Messages

 Why would they bring her,whoever she is,onto a GAA podcast?

I think James McCartan deserves credit for stepping up to the plate in the first place. He took on a team nobody wanted, and for good reason. There's clearly no pride in the Down jersey anymore.

Great credit indeed for stepping up but now time to step away.

Difficult one to answer, not that popular among the players by all accounts as well.

There are similar thoughts about James also.Communication terrible and going on the two alcohol episodes there appears to no respect to the Management.Respect is usually earned but is non existent from both sides.

So here we are at the end of 6 months into this Management regime.One draw and 10 defeats.James spent the afternoon shouting at the players and getting into needless confrontation with Officials and a Cavan player.He also appeared to be late onto the sideline at the start of the match.Losing credibility with everyone after achieving legend status up to about 2010.

Hello all, long time lurker, first time poster.

I'm not surprised to hear fellas are walking away from the county or have no desire to play county football. I have watched Down (and the transformation of the game itself) since the mid 1990s and have always wondered why anyone would be interested in playing Gaelic Football -  particularly when its being played in the fashion adopted by all counties throughout the island.

Men behind the ball, the endless fist passing and goalkeepers running up the park like headless chickens. It's a style which has been willingly embraced by counties who have had little or no success in the last century and were desperate for success but not by playing the game in its orthodox fashion. This new brand of 'football' (if you can call it that) has been encouraged by managers who fancy themselves a bit too much and think they're enlightened thinkers. In reality they are just legends in their own heads.

Down has always been a traditional county and we were reluctant to go along with this craze. Unsurprisingly, this has translated into lack of success at inter county level. There is no aesthetic appeal within Gaelic Football like there once was. Players no longer punt the ball 40 yards into the forward line which, when done successfully, was a thing of beauty to behold particularly when you have corner forwards battling with their marker. Now it's all risk averse and about 'recycling possession'.

Over the years I have seen supporters of the game, especially the armchair ones, lose interest and I don't blame them. Why would you want to watch the muck being served up? More importantly, why would you want to train six nights a week just to master the art of fist passing within your own half? Down have nothing to prove to anyone but if other lesser counties want to indulge themselves in this then be my guest - I'll stick to the club scene.

What a pile of waffle as your first post.

Accountability and transparency are huge factors.
Without them, there is no integrity and people lose confidence and have no faith in decision-makers and the structures they apparently uphold.
When you hear about task forces, steering committees, focus groups, think tanks etc it pretty much smells of bullshit, smoke and mirrors. And for a long time people in the county have been blinded by the bullshit and swallowed it whole.

A brush should be taken to that county board and the unelected figures in the background that use them as puppets roaded.
Jobs for the boys.

Have a friend who's son is on the Down U16 Dev Squad and a nephew who is on the Tyrone U16 one.The Down squad are scheduled to meet 6 times from the start of the year up to the end of August.Tyrone have met at least twice every three weeks but it's mostly weekly around this time of the year.Manager of the Down squad is Benny Coulter.

What is your point,  a quick glance on social media would see that Down u15 and u16s have been playing plenty of matches? What would be the point of taking kids halfway across the county to train when they are already getting coaching 2-3 times a week in their clubs with a match on a Monday night!
BTW that is a gripe of mine, carrying 50 odd lads on a development squad !!

Apparently Mooney is back in the Down camp.

So TruthHurts,Tyrone have got it wrong all these years.
We're doing it correctly and getting exactly what for this good practice?

I do not get what you are getting at?

I think what he is getting at is that the Down method of running their Dev squads is not yielding results( U16's only meeting 6 out of 33-35 possible weeks---ridiculous if true) whereas Tyrone's method over the years of putting real work into their Dev squads has and probably will continue to reap rewards.That's twice today our paid employees that been brought into the various conversations on the ills of Down football.Both probably paid Managers in other Clubs.

[Paddy O'Rourke was appointed last November to head a steering committee for the new Mourne Academy]

Taken from an article in Irish News - Jan 2016.

.....the main focus for the Mourne county is ending the barren run they find themselves on at present. No Ulster senior football title in 22 years. No Ulster minor football title in 17 years (although there was an All-Ireland in between). Just three provincial U21 titles since the mid-1980s.

It is not a particularly healthy recent roll of honour. They know that themselves. They're reminded of it often enough. But over the past year-and-a-half, the building blocks for the restoration of Down's lofty reputation have been laid.

