{"id":324742,"date":"2026-03-02T09:31:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T09:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/324742\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T09:31:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T09:31:09","slug":"loud-and-clear-message-regarding-august-final-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/324742\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Loud and clear’ message regarding August final date"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the lead-up to the 2026 GAA Congress, the election of the next president of the association and the possible extension of the inter-county season were expected to be the main talking points.<\/p>\n

The subsequent adjournment of Saturday’s action due to protestors<\/a> may have overshadowed everything, yet the aforementioned questions were answered emphatically.<\/p>\n

On Friday night, Wexford\u2019s Derek Kent romped to victory on the first count<\/a> and will take up office in February 2027.<\/p>\n

The second major talking point on the possibility of the GAA inter-county season being extended, to include a 2027 August football final \u2013 or Motion 14 as it was voted on by delegates on Saturday \u2013 was showing signs of struggle early into the weekend.<\/p>\n

Brought forward by a working group chaired by former GAA director general P\u00e1raic Duffy.<\/p>\n

The naysayers were out in force – Connacht GAA’s John Prenty and Galway’s Paul Bellew reiterating their opposition to those assembled \u2013 while another former president Se\u00e1n Kelly, also took a dim view of the motion.<\/p>\n

As it was a new rule, it only required a 50% rather than two-thirds majority, but the writing was on the wall leading to Duffy requesting the motion to be withdrawn<\/a>, quickly approved by Burns.<\/p>\n

“It was never something I heralded as part of my agenda,” Burns said in the aftermath, admitting that he rubber-stamped the withdrawal of the motion out of “deference” to the former director general.<\/p>\n

“I would have been quite happy to let it go, even if it was going to be beaten. That would have put a top and tail on it.”<\/p>\n

\"GAA
\nGAA president-elect Derek Kent, left, with director general Tom Ryan during the 2026 GAA Congress<\/p>\n

That sentiment was echoed in even stronger terms by director general Tom Ryan, who was asked if the vote meant the door was firmly shut for an All-Ireland football final in August.<\/p>\n

“That\u2019s the message loud and clear,” he said. “One of the things we really need is a bit of certainty.<\/p>\n

“To me, one of the attractions if we had moved it was that it was going to draw a line under this. You can infer the same thing for the message we got today (Saturday). Leave it where it is.<\/p>\n

“It is going to be very difficult for us to come up with something meaningful. That was a well thought out proposal, there was logic to it and people didn\u2019t want it, which is fair enough.<\/p>\n

“July is where we are.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the lead-up to the 2026 GAA Congress, the election of the next president of the association and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-324742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324742","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=324742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}