KCLR Scoreline understands the FAI intends to announce that junior leagues will be taking a break from 11th Dec to 6th Jan.
There intend to bring in a new registration system for players which will be done exclusively online. This means that there can be no registering of any new players between 11th and 19th Dec. Also there will be a supposed €3 registration fee for every player registered.
This may come as a blow to clubs that rely may rely on players involved in the GAA to help fulfill fixtures during our Gaelic Games off-season. However, most should be able to navigate, as they did during the pandemic and in Kilkenny, after the resignation of the previous league committee.
The Kilkenny District league will be conducting a meeting tonight in the Orchard House Bar at half seven, which intends to introduce the newly elected committee to the clubs. It is believed the news will be relayed to clubs after secretaries were informed via a webinar conducted by the FAI.
Whether this affects the schoolboys and girls league remains to be seen in Kilkenny, as there are fixtures still on the website.
See also: Kilkenny & District League elect a new management committee
Carlow
On the other side of the border, Carlow intends to still run fixtures the following week, due to using a different online competition set-up. However, they do still intend to give their players a break over the Christmas period.
When contacted by Scoreline, the Carlow District League secretary, Brian O’Reilly enlightened us on the Barrowside situation;
“We are going ahead with a full program on the 17th and 18th of December. then we will shut down for two weeks, coming back on the 9th of January. So there is only one extra weekend we will get to play.”
“We will play a couple of our KCLR Shield quarter-finals that weekend, so it is looking like the Shield final will go back to where it used to be, which was St. Patricks Day weekend, possibly earlier. (The last final was played New Years Day 2022)“
“New Oak and Vale Wanderers have gone quite far in outside competitions, they are catching up on league games, so we could not lose a weekend fixture for them to play the shield quarter. So they have agreed to play mid-week fixtures. New Oak will play St. Patricks and Baltinglass will play Vale Wanderers. So the other two quarter-finals will be played on a Sunday will New Oak and Vale can play a league match.”
