January festival of ad-hoc challenge games likely here to stay

The pre-season competitions have been laid to rest but interest in the weekend's challenge match fare was nonetheless intense.

Partly this was due to the postponement of the All-Ireland club semi-finals, which would have hogged much of the limelight. Even more of it was attributable to curiosity over the new rules in Gaelic football, which will dominate commentary for months to come.

The sheer length of the inter-county off-season may also be in the mix, further whetting the appetite when the new year rolls around.

The pre-season competitions, long proposed for the chopping block, were suspended - in the end, somewhat abruptly - last September after determined lobbying from the Gaelic Players' Association.

In Ulster particularly they are still grieving the loss of the famous Dr McKenna Cup and their administrators are not taking it lying down. It was the ultimate testament to province's rabid intensity around Gaelic football that their pre-season competition attracted total gates of 30,000 and generated special pull-out supplements in the Irish News.

We'll never know how close the College of Irish Psychiatrists came to designating 'McKenna Cup fever' as a legitimate psychological condition. Gaelic Games followers in the other three provinces didn't pay so much attention to the McKenna Cup other than to marvel at the size of the crowds and to notice that Mickey Harte's Tyrone always seemed to win it.

The Ulster Council expressed their surprise and disappointment at the axing of the pre-season competitions in a relatively diplomatic statement last September. Now that January is upon us, they have ramped up the rhetoric, with Ulster GAA secretary Brian McAvoy explicitly calling for them to be restored to "their rightful place" in