Joe Carroll: Louth fail to fulfil fixture and others followed suit

Maybe had Mickey Harte known the snowball affect his decision to withdraw his Louth team from their O’Byrne Cup match with Wexford was going to have, he might have gone through with the fixture.

Soon after it became known Louth wouldn’t be travelling to Wexford Park, two other fixtures fell by the wayside, Carlow vs Laois, and Westmeath against Kildare.

Then, when it seemed everything had quietened down, the opinion being that one of the reasons the games were being called off was because they were dead rubbers, the results of them being of no consequence, Offaly said they wouldn’t be travelling to St Brigid’s Park to fulfil their semi-final with Louth.

Offaly had beaten Dublin last Wednesday evening – when Louth were due to play Wexford – and afterwards their manager, Kerryman Liam Kearns, said that because his side had played three games in eight days and Louth had played only two, they wouldn’t be lining out for the semi-final.

There seems little doubt that had Louth’s game with Wexford gone ahead, we’d have seen an Offaly team making a rare appearance at Dowdallshill on Sunday.

A couple of points that can be made: 1, had there being a rule in place throwing teams out of the competition that didn’t fulfil fixtures, Sunday’s game, along with all of the others which had a line drawn through them, would have gone ahead; and 2, didn’t all counties know what the schedule would be before the competition got underway, that there’d be three games in eight days in the preliminaries, with the knock-outs coming up soon afterwards?

Because of all that’s happened in the past week, counties showing scant regard, it has to be said, for a competition that provided ideal preparation for the National League, the Leinster Council will either come up with a new format – a simple knock-out, perhaps – or impose penalties, if there’s a repeat.

Having been given a walk-over by Offaly, Louth play Longford in the final. It would be good for Harte’s team to win, but much better had the competition been run as planned.