Loss of FBD League will take over €100,000 from Connacht Council’s coffers

Connacht GAA Secretary, John Prenty, has said that the loss of next year’s FBD League will take over €100,000 from the Council’s coffers.

Roscommon won’t have the opportunity to defend the title they won last January early next year in the University of Galway Connacht GAA Air Dome as a result of Central Council’s decision to suspend pre-season competitions in all four provinces for one year in 2025.

However, Prenty believes that the decision is likely to be made permanent, meaning that the Rossies could become the last team to win the Paddy Francis Dwyer Cup, named in honour of the former Roscommon GAA Secretary.

“It’s a significant financial hit on our province — almost €105,000 took in this year,” Prenty told the Irish Independent.

“We had a sponsor, we had gates receipts obviously, and we had streaming. So when you add the three of them together, it’s over €100,000.”

Prenty now believes that January challenge matches will fill gap created by the absence of pre-season competitions in the GAA calendar.

“That’s as sure as today is Monday, and they will be driving all over the country whereas in our situation we gave them a structured programme.

“Some of them obviously played challenge matches on the same weekends, but it gave them an opportunity to look at new players in particular.

“Look, it is where it is. They say it’s a one-year trial, but a lot of those one-year trials become permanent,” he remarked.

Prenty went on to say that the Connacht Council would have to look at its expenditure patterns to see where it can save over €100,000 in 2025.

“Probably it will have to come from our supports from counties or coaching and stuff like that — we haven’t even talked about it, so we have to examine all of that.

“We’re not the biggest province in the country…from a gate receipt point of view, we are very limited in what we can do,” he concluded.