A LEADING Cavan County Board official has reacted angrily to the shock news that the Irish Government has issued a blanket ban on supporters attending sporting events in the Republic.

Cavan PRO Susan Brady says the previous limit of 200 people had already caused ‘untold problems’ for clubs and county boards, and she says they may as well scrap the calender altogether if matches are going to be behind closed doors.

In a brief statement issued yesterday evening, the GAA called on on public health officials to “present the empirical evidence which informed the requirement for the Association to curtail its activities” and requested an urgent meeting with Acting Chief Medical Officer Ronan Glynn.

Susan Brady couldn’t make head nor tail of the tightening up of restrictions, and while the infection level has increased in the Republic, no clusters are understood to have arisen from a sporting event.

She said: “I don’t know why on earth they can’t let people go to an open-air venue where there’s been absolutely no issues of any description and at the same time leave pubs and restaurants open. In Cavan there hasn’t been one case reported in the last ten days so it doesn’t make sense to me.

“People are dying to get out, they need it. Mentally people need it. What is the point of this?

For whose benefit is this? They’ll be glorified training games. We’re going into round four of the senior and the intermediate championship, we were able to cope with the restrictions and we hoped by the semi-final stage we might get a few more in.”

There were already fears that the All-Ireland Championship wouldn’t go ahead this year for financial reasons, and Brady wonders whether there’s any point at all with proceeding with games with gate receipts set to plummet further.

“The restrictions have already caused untold problems. Clubs are under pressure, gate people are under pressure, county boards are under pressure, it’s crazy.

“You’d be safer pulling the calender if this is what they’re going to do as it would cut the expenses for clubs and counties. You’ve nothing come in so what’s the point of keeping it going.”

She continued: “For me personally as a PRO this has become a PR nightmare, we’ve only got our streaming up and running, we’d finalised our streaming for the weekend and now we have to pull that again. What the GAA is going to do I don’t know. “

Meanwhile, Donegal PRO John McEniff was also surprised by the news, but is waiting to see the small-print before making a final judgement.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, if they’re going to change their minds it won’t be until September 13th.

“I’m not even sure if reporters and streaming services will be let in. If a match is televised by TG4 they’d nearly have 15 along with them themselves, so we need some clarification for that as well.

“In relation to the spectator end of things, it’s obviously very negative for the sport. If it’d stayed at 200, by the time you get to quarters and semis and what not, clubs are going to have problems in relation to who’s going to get in. So in one way it gets rid of that problem and I know Leitrim have already decided that all games will be behind closed doors and maybe they’re thinking along those lines.

“That’s the silver lining, but we won’t really know until we get into it what the total implications are. Certainly it’ll have an impact on county gates as well. In reality it was already only around 100 supporters who were getting in.”

Meanwhile, Ulster Council Chief Executive Brian McEvoy has confirmed that they will continue to permit up to 400 fans into matches in the North unless unless the Stormont Government changes their current guidelines.

By Niall Gartland