Calls for NFL to be delayed

GAA news

There are growing calls for the National Football League to be delayed after a meeting of county board treasurers heard that there were “massive concerns” about the financial implications.

The GAA have forecasted to lose €17m in 2021 and county boards believe that running the league at this time would not be prudent.

“There was a lot of frustration from treasurers that the league was announced and nobody seemed to be cognisant of the fact that it was going to take a lot of money to put teams out to play in it,” stated Cavan treasurer Martin Cahill (above).

All counties have submitted budgets ahead of a National Finance Committee meeting on Thursday and a Central Council meeting on Friday at which the matter will be discussed.

“It was discussed before Christmas, the Finance Committee wasn’t really listened to. I would say for the 10 weeks from February 1, you are talking about €20,000 a week to run your county hurling and football teams.

“The championship was heavily under-written by the government, we are told now that there is no central funding from Croke Park and there is unlikely to be government money.

“The treasurers were saying ‘do we need to run with this now?’. I don’t think there was anyone saying not to run a National League but the feeling was that if we could hold it off until later in the year, we might be able to have gate receipts and venue rental.

“We are running a competition that nobody can go to and it would cost Cavan alone €200,000. The timing of it is what most people cannot get. There are massive concerns from the financial end of things.

"I think we should hold off for a couple of months. Even on a wider level, players going about their business as normal in the current situation with cases rising and so on is probably not a good look for the association either."