Gaelic Players Association (GPA) chief Tom Parsons reckons a stripped back ‘blockbuster’ seven-month inter-county calendar is the way to go.
The GAA has already tightened up its inter-county schedule significantly, reducing it from almost 11 months - the 2016 season ended on October 1 - to just under eight in the season just gone.
With pre-season competitions returning in 2026, most likely just for one year, and teams permitted to return to training from November 21, the upcoming county window will be just over eight months in total.
The majority of inter-county players, according to their responses in the GPA’s annual membership survey for 2025, want this pared right back to seven months.
With six weeks demanded for a pre-season, that would mean just five and a half months of competitive games.
That may frustrate traditionalists and reduce the GAA’s overall exposure period but it is what 92 percent of players favour.
Almost two thirds of them, 63 per cent, responded that they felt the ‘maximum sustainable length of the inter-county season, from the first collective training to the last game of the year’, should be seven months.
Throw in the 29 per cent who responded that it should actually be less than seven months and you have that 92 percent near unanimous majority.
Read more:
GPA disappointed by return of pre-season competitions
Asked if this is actually feasible, GPA head and former Mayo midfielder Parsons nodded.
“Well look, the GAA has already recognised that the group stages (of the SFC) amounted to too many games so that’s changed already for next year,” said Parsons.
“So that’s one game down. I think the GAA has also recognised that pre-season competitions, in the long-run, are just not viable, so that’s another month down.
“Are there other mechanisms to find another two weeks? There is.
“The leagues could be restructured. You could strip the league finals.
“You could have three leagues of Division 1, 2 and 3 and split them into 1A and 1B so you can, of course, find extra time.
“There are tweaks there to find a seven-month season. And then what you have is that seven-month season, a blockbuster, which is really positive.”
A similar majority of players, 87 per cent, said there should be a ‘mandated off-season for all inter-county players’.
Half of respondents pointed to a ‘no-contact November’ as the best option for this closed season.
Responding on a wide range of topics and issues, a total of 3,676 players, across the GPA’s male and female member base, also touched on the amateur status issues of payments to managers as well as the playing rules of their games and the issue of drug taking among players.
Of the male players, 64 per cent said they were content with the current amateur status - that figure drops to 58 percent among the stronger Sam Maguire Cup teams - while 75 per cent favoured some form of payment to managers, ‘over and above expenses’.
Asked what form the payments to managers should take, a ‘fixed stipend payment’ was backed by 41 percent with 34 percent suggesting a ‘full annual salary and contract’.
“Any conversations I’ve had with players, the vast majority are aware that there’s some form of payment happening at inter-county level,” said Parsons, the former Mayo midfielder.
“And they’re very aware of what’s happening on the club circuit.
“I think, A, it’s transparency and, B, there are a lot of professionals within Gaelic Games already.”
On the rules front, 95 percent of footballers said the new rules in 2025 had improved their playing experience. But 92 per cent of ladies footballers want a review of their rules with 78 percent calling for ‘more physicality’ and 87 percent claiming the current tackle isn’t adequately defined or policed.
Meanwhile, 20 per cent of male county players are ‘aware of a teammate who has struggled because of drug misuse’.
