GAA president Aogán Ó Fearghail has defended its competition structures following a weekend of promotions and relegations in the Allianz Leagues.
Many eyebrows were raised over the weekend as Cork maintained their Division 1A status in the Allianz Hurling League with a 2-22 to 0-25 victory over Galway in their relegation play-off at Pearse Stadium.
Despite failing to claim a single point and losing all five of their league games, the Rebels were able to avoid the drop by beating Galway, who lost just twice during the league.
Ó Fearghail admitted that there will always be discrepancies in such scenarios with teams feeling hard done by when either relegated or missing out on promotion due to points differential.
“In any league, there is always going to be discrepancies and especially when you use scoring differences and you have a small number of teams in a league, it is inevitable,” Ó Fearghail told RTÉ Sport as GAA opened its new National Games Development Centre at Abbotstown on the site of the National Sports Campus.
“It is impossible to devise one that is perfect. The important thing is that the best teams go up and the teams who haven’t been as successful go down.
“We’ve been looking at our league structures for years and most people are comfortable where we are at. There will always be teams who go down who feel hard done by, but the best teams still win.”
The football game between Dublin and Roscommon at the weekend had nothing to do with the relegation-promotiion debate, but the fixture caused a great commotion following the late venue change, with the Dr Hyde Park pitch failing a Sunday morning inspection.
And the president admitted that both the GAA and Roscommon County Board know that the pitch at Dr Hyde Park is not up to standard.
But Ó Fearghail refused to blame the Roscommon board for the late decision to move Sunday’s Allianz League clash with Dublin to Carrick-on-Shannon due to the amount of rain that fell over the weekend.
“Of course Dr Hyde Park is not up to the standard that it should be,” added Ó Fearghail.
“We know that and of course Roscommon knows that, and that’s where all of this really centres on, the development of proper playing fields.
“It was unfortunate, as Roscommon would have wanted to have hosted the game and they were quite confident on Saturday evening that the game could proceed.
“But they could not foresee the deluge of rain that fell on Saturday night and on Sunday morning the game was called off.
“It is most unfortunate for supporters and I would share their anxiety of what happened.
“It shouldn’t happen but in an island like Ireland on the west coast of Europe, these events will happen from time to time.”
