{"id":227935,"date":"2026-01-05T04:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T04:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/227935\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T04:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T04:28:10","slug":"michael-verney-persisting-with-pre-season-competitions-in-depths-of-winter-highlights-how-amateur-the-gaa-really-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/227935\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Verney: Persisting with pre-season competitions in depths of winter highlights how amateur the GAA really is"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">These games are no longer fit for purpose, they need to be stopped\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Referee Brendan Cawley inspects the pitch conditions at Kingspan Breffni Park. Photo: Seb Daly\/Sportsfile\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Sports3316054.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Referee Brendan Cawley inspects the pitch conditions at Kingspan Breffni Park. Photo: Seb Daly\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">New year, same old shit going on in the GAA. Most of us possess an almost endless love for our great Association, but the ability of the powers-that-be to continuously shoot themselves in the foot knows no bounds, with a string of cancelled games bringing that to the forefront once again across an interrupted weekend.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Who could have predicted that pre-season games fixed in the depths of winter might be cut down by the weather? It\u2019s an almost annual occurrence so surely somebody could have seen the inevitable happening?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"These games are no longer fit for purpose, they need to be stopped Referee Brendan Cawley inspects the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[4183,61,60,23501,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-227935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-gaa","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-michael-verney","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}