GAA Special Congress to give Management Committee 12 weeks to plan new Championship structure

Tomorrow’s Special Congress will give the GAA’s Management Committee 12 weeks to draw up a new Championship structure.

The gathering will take place remotely tomorrow afternoon, as revealed by Mirror Sport last week, with just one item on the agenda - “to establish an interim governance structure for the Association in an emergency situation”.

It will involve handing power to the Management Committee to overhaul the Championship format as required, should the GAA get the green light to resume games later in the year.

Management will hold this power for 12 weeks “unless needed for a further period”, though it still suggests that if the GAA is not in a position come July to at least make plans for staging the inter-county Championships, it’s unlikely that they will go ahead at all.

At the very least, the round robin phases in the hurling and football Championships will fall by the wayside, along with the tier two Tailteann Cup in football, though the GAA remains keen that every county be granted at least two Championship matches despite the idea of a straight knockout format gaining traction among several players.

Interestingly, once passed at tomorrow’s Special Congress, this mechanism will also be “applicable in any future similar emergency”, according to a GAA statement.