GAELIC GAMES FIXTURES:ULSTER COUNCIL secretary Danny Murphy believes it is premature to talk about rearranging the calendar for club championships on the basis of the current bad weather. Heavy snow caused two of the weekend's three senior provincial finals to be called off and re-fixed for this weekend.

Although the Munster hurling final between De La Salle and Thurles Sarsfields did go ahead there were calls from Munster chair Seán Walsh, at the provincial awards night on Friday, and former Donegal All-Ireland winner and pundit Martin McHugh on RTÉ radio on Saturday, for the schedules to be looked at.

In the light of harsh winter weather in recent years Walsh felt the intercounty championships may have to be tightened to create some additional space in the calendar whereas McHugh suggested running club and county activity simultaneously.

“I think we’re getting too excited about the prospect of harsher conditions becoming a regular feature of this time of year,” said Murphy yesterday. “Bad weather is not unusual at this time of the year and there is often serious disruption to fixtures. It’s an ongoing problem and not just in November. I remember a Kerry-Galway All-Ireland quarter-final (2008) played in about four inches of rain at Croke Park.

“If a pattern develops we’ll have to look at it but the only thing you can say about the weather in the past couple of years is that it’s completely unpredictable. There was heavy snow last January and now in November but had our match been played on Sunday our fixtures would have been wrapped up by the end of November.

“Last season the McKenna Cup matches were all played on schedule after some of the worst weather seen in a long time.”

Suggestions that provincial club championships should be concluded earlier aren’t new. Only last year at the GAA’s annual congress in Cork a motion from Antrim club Cushendun proposed the provincial and All-Ireland championships be completed by the start of the National Leagues, which would require the whole championship to be played out by the end of January at the latest.

The issue is particularly acute in Antrim, whose hurling champions almost always proceed to the All-Ireland stages and consequently leave the county team weakened for the early stages of the NHL.

The motion actually attracted a majority but not the necessary two-thirds required to pass into rule.

“It’s all very fine to talk about the club championships finishing earlier in the year,” says Murphy, “but county finals usually don’t take place until late October and that creates pressure on the provincial competitions. Don’t forget that in order to complete the championship, there has to be a quarter-final with the British winners and then two All-Ireland semi-finals.

“If the only solution for the club championships is to play them earlier then Croke Park will have to complete the intercounty schedules earlier and I can’t see that going to happen.

“Playing them at the same time won’t work because of the structure of interlinked championships. Yesterday in the Munster hurling final you had John Mullane and Kevin Moran playing for De La Salle and Lar Corbett and others playing for Thurles Sarsfields. Waterford and Tipperary aren’t going to line out without those players.”

Although the Ulster senior club final between Crossmaglen Rangers and Naomh Conaill has been listed for Clones, Murphy isn’t confident the match will take place.

“We’ve moved all of the fixtures from last Sunday up to this weekend at the same time and venue but I wouldn’t be optimistic about them going ahead. There’s been a lot of snow and temperatures of minus-eight and minus-nine have been recorded in several places in the province.”

The Leinster Council have also shifted their club finals to the coming weekend, which means the province’s senior football and hurling finals will clash next Sunday.

The deferred hurling decider between Wexford’s Oulart-the-Ballagh and O’Loughlin Gales from Kilkenny is due to go ahead in Carlow, whereas less than 25 miles away in O’Moore Park, Portlaoise Dublin champions Kilmacud Crokes take on their Offaly counterparts Rhode in a repeat of the 2008 Leinster football final.

The Dublin club yesterday received some bad news as they prepare to regain the title they won two years ago before going on to win that season’s All-Ireland championship against Crossmaglen.

With Crokes short several inter-county players, the club learned that another, Adrian Morrissey of Wexford, had failed in his appeal to Leinster Council to reduce a suspension handed down to the player following a red card in a Dublin league match against Erin’s Isle.

The Finglas club volunteered both the player involved in the incident and their team manager to try to help clear Morrissey but the gesture was unsuccessful and he missed the semi-final defeat of Westmeath’s Garrycastle and will also be absent from Sunday’s final.

If however the weather continues to disrupt the fixture Morrissey’s suspension will have expired by the following weekend.