GAA Director General Paraic Duffy has re-emphasised the importance of fixture changes which would involve all competitions being held within a calendar year.
Duffy has been very vocal on the subject for the past 12 months - the changes would mean the All-Ireland finals finishing a week earlier and club finals moving from their traditional St Patrick’s Day finish to a December date.
Writing in this year's Director General's annual report, he stressed the importance of this issue, saying that real progress on the fixture master plan and club fixtures was required.
He agreed that there was "an unacceptable distortion whereby the vast majority of our players do not have a planned and fairly scheduled set of fixtures, fixed and known in advance".
Duffy said there were five major reports already completed on improving the fixture issue and they would provide an answer to address the player welfare problems and the needs of club players.
The wide-ranging and detailed document, which runs to over 20,000 words, also covers many other issues, including the vindication of the black card rule and the allocation of media rights, which Duffy believes has been a success with regard to new arrangements with RTÉ’s worldwide service GAAGO and Sky Sports' coverage of Gaelic Games.
On the black card, Duffy said: "it is indisputable that the changes advocated by the Football Review Committee (FRC) have brought the intended improvements to the playing of the game."
Duffy revisited the decision to go to Limerick with the All-Ireland semi-final replay between Kerry and Mayo, admitting that the decision to host the Penn State/UCF American football game at Croke Park in August was a "risk that backfired" but explaining that it was part of a strategy to "widen our funding base" .
"A decision made in the best interests of the Association ended up causing offence to supporters, an outcome that I very much regret," he wrote.
"I have to acknowledge that we took a risk that backfired on us, a consequence of what proved to be an over-optimistic assessment of the unlikelihood of a replay."
He said he was impressed with the success of the kick-out rule in the recent International Rules series, where the ball must go beyond the '45. He pondered whether this was worth considering for football.
The Monaghan man also addressed the perception that there was a disconnect between Croke Park and the wider GAA community regarding the association's financing and the existence of a 'Corporate GAA', highlighting the need to finance the organisation.
A review of the year would not be complete without some comment about the debacle of the Garth Brooks’ scheduled concerts. Duffy, unsurprisingly, defends the GAA position in the controversy.
Duffy concluded that he was disappointed with the Dublin County Council: "Croke Park and the GAA felt let down by this whole process.
"Most people who followed the Garth Brooks affair found the decision to refuse a licence for five concerts incomprehensible, he said. "And they were right.
"Consider the reality of what we all knew when the licence application for five concerts was submitted: DCC had created a legitimate expectation that a licence would be granted for five concerts; 400,000 people – 330,000 of our own citizens and 70,000 tourists from abroad – had paid a substantial sum of money to buy tickets; and the concerts were set to present the country with the gift of a massive economic uplift.
"DCC told us that the decision reached was, I quote, ‘appropriate, balanced and reasonable’. But was it so for the 400,000 people who had already bought tickets and who were looking forward hugely to the concerts? We had the opportunity to enjoy a unique experience that we would have fondly remembered for years. We lost all of this, just as the GAA lost out in all the ways I have identified."
