It hasn't been the best of Christmas periods for the National League with the weather continuing to take its toll on what looked, even before a flake of snow had fallen, a fairly chaotic fixture list and clubs feeling the need, because of this week's cup ties, to reschedule matches for the next couple of days.

The upshot is that the traditional build-up to the start of the cup has been thrown into disarray and the decision, taken last year, to defer a decision on a winter break in competitions here has been made to look more misguided than ever.

Part of the logic behind that decision was the fact that FIFA has been pushing strongly over the past couple of years for an internationally co-ordinated calendar which, it is expected, will come into force within two or three years.

The FIFA plan will almost certainly result in domestic leagues across Europe taking Christmas and the new year period off and why club officials here felt it would be better to wait for confirmation of the international scheme to arrive in the post before acting remains puzzling, although the line taken at the time was they would no sooner make one alteration than the other would be foisted upon them.

The fact that it takes so little to make the majority of pitches here either unplayable or best left alone means it would have been worth the trouble of pre-empting the international adjustment. Just look at the way Kilkenny City's season has been disrupted by one under-21 game played when it would have better been abandoned or the number of times a club like Finn Harps has lost games to a waterlogged pitch over the past few seasons.

As it happens the majority of games do go ahead and given the fact that income from gate receipts is so vital to most clubs' ability to pay their players' wages is generally seen as the main thing. But no one would seriously argue that there is a large percentage of games played during the worst of the winter weather wouldn't be more entertaining if they were played in better conditions on a better surface.

You can, of course, be treated to a thriller played on a bog and there have been a few fairly decent contests played in recent weeks on pitches that weren't far off being one. But in a league where clubs insist they are trying to improve the technical standard, bring on youngsters and convince supporters that their product is better than it is generally given credit for, the determination to steer clear of as much of the good weather as possible is fairly baffling.

A novel way of addressing the problem was demonstrated by Shamrock Rovers over the holiday period when they opted to switch their games against league leaders Shelbourne to Tolka Park from their occasional home in Santry.

The size of the Morton Stadium's pitch has long been a major concern for Joe Colwell and his winger loving manager Damien Richardson. The fact that the surface cuts up so badly when it rains makes matters much worse. The solution? Simply cart the game off to your opponents' place where conditions suit much better.

Part of Rovers's motivation was reportedly the belief that they had a better chance of beating Shelbourne at Tolka than they did at Santry. For Richardson the win at Bohemians, where there is also a good and even bigger pitch, might have been seen as decent enough evidence of the desirability of making the switch but the fact that Shelbourne's early jitters at home had been put firmly behind them and that they went into the game with four wins and two draws from their previous six matches at Tolka suggested otherwise. In the end they deserved little sympathy when they lost 3-1 despite a fairly strong performance.

Money was the other reason cited for the decision and coming from a club that was earlier this season making straightforward appeals for donations of £20 from its supporters that's certainly a plausible explanation for their eagerness to surrender home advantage. Still, it never should have been allowed to happen and, in contrast to the disruption caused recently by the weather, a repeat won't be prevented by a FIFA initiative.

emalone@irish-times.ie