GAA News

The GAA have been proudly reporting the success of the pre-Championship Open Nights on Thursday and Friday night, but supporters in Monaghan might have a different opinion.

Huge numbers of GAA fans throughout the country flocked to the open nights, which allowed supporters and local media to mingle with their inter-county heroes and create an atmosphere of goodwill ahead of the busy schedule over the summer months.

With the Euros and Olympics competing for the attention of sports fans this summer, it’s especially important that the GAA makes itself heard and numerous inter-county players from all over the country tweeted about what an enjoyable experience the Open Nights turned out to be.

Apart from in Monaghan, that is.

There were warning signs that there could be trouble ahead earlier this week when a number of Monaghan players tweeted their dissatisfaction that a round of club games had been scheduled on the same night as the Open Night, resulting in it being pushed back to 9.30pm, pretty late for any children that might have wanted to attend.

Although the Open Night went ahead, it didn’t exactly go to plan according to Monaghan players Dick Clerkin (pictured above) and Darren Hughes, who both vented their frustration with the County Board on Twitter this morning.

We’re sure that the Monaghan County Board had good reason to schedule the club games for Friday night, but as an exercise in PR, it doesn’t look good when they appear to be the only county not playing ball.

It was obviously the source of anger amongst the squad when numerous players saw fit to tweet about it, but at least the players seem determined to right the wrong, so hopefully the Monaghan supporters will have a proper chance to meet and greet the squad in the coming weeks.