GAA unveils 2021 calendar: All-Ireland finals in August with club season to follow
The GAA has unveiled its plans for 2021, with intercounty action to take place ahead of the club season. The All-Ireland Football Championship will be held on a straight knockout basis once again
Thursday 8 April 2021 16:49, UK
The 2021 GAA calendar has been released, with the intercounty championship to culminate in August.
Intercounty teams are permitted to return to training from April 19, in preparation for the National Leagues.
The hurling leagues will get underway on May 8/9, and the football competition will start the following weekend.
The National Leagues will run for six weeks, with the 'potential' football finals taking place on June 18/19. National Football League finals will only be played that weekend if counties involved are not played in the championship on the following weekend.
There will be no Division 1 final in the National Hurling League, with joint-winners being announced.
The intercounty championships will then begin in June, and will culminate with the All-Ireland finals on August 22 and 29 in hurling and Gaelic football respectively.
The formats will mirror those seen in 2020. The All-Ireland Football Championship will be held on a straight knockout basis.
The remainder of the year will then be handed over for club activity, provided widespread activities are allowed by government authorities. Counties can begin their club competitions once they are eliminated from the championship.
The provincial and All-Ireland Club Championships will be held at the end of the year, with the national finals taking place in February 2022.
National Leagues: Football competition to be held on regional basis
As was the original plan, each division of the National Football League will be split into two groups of four based on geography.
Each team will play three matches. The top two from each group will then move into semi-finals, followed by a potential final. The bottom two teams in each divisional group will proceed to a relegation play-off.
In hurling, counties in Divisions 1 and 2 were asked if they were happy to return three weeks after April 19. Therefore, they will have five league matches.
Divisions 1A and 1B will remain round-robin groups of six. There will be no quarter-finals or semi-finals. As in 2020, there has been no final scheduled. Joint-winners will be declared, unless the two teams that topped their respective groups meet in the championship. In such an instance, the championship game will double up as the National League final.
Football Championship remains straight knockout
The race for the Sam Maguire Cup will mirror the format seen in 2020.
It will be held on a straight knockout basis, with provincial championships retained.
Neither London nor New York will be involved, while the Tailteann Cup has also been cancelled.
The All-Ireland semi-final draw follows the pre-existing rota: Connacht vs Leinster, Ulster vs Munster.
The All-Ireland final will be held on August 29.
All-Ireland Hurling Championship to mirror 2020 format
The Liam MacCarthy Cup competition will also be similar to 2020.
There will be six teams in the Leinster Championship, with relegation back to the Joe McDonagh Cup returning.
There will be a preliminary round in the qualifiers between the two defeated quarter-final teams in Leinster. The winners will progress to the first round of the qualifiers, with the losers getting relegated.
The All-Ireland Hurling Championship final will be on August 22.
Club season to be held at the back end of the year
Once counties are eliminated from the championship, they will be free to begin their club competitions, should widespread Gaelic games activity be allowed under government restrictions.
The provincial club championships will start in mid-November, with the All-Ireland club finals set for February 2022.
GAA hopeful of smooth season
"If we have permission to run the whole championship, I'm confident we can run the whole thing as laid out," said the association's president Larry McCarthy.
"The CCC find it to be a good programme. We've concertinaed from 27 into 20 [weeks]. So with the cooperation with everybody, I'd be very confident we can run it off."
We tried to be fair to everyone.
The Croke Park top brass acknowledged that delaying the club season until the end of the year was not the preferred option, but a necessary one.
"It's not ideal but nothing about this is ideal," admitted Feargal McGill, the GAA's director of player, club, and games administration.
"The steps we've taken are to delay the start of the provincial club championships and to exclude teams from the early rounds of the provincial championships. So that's as much as we can do.
"To be fair, if you make the All-Ireland football final you'll still have all of September, all of October and at least half of November, more actually you should have three full weeks in November, which is 11/12 weeks that will be available.
"None of this is ideal, it's not ideal the length of time we've available for inter-county and it's not ideal the length of time we have for club. But we tried to be fair to everyone and we measured it out that way."