1991 All-Ireland winning captain Paddy O'Rourke was appointed last November to head a steering committee for the new Mourne Academy. By that stage, he had a year under him of working with the county's development squads. James McCartan, who only stepped away from the senior job at the end of the 2014 season, has already been tempted back in to try and boost Down's quest to return to the top table at minor level.

The likes of '94 captain DJ Kane, professor Niall Moyna (who acts as a consultant) and county development manager Conor O'Toole are also on the steering group: "Two years ago, we launched a consultative programme," says long-serving Down county secretary Seán Óg McAteer.

"We took in a wonderful man, David Passmore, a senior lecturer in DCU, whose background is Irish hockey. He's done a really in-depth report, having consulted widely with schools, clubs, former players, people who were interested in Down football.

"In the past, we've done four plans in hurling and never one in football. For a county like Down never to have looked at its football from Maurice Hayes' time..."

That was part of the problem. 'The Down Way' brought regular success from 1960 until the mid-90s, give or take an odd blip. But at present, Down are enduring their longest spell without senior success since the years prior to their 1959 Ulster title.

For Newry Mitchel's man McAteer, one of the keys to bringing the county back to the top table is expanding Gaelic games through the schools: "Currently, we're in 86 primary schools through a coaching programme. We'd really like to broaden that.

"We're in some integrated schools, but we'd really like to get into state schools as well. Not to shove anything down anybody's throat, but to let them sample Gaelic games. To actually just have taster sessions and tell them the story of what Down's about.

"You go somewhere and someone asks where you're from, you'll say county Derry, I'll say county Down. It's one thing that unites people. It isn't a badge of anything; it's where you're from. The people from Comber, Saintfield, Newtownards are as much a Down person as anyone from Newry or Downpatrick or Kilcoo.

"We've got something there that can be a brand that unites people. That's something we'd like to explore by telling our story through the communities and schools over the next few years."

The issues Down face are not unique. Other counties have similar problems. For Derry, it is the city. For Antrim, it's the middle of Belfast. Donegal have their struggles in Letterkenny.

Soccer and rugby, particularly the growth of the latter, continue to enjoy a duopoly on the youth's imagination. The bigger the population base, the wider the sporting pallet of the inhabitants.

Take the 2005 All-Ireland minor winning squad. Two "major population centres", as McAteer puts it, of Newry and Downpatrick provided precisely none of what was, at one stage, a 38-man squad.

In Newry, the Shamrocks and John Bosco are both in Division Three. John Mitchel's are in Division Four. And yet, out in the hinterlands, Ballyholland, Glenn, Saval and clubs like them thrive in the top flight.

"There's a problem there definitely, within Newry. There's a lot of work being done in all of those clubs at underage levels," McAteer added.

"We have to try as a county to allow that work to happen and to develop it at underage through the schools. We have to try and ensure there are as many people as possible in Newry playing Gaelic football and hurling as possible.

"We have to look at Newry and Downpatrick in particular, but there are other urban centres there too. You have Banbridge, Kilkeel, Warrenpoint, all growing towns. You have that area of St Paul's and Holywood and Newtownards and nobody from those population centres about county panels. That needs to change if we're going to be successful.

"This year, as part of James' work with the minors, we've set up coaching clinics in Belfast, which run on a weekly basis, targeting young players from around Bredagh, St Paul's, Carryduff, Drumaness, Darragh Cross and people from the schools in Belfast. It's not just our usual schools that need to be targeted; it's all the schools in the Belfast area. In all those schools, there's people playing Gaelic games, at home or wherever.

"We hope that project will come to fruition and we'll maybe get a few to county minor panels. We mightn't get anybody, but at least those boys are exposed to good quality coaching for 10 weeks and the opportunity to get onto a Down minor panel. We have to be creative. We are being imaginative. These things will take time to come."

A passionate McAteer also clarified comments he made at the recent Down convention. In his report, McAteer hit out at the media, suggesting the "ethos of the GAA... is not something of interest" to reporters who also cover soccer and rugby.

However, he told The Irish News earlier this week he respects that people have opinions and that they're entitled to offer them: "Last year, we were probably getting a bit of a kicking at times. I'm passionate about Down GAA, it's my life and my work," he said.

"But we have to respect that the people within The Irish News provide a vital outlet for the promotion of our games. We have to be positive about that as well. We saw the value of that when we advertised our club championship games in The Irish News this year and we saw our gates increase. We saw the number of people at our games increase because we positively marketed our games through The Irish News.

