Banty: 'Late August start for Ulster SFC likely'

Paul Fitzpatrick

Cavan and Monaghan supporters had been looking forward to the oldest derby in the game all winter since the draw pitted them against each other once again, with the latest meeting pencilled in for the preliminary round in May.

Unfortunately due to the national lockdown, that match will not go ahead now on the scheduled date but Monaghan senior team manager Seamus McEnaney insists that the championship will be run off at some stage in 2020.

While some have expressed doubts as to whether there will even be an All-Ireland Senior Football Championship in 2020, it is understood that the GAA have been planning for a number of eventualities, some of which will become public knowledge after next Friday’s Special Congress.

McEnaney believes there will be provincial and All-Irelands as always, although the timescales and formats will have to be considerably altered.

“I think that Cavan and Monaghan will play around late August. If I was to put a pound note on it, I would say mid to late August and maybe back into collective training in mid-July. My gut feeling is that is what will happen,” McEnaney told The Anglo-Celt this week.

‘Banty’ stated that he was happy with how preparations were going for his side prior to the suspension of all GAA activity and the national shutdown which subsequently ensued.

“It’s a very curious position we find ourselves in. We would have felt we were in decent shape, we’re in a good place as a group and it looked like we had secured Division 1 status – or close enough to it anyway,” he said.

“Everything was going according to the script until this.”

Exacerbating the situation is the uncertainty of not knowing if or when competition will resume.

“The biggest thing of all for us and anyone involved in GAA is the unknown. If the GAA could come out and say, and I know they can’t at the moment, that the Ulster Championship is starting on a certain date and it’s going to be knock-out or a back door or whatever the case may be, it would be better.

“It is my belief that there will be a championship and if there was a date, you could plan to that. At the minute, we’re just ticking over on a WhatsApp group, giving fellas a bit of work to do individually on their own.

“Obviously we are adhering 100pc to the guidelines – you wouldn’t want to put yourself in any other position. But it’s the unknown as to when you need to be in peak position for you.

“Is there any benefit to the lockdown from a football manager’s point of view? No, there’s not. We were very fortunate because with the management team we have and the physios, we were carrying zero injuries by the time the lockdown came.

“Listen, I don’t see any positives in relation to this. It’s very important for us as a management team, I feel anyway, to keep in weekly contact via WhatsApp or even a video conference with players off and on because these lads are at home and they have nothing to do.

“They want work to do and at least we are keeping them ticking over two or three days a week with some bit of running or some weights at home or whatever the case may be. But it’s very important for everybody for their health to have something to do each day.”

McEnaney believes that the government are handling the current emergency well. 

“I follow what the government and the HSE are doing very closely and I think to be fair to both the Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan and the government, they are doing a really, really good job in running this crisis for the country. We are getting great information, a lot of statistics about the growth of the virus and the reasons for the lockdown.

“My own belief is that after May 5, hopefully if we can keep the trend going down from 9pc in terms of the daily increase to 5pc or 4pc, I could see the government maybe opening up construction sites again. They will open things up on a very slow basis, similar to the way they locked it down.”

Such a loosening of restrictions would inevitably have a knock-on effect on sport and could offer the GAA some leeway in which to run off their competitions; by the end of this week, the picture should become clearer.

“The GAA is having a Special Congress next Friday and I believe that is to allow them to play the championship later and to allow them to have a different format for it… I think it will go back to the old championship with a knock-out Ulster championship, a normal back door and no Super 8s. That’s my opinion.”

Having enjoyed success at minor level in recent years, McEnaney is enjoying his second coming as Monaghan senior manager. He believes that every county-standard player in Monaghan has made themselves available for selection and is willing to commit to his panel, something which is not the case in other counties, with championship opponents Cavan an obvious example.

The Breffni men saw key players such as Killian Clarke, Dara McVeety and Conor Moynagh opt out over the winter, although league form in Division 2 was positive and promotion remained in the hands of Mickey Graham’s side prior to the suspension of all activity last month.

“We had great buy-in from all the lads, we were at full tilt,” said McEnaney. 

“The great thing about managing Monaghan, and I’ve said this many a time, is that everyone that is capable of playing county football wants to play and does play for Monaghan. And that’s a huge thing.

“I don’t know whether you have it anyone else or not but I know for sure we have it in Monaghan. And it’s brilliant. You couldn’t sit down and say ‘Jesus, you know, if we had that fella or we had this fella, we’d be maximising’.

“The senior Monaghan group of players are serious men about their football.”