Club player denied football all year in Laois because of rule mix-up

Some rules for one person and some rules for another.

The GAA is confusing sometimes. Gradings, fixture lists and the whole shebang - there are a lot of shortcomings, that's for sure. You hear of people getting screwed over all over the place. It might be Waterford club footballers not being able to compete in their provincial championship or it might be a club amalgamating and players having to choose between a final and semi-final. It feels like it's rife sometimes, the problems out there for the club man and woman. But the latest one in Laois is just an awful mix-up altogether. Any regular SportsJOE reader may remember how The GAA Hour's very own Colm Parkinson was seemingly cut a raw deal. Parkinson last played with his hometown club Portlaoise back in 2011 and wanted to get back into the setup this year. At 39 years of age, his intentions were to play with the intermediate side at the club. Fair, right? Dropping down from senior to intermediate at the age of 39 doesn't seem unreasonable, as Parkinson himself put it:

"I mightn't even make this intermediate team. I haven't kicked a ball since 2011."

However, Parkinson was told that he could not play for the Portlaoise intermediate team. The reason he was given for this was that the last time he played for the club, he played senior and has since not been regraded. He had been told that he missed the deadline for regrading and therefore would only be able to play at senior level for the remainder of the season. Rule 6.14 (1) from the Official Guide of the GAA, on eligibility for Championships/Gradings, states:

"All players are eligible to participate in Inter-Club Intermediate grade, except those who are currently graded as Club Senior Championship status in the code."

The cut-off date for regrading is February 28. Okay, whether you agree with the rule or not is irrelevant because just listen to what happened in a recent Junior Football Championship semi-final in the same county. St Joseph's progressed to the final after a convincing 2-15 to 1-6 win over Park-Ratheniska. Playing on that team were Laois legends, Noel Garvan and Tom Kelly. Those players had not been regraded. Garvan and Kelly were allowed to play in the Junior Championship. Advice was sought about the eligibility of the players and the result stood. The reason being is that the two players in question hadn't played in a year so didn't have to worry about being regraded. Colm Parkinson, however, was told that he wasn't eligible to drop down to intermediate after seven years away from football. The inconsistency of it all. The Laois County Board sought the advice of Croke Park in the aftermath of the game where both Noel Garvan and Tom Kelly played. The ruling from Croke Park is this:

Because both players had not been playing GAA when the new regrading rule came in back in 2016, they were cleared to play. In effect, it doesn't make sense to rule players on a regrading rule when they haven't been involved in the game.

However, a few months prior when it was Colm Parkinson in that situation, this wasn't the case. Portlaoise Secretary Peter O'Neill he, informed SportsJOE of why Parkinson had not been treated in the same manner:

"Croke Park had sent out to the county committee who sent the ruling on to me as secretary of Portlaoise that, because the last game he had played was senior, he would have to be regraded," O'Neill explained. "The same thing happened where a query was put in with Tom Kelly and Noel Garvan and the county board queried this with Croke Park and the advice came back that it was found retrospectively you couldn’t apply a rule to say that you must be regraded each year only came in in 2016. "And (Croke Park) went on the rule for 2016 initially with Colm Parkinson. They came along and basically admitted that that was a mistake and they couldn’t apply that rule to players prior to 2016 but that’s not a whole lot of use to Colm."

Portlaoise will now play an intermediate final where Parkinson will, technically, be cleared to play. However, after not being allowed to feature the whole year for Portlaoise, the 39-year-0ld is highly unlikely to feature on final day either, possibly missing out on a championship medal because his case had been ruled wrongly.