Two massive games. Two days.
Eight Galway club players will play the two biggest games of their whole seasons within 23 and a half hours of each other this weekend.
St Gabriel's junior football team, an east Galway outfit comprised of players from the parishes of Kilconnell, Aughrim, Kilreekil and Cappataggle play in the county junior football final on Saturday at 4:30, against An Fhairche (Clonbur) in Pearse Stadium.
Now St. Gabriel's aren't your standard club team. Seeing as they're an amalgamation of the four parishes, all the players involved obviously want to play football.
https://twitter.com/SportsJOEdotie/status/910502522250563589
They have had to go out of their way to represent this club. They have had to travel long distances in order to make training.
They have made a commitment that they wouldn't make unless they loved the game, unless they loved making it, unless they were in it to win it.
Saturday's final is a final that they have trained all year for. A final that they had earmarked as their aim, their ambition from the moment they began training in January.
Yet on Saturday, eight of these players will have one eye on a game that is happening the very next day.
Eight of the Gabriel's players are from Cappataggle. Eight of them will line out at 4:00 on Sunday in a win-or-bust senior hurling Championship preliminary quarter final on the Sunday against rivals Kilnadeema-Leitrim.
https://twitter.com/SportsJOEdotie/status/900368310608384001
Now we hate and most players hate when people feel sorry for them for making a commitment that they love to make. This isn't like that, though and that's the reason they've told us they're not happy about it.
The football game will be full of attrition, it will be hard-hitting. We all know how you feel the day after a game. Even if you're not injured, you're aching, you're stiff, you're certainly not in the right frame of mind for another one.
This is the type of thing that browns a whole pile of club players off. This is the type of thing we need to get rid of.
How hard would it have been to reschedule one of the games? Not very hard.
