Dec 10,2024
The Dublin convention has passed a motion for next year's GAA Congress that would mean players would have to play a minimum of four league games with their clubs in order to be eligible for inter-county selection.
The amendment also calls on club and inter-county games to scheduled in such a way so as to allow the rule to be implemented.
"The reality is now that inter-county players hardly ever play with their clubs except in the now-shortened club aspect of the split season, which is now down to four months," he told listeners to the programme last month.
"In Dublin, and probably many other counties, the vast majority of clubs don't have county players.
"A Dublin club will play on average four championship games. We can’t surely accept that inter-county players are playing four games with their club. I would argue it is a complete betrayal of what the GAA should be about."
2025 will mark year four of the current split-season calendar, which sees inter-county championships wrapped up by late July, with the rest of the year given over the club championships.
McCaffrey further proposed breaking the GAA season up into four blocks, something which has the potential to come into conflict with the Gaelic Players Association, which confirmed in the summer that 85% of its members support the new split.
"...[W]hat we tried to fix - and what was coming from club players and inter-county players was the word 'certainty'.
"The one thing they have now is certainty. And that word is lost so much in the media."
