St Naul’s seeking Croke Park clarification on relegation fixture 

St Naul’s are seeking clarification from Croke Park on the standing of the Donegal GAA Master fixtures plan after the Donegal Competitions Controls Committee (CCC) fixed their relegation play-off with Killybegs for this weekend.

St Naul’s player-manager, Stephen Griffin, has accused the Donegal CCC of being disrespectful to St Naul’s players and the St Naul’s club after they turned down a request not to go ahead with the crunch relegation clash this Saturday in Glenties. 

“The Master Fixture Plan for the year clearly states that this weekend (September 16/17) is a championship break weekend,” said a clearly disappointed Griffin.

“We have been going by the Master Plan all season and we shared the Master Plan with all the players so they could organise their lives away from football.

“We have a number of players who have booked to go to Ireland’s Rugby World Cup game in France.

“They would not have made the booking if the weekend was not in the plan as a free weekend. Those plans are now up in the air.

“We’ve played for the last four weekends in-a-row and we were looking forward, like all other clubs, to the free weekend to let any knocks or bruises clear up and to recharge the batteries.” 

The second relegation semi-final involving St Michael’s and Milford is fixed for seven days later on Saturday,  September 23. 

“We informed the CCC of all this in the request we sent to them that the fixture not go ahead. 

“We received a reply via an email at 9.30 on Tuesday night informing us that the CCC had discussed our request but the decision was taken to go ahead with the fixture on Saturday evening in Glenties.

“We are disappointed with this decision and I feel the failure to honour our request is very disrespectful to our players and the club.

“We don’t want this hassle, we want to play football but we also want to be treated fairly and with respect.

“We don’t want to have to contact Croke Park but we feel we have to and we await the outcome of the response from Croke Park. 

“The club executive will, I assume, meet and discuss the matter and decide on the next step.” 

The Donegal Democrat understands the Donegal CCC emailed clubs on Thursday of last week, September 7, two days before the final round of games, informing them that the relegation semi-finals were now being played on this weekend, September 15/16/17 and that the final was fixed for the following weekend September 22/23/24.

“We did not know last Thursday night that we were going to be in the relegation battle. That was only decided after Saturday evening’s game with Killybegs. 

“Last Thursday night we were hoping to avoid the relegation battle and make it into the preliminary quarter-finals,”  says the St Naul’s manager.

“The fact that the St Michael’s versus Milford game is now fixed for Saturday week, September 23, means the final cannot go ahead on that date. And so there is no reason why our game has been fixed for this weekend,” he added.