the following weekend, that looks very much like for the fixture programme and I think that would have been very much out of touch with what the country needs to do at the moment.
“It wouldn’t look right or feel right to have the GAA playing, albeit behind closed doors, a full fixtures programme. So we decided very quickly that that was something we didn’t want to do,” he told GAA.ie.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s announcement in Washington yesterday morning focused minds as to what course of action the GAA should take, said Ryan.
He added: “I suppose like everybody else we would have had certain indications that those things were going to be announced and they changed things for us on two fronts. The first one being the closure of schools and the second one being the restriction on mass events.
“So, with those two things in mind, that very much changed our approach. We had been considering things like playing games behind closed doors.
“We had been looking at how practical it would be to continue out certain competitions or play at certain levels and not at others and so on.”
Meanwhile, GAA president John Horan has called for patience around when the Association’s activities will return to normal.
He said: “I would encourage all our membership to adhere to all the guidelines that have been given to them by ourselves and by the health authorities to actually comply with them and I think, with that, it will help us all come through this in time.
“Our games are important but health and well-being is far more important than anything else.”
He added: “In time we will come through this and we know that. It’s just that if we do the right things at the moment I think we will come through it in a better position than if we start going off doing things that we feel we want to do but we shouldn’t really be doing.
“So I think if everybody complies and gathers together in support of the actual drive that’s there at the moment to overcome this epidemic that has hit our country, I think we’ll come out of it all the better.
“And look, at the end of the day, we will get back to playing games, it’s just a matter of time and a matter of people being patient.”
