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GAA remain hopeful of staging Allianz Leagues

Thursday, 11 February 2021 10:56

The GAA are hoping the Allianz Leagues can be staged despite the delay to the inter county calendar. 

There will be no matches or training until Easter at the earliest because of the COVID 19 crisis. 

Hurling and Football are no longer deemed elite sports which are exempt from Level 5 restrictions. 

The Association had originally planned to finish inter county activity by July before freeing up the schedule for clubs. 

GAA Director of Communications Alan Milton says losing the Leagues would be a last resort.

"For obvious reasons, we're a games organisations and we don't want to kill off games unless we have to.

"It's an important competition, and it would also have a potential bearing on the Tailteann Cup, which is the second tier football competition.

"So we certainly hope we don't have to go there."

Milton says that while the news has come as a blow, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.

"I think what happened, a lot of people had presumed that the exemption that we had received last winter had automatically carried over.

"While we were operating under that basis ourselves it doesn't come as any real surprise, because we were always going to have to go back into negotiations and discussions with the health authorities and with the government to see if they were happy for us to return." 

 

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