"It's a two-way street. We recognise the work that journalists do in promoting our games. It's vital that we're an open house for journalists. There's no room within Down for us to be a closed house. We have to respect that journalists have a job to do. We mightn't always agree with what they say, but we have to respect that people have opinions and that they're entitled to offer them."

Back to the job in hand and a determined McAteer sees high hopes for Down. The timeframe for Down success? Between seven and 10 years, according to the report produced by David Passmore.

If things go to plan, that is the timeframe inside which Down hope to be back competing for Ulster and All-Ireland titles regularly: "You will get to the top table at different stages in that time, but we need to be consistently there," said McAteer.

"You're not always going to win because there's only ever one team at each age group that will win. But we need to be consistently at the top table."

Mourne County GAA Academy under the chairmanship of former All-Ireland winning captain Paddy O'Rourke. Other members of the Group include 1994 All-Ireland winning captain DJ Kane (Newry Shamrocks), Declan Mussen (Kilcoo), Dr Eddie Harney (Saul), Joe Tunney (Carryduff), James McCartan (Minor Manager), Conor O'Toole (County Development Manager), Tom Potter (Coaching Officer) and Professor Niall Moyna (DCU) who will act as a consultant/advisor to the group.

Id love someone to give an update on how all this is going roughly 6 years after this was all conceived.

My point exactly.

Down better going with 30 players who want to play for Down and not disappear to America, Australia or drop if the panel. Derry went through 107 players in less than 10yrs, it was a joke. Down beat Derry in Newry 2yrs ago. Gallagher got rid of maybe 8/10 players I have thought good enough to start / on the panel. Due to either attitude or couldn't commit. Down gonna go the same way. Derry keep Slaughtneil on board to backbone the team, Kilcoo seem to they too good for the county team.

I think we're all up for building for the future but if we look back at the most recent plan prior to this,we know the results of that by our current situation.Who was in charge of implementing that and who is in charge of bringing this latest idea to fruition?The answer to this is critical as to the prospects of this plan succeeding.

While it's probably not decent to be criticising the Down Senior set-up on here anonymously it's definitely out of order to be doing in a National Newspaper especially when he has never been in or around a County set-up.Kilcoo keep on doing what they have always done and that's pis-ing people off.
Low action by EB.

Zero respect of the Managers from this group of players.Unfortunately but this is the reality of this current panel.James McCartan and his back room team haven't helped in this with their lack of engagement from day one.
   The world has changed and Managers need to change with it to stop what
has happened with this whole set up since their appointment.

 And by the time the annual Convention comes around before Christmas,the usual officers will be elected and probably not even opposed.The cycle of incompetence will continue.

 While it's probably not decent to be criticising the Down Senior set-up on here anonymously it's definitely out of order to be doing in a National Newspaper especially when he has never been in or around a County set-up.Kilcoo keep on doing what they have always done and that's pis-ing people off.
Low action by EB.

Could Mickey Harte be poached from Louth?

I think you know the answer to that.Poaching someone who is already in position.What have we been discussing? Respect!!!!!

Difficult one to answer, not that popular among the players by all accounts as well.

There are similar thoughts about James also.Communication terrible and going on the two alcohol episodes there appears to no respect to the Management.Respect is usually earned but is non existent from both sides.

   No surprise about at what happened yesterday.This B Competition will do nothing for us.Unfortunatly James has lost the dressing the room and from the amount of people from Down there yesterday,he has also lost the fans.

   We need a clearout at Senior level of both Management/Players and to appoint someone with a blank canvas to watch players for the remainder of our Leagues and in the Club Championships.There is a rot which needs to be extinguished.

You can't beat the free state pints before and after a game.We have a driver for Clones.

BTW I am not saying it is right or wrong to charge but I can see in a couple of years that there is going to be a major conflict due to playing pitches in clubs. Clubs cannot cope with the teams they have at the minute and each club has mothers and others, lads and dads etc etc

I can see some clubs trying too much and keeping everyone happy but stretching the club.

Fair lay to Armagh LGFA for developing a pitch in south Armagh as their base. Where there be a permanent pitch is Down that could be used for LGFA or camogie matches.

Clubs can cope, plenty are making headway in acquiring 2nd pitches as well - plus they just don't have their underage teams training twice a week like you suggested on another thread

I still stand over that you need to be training twice a week at underage with a match included.

Define underage!

U11s was his arguement

So if the U11's need that it follows that 13's,15's, Minors and the rest need it also.If every Club took that approach especially if it is a Dual Club they would need multiple pitches and I am not counting Ladies or Camogie into any of this. U11's training twice weekly is crazy.