{"id":377852,"date":"2026-04-02T06:51:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T06:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/377852\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T06:51:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T06:51:10","slug":"club-criticises-connacht-fa-for-refusing-to-reschedule-final-clashing-with-leaving-cert-orals-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/377852\/","title":{"rendered":"Club criticises Connacht FA for refusing to reschedule final clashing with Leaving Cert orals \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A football club in south <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/sligo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/sligo\">Sligo<\/a> has criticised the Connacht FA after pulling out of a final because it clashed with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/leaving-certificate\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/leaving-certificate\/\">Leaving Certificate<\/a> oral exams. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Real Tubber from Tubbercurry\u2019s under-18 girls team were due to play <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/galway\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/galway\">Galway<\/a>\u2019s Mervue United last Saturday in the Connacht Shield final in Headford, Co Galway. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Real Tubber refused to show up because some of its players were doing oral exams and the trophy was awarded to Mervue United, who fulfilled the fixture. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The Leaving Certificate oral exams began last Saturday and end on Thursday. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Manager Louise Kilbane said a number of their players actually had Leaving Certificate oral exams in Spanish and German on the day in question, and there was a fear that if any of them got injured, they wouldn\u2019t be able to do their orals. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThey are all high-achieving girls and oral Irish is 40 per cent of their final mark,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In a statement published on its Facebook page, Real Tubber said it made \u201cnumerous legitimate requests\u201d that the game be rescheduled after the original date, March 7th, was postponed because of bad weather. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThe Connacht FA have refused the requests. Additionally, they have not offered a credible explanation as to why the original final dates were changed (other than wet weather and no pitch availability in Connacht) despite the finals now being played on an astroturf surface,\u201d the statement read. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThey refuse to accept that fixing finals which clash with state exams is a legitimate reason to seek a postponement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cAll through this process, Real Tubber, with several players sitting their Leaving Cert orals, have consistently outlined why they will not be in a position to field a team in the final if the dates remain as per the Connacht FA schedule.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThese players, who have served this club so well for the past ten years, will now lose their opportunity to contest their last ever underage game in a Connacht final.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThe players feel let down and upset by an association that claims to promote grass root sport.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The Connacht FA has not responded to a request for a comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A football club in south Sligo has criticised the Connacht FA after pulling out of a final because&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[4500,61,60,3184,8764,14169,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-377852","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-galway","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-leaving-certificate","12":"tag-mayo","13":"tag-sligo","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377852","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=377852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}