Down Club Hurling & Football

[SHEEDY]

Love to see burren getting beat especially in the championship, rather kilcoo won it than burren if it was a straight choice and im not from kilcoo  but nobody can deny burren are one of the biggest clubs in down and ulster with a magnificent history. when have any of the top clubs shown some balls against kilcoo not just burren.

[Hedgehunter]

Downjim when are these Burren lads going to grow a set?

is someone from burren bullying you at school smurfy? you seem to have some serious issues with burren and their set of balls or lack of.

It's more about ClownJim who is absolutely downright disrespectful to any club in Down not in the greater Burren area.

Would you ever consider that he is a complete WUM and will love the fact that some of yous react to it.  I also have my doubts as to whether he is actually from Burren.

Ohh I know he's a WUM but it doesn't disguise the fact that he's still a (as someone else put it) Richard Head.

[outinfront]

Exciting times in Down football when this is the best we can come up with to discuss!

[Smurfy123]

Going to stop talking crap lads and have real discussions.
Looking at the weekends super 8s I believe Down are miles away.
The pure pace of all the games over the weekend we coukd not live with. The tackling in the Galway and Kildare match was immense. Roscommon are at number 8 but I still think we are behind them although we did beat them this year. Our defenders are to slack and we have no midfield and very few match winning forwards with Harrison the exception. Kerry were poor but have some class forwards. Good luck to whoever takes over as they have one hell of a job ahead of them

[umpire]

The Down's Championship prediction league is starting soon on new thread. All posters on this thread is welcome to take part.

[Cuan12]

It's amazing the amount of anti Burren sentiment there is on this forum, if I didn't know better you would think they were part of the orange order, doesn't help when they have that arse wipe clown Jim leaning over the wire supporting them, I remember Burren having kahunas the size of cannon balls, but they had serious competition from Bryansford Downpatrick and Loughinisland all from east down , which leads me to a previous point I made about Downpatrick.
When they are strong Down are strong , when east down clubs are strong Down is competitive and when east down schools are successful ie Red High and St Malachys Castlewellan , Down are successful ,look at 1991 and 1994 , east down clubs supplied over half the squad numbers.Why is our senior team so behind now?
Well we could start with the following, new county secretary, do away with starred games , go back to straight knock out championships and appoint a manager with no connection to 1991 or1994.
Lastly , who are the five tasked with getting us a new senior manager?

[Hedgehunter]

My take would be to run the senior team with the bare minimum funding for about 5 years and invest every other penny into youth development and work from there. Let's be realistic we are nowhere near the top table of the Gaa, so why not pump everything we have into youth and build a decent platform to possibly get back among the big boys within the next decade.

[thewobbler]

My take would be to run the senior team with the bare minimum funding for about 5 years and invest every other penny into youth development and work from there. Let's be realistic we are nowhere near the top table of the Gaa, so why not pump everything we have into youth and build a decent platform to possibly get back among the big boys within the next decade.

I'd a thought like this a few years. But.

Doesn't matter who you pay to coach a senior county team, you'll still see the bulk of your costs getting eaten up by mileage, equipments, pitch hire, food, administration, team travel and accommodation. You will need video men and stat men no matter who takes the reins. When you get down to brass tacks, the difference between putting a top class management team in place and a run of the mill team is probably not much more than 40-50k a year. Which wouldn't pay for two coaches at juvenile level. Not enough for a major impact on youth football imho.

But if a good management team is put in place, and gets the team playing football well, and gets the buy in of the best players, the knock on effect in terms of player interest at juvenile level rises simultaneously.... and if talented young athletes are really aspiring to play County ball, that's worth more than coaching I reckon.

[redzone]

The introduction of a second tier competition would really benefit teams like Down. Get them winning a few games because let's face it, Down have little or no talent coming through at underage. Nor have they the know how to even get the right structures in place. The county board is a joke

[Cuan12]

I would have to take issue with the post stating we have no under age talent coming through , obviously the same poster wasn't at clones to see the management throw away a six point lead, there was on view several talented youngsters , my question is how can we compete at u 14 through to minor level yet once they leave minor grade the level of performance drops and in some cases are lost to the sport altogether, so we have a problem that needs addressing.
I agree that the senior set up will cost a sizeable chunk of money but it can be managed better , we need value for money, the under age structures are starting to show results , one noteable result recently being the u16 victory over Dublin so something is working, however I feel that sometimes the county coaches don't connect with club juvenile coaches to ensure that players who develop slower than current county players are not overlooked , so sometimes it is not always down to money.

[Smurfy123]

This may sound stupid but Down need to find some tall players (6.4)to compete with division 2 teams never mind the big teams. Every team over the weekend had men mountains with the exception of maybe Monaghan around the midfield. The new manager ideally would be rewards to go for the whole of the club championship but if not then at the very least he quarter finals. We are bound to find someone in the lower leagues this year and make an impact with Down. All development squads should be scrapped they are a waste of time from under 16 and below. A complete waste of time

[Hedgehunter]

I agree to an extent.. County development could start at 16 while starting regional development among groups of say 6-8 clubs per region with no club omitted.. This could start on a shared basis with each club holding rounds of training sessions with the host club afforded the ability to include their whole squad for said session. Just a thought..

[downjim]

We have tried the big men from the lower divisions.

I would like to see junior teams amalgamating for SFC, the Kerry model seems successful

[Cuan12]

Scrap all development squads from u16 and below is an interesting suggestion but a dumb one all the same, sounds like penny pinching but maybe I'm wrong but I would ask what replaces these squads because without youth we have no future , trampling all championship matches to unearth some new talent is another good idea, but lads if there are any 6  6 midfielders as yet undiscovered or not tried I would be  extremely surprised, I believe in the absence of height our coaches have to find a way of counteracting this lack of height and Rory Beggan has showed us a possible solution.!!!

[Targetman]

Rory Beggan was brilliant yesterday, unfortunately we aren't blessed with his like!!