GPA’s annual members survey reveals 63 per cent are willing to play on Fridays under the right circumstances

Over 60 per cent of male intercounty players are supportive of Friday night games if certain conditions were to be put in place.

It is one of the standout findings from the Gaelic Players Association’s Annual Member Survey, while includes responses from 3,555 intercounty players across the four Gaelic codes.

The debate around Friday night intercounty games has been ongoing for several years, with one of the stumbling blocks being concerns over the impact such matches would have on the working lives of amateur players.

Laois and Carlow played on a Friday in the 2013 Leinster football championship, but the subsequent blowback dimmed the idea of such fixtures becoming more widespread.

However, under the right circumstances, intercounty players have now for the first time collectively indicated they would be open to Friday night fixtures.

Some 46 per cent of respondents to the GPA survey said they would be supportive “if players are compensated for time off work”. A further 17 per cent supported the idea, but only on the basis that the matches would be “local derbies, and if players are not required to take time off work”.

Collectively it amounts to 63 per cent of intercounty players declaring a willingness to play on Fridays. A separate 24 per cent said they would be “very supportive in all instances” without caveats. Only 11 per cent of respondents indicated they were “not supportive in any instance”.

Many now counties stage club games on Friday nights but the further distances and extra pre-match preparation involved in intercounty games bring logistical challenges.

However, GPA chief executive Tom Parsons said they would not stand in the way of Friday night games, so long as players are not left with financial implications.

“Players won’t be the blockers if the conditions are right, but it needs really good consultation,” said Parsons. “If there’s a blanket kind of, ‘this is an amateur game, suck it up and play a Friday night match,’ it just won’t be tolerated.

“But it should not be put on players, or certainly their representative body, that we are the resistance to a Friday night game. Sit down, let’s design it, let’s make sure players are protected and aren’t out of pocket.”

Parsons feels it is possible for a workable model to be put in place to facilitate Friday night games, although Croke Park officials must negotiate such an agreement.

“If a player gets injured, the GAA will fund a loss of wages, there is a fund there for loss of wages,” the former Mayo footballer added. “There’s already something there that triggers the reimbursement of a day off work, and it’s an injury. So a Friday night game is a different trigger, but it triggers the need that a person can’t work.

“Let’s say Mayo are playing Roscommon, and we have a few lads that are living and working in Dublin. Leaving Dublin at 12 or one on a Friday is like leaving at five o’clock – the traffic to get out of Dublin is insane. To drive down to play a game, is that fair? No, the player has to take the day off work.

“With a derby game, again if you have Mayo v Roscommon, you have Ryan O’Donoghue coming from Belmullet on a Friday, the day’s gone.”

And it is not just financial renumeration Parsons believes players would look for assurances on, but also the value of their time so that perhaps the rest of the weekend would be left free.

“It’s how it’s looked at and framed. There needs to be a mature conversation about it, a modern form of amateurism that players can be reimbursed.

“There could be a lot of benefits to it but then you need to consult players. What does the cadence of their week look like?

“Would we get a guarantee or a policy that if you play a Friday night game, the rest of the weekend is off? Because if you play a Friday night game and then it’s a case of, ‘let’s use this as an opportunity for a camp all weekend,’ That’s what could happen.”

Among the other findings in the report is that 85 per cent of players are in favour of sharing their data with a centralised database for the purposes of supporting workload, welfare and injury risk.

A total of 74 per cent of respondents reported an injury in 2026 and 49 per cent had two weeks or less rest between the end of the club season and start of their intercounty campaigns.

There is also no major appetite for further football changes, with 76 per cent players in the men’s game wanting no more tinkering with rules, while 23.5 per cent said they would be open only to small tweaks.