Hope all is well with everyone

 

Over the past few days the LFA have received a lot of queries regarding return to football, criteria, etc and we felt it is better for us to try bring you all up to date rather than dealing with several individual queries

 

The Safe Return to Training document is just the first step on what is a full return to football in the coming months

 

Clubs who fulfill the criteria and send the signed checklist form back to the FAI are okay to return to training with a total of 15 people from Monday June 15th. This training is non-contact and is not a full on training session as we would be normally accustomed to. Basically, it is just a way of getting people back out on to pitches again and allowing players to interact in a safe environment

 

The dates provided by the FAI a few weeks back regarding a return to matches remains the same (August 10th for full training and August 28th for fixtures). As the Government announced that they were removing phase five from their pathway to reopening the country, it was naturally assumed by everyone that this would mean the playing dates from the FAI would also be brought forward. While this may happen and is being discussed in great detail at FAI, HSE and Government level, it has not happened yet so the August 10th/28th time frame remains in place for the moment. The logical assumption is it will change but leagues and clubs cannot announce any league start / restart dates until they have been officially sanctioned

(The reason we are being so clear on this is, we have seen on several club social media pages that football is returning in July and the reason for this email is to clarify that this has not been announced by the FAI)

 

Queries have been raised about the leagues who have decided not to complete the 2019-20 season and when can they start their new season. This too is under discussion and may change but once again until this is changed officially, it remains at October 16th

 

Once all the above becomes clearer, which we believe will be within the next week, the transfer and registration windows, which are currently frozen, will then be addressed and new dates will be sent out to the leagues

 

For leagues who do intend to apply to complete the 2019-20 season, please remember the deadline is noon on June 15th (Monday) but to give us time to check them and send them through, we would appreciate if they could be sent to Peter Doyle in the LFA by 10am at latest

 

The Officers of the LFA met (by Zoom) on Monday evening and it is the intention of the Association to complete our LFA Junior Cup, Junior Shield, Youth Cup and Under Nineteen Cup. The LFA Over Thirty Five Cup and LFA Senior Cup have both been cancelled for the 2020 season

 

Once our 2019-20 competitions are complete, entries will open for the 2020-21 competition and will not start until all leagues have had an opportunity to enter. This will probably mean a late October kick off for our competitions.

 

We hope this email has not created more confusion that it has tried to clarify but the main message is, the dates sent out by the FAI remain in place until officially changed. We will keep you updated as quickly as possible as decisions are made