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We had a referee in a club game over the weekend who thought the home team was the away team and the away team was the home team. Told everyone the away team was winning at half time when they were actually losing by a point.

Has there been any confirmation of 2nd teams for 2025 season then?

Here is a rundown of my own club's season in a 9-team reserve league.

Match 1: Won by 39 pts.
Match 2: Won by 7 pts.
Match 3: Won by 22 pts.
Match 4: W/over, other team DNF
Match 5: Won by 13 pts.
Match 6: W/over, other team DNF
Match 7: DNF (match refixed at short notice day after a senior match)
Match 8: Won by 28 pts.

League semi-final: Won by 6 pts.
League final: Lost by 3 pts (last minute goal).

Championship
Prelim. Round: W/over, other team DNF
Round 1: Won by 18 pts.
Q/F: Lost by 4 pts against eventual winners.

From our perspective, we weren't intent on "cooking the books" to try and win or compete for an "easy" Junior title as someone above has cynically suggested.

I'd hazard a guess that we only just have the numbers to make a 2nds team viable and I imagine our "stronger" reserve players will be invited/told to tog out for the seniors. If we do press ahead with it, it will be with the intention of having regular, competitive games for our players and nothing else. I imagine this is the same for any of the other clubs that intend on fielding a 2nds team in 2025.

[fixtures kept being postponed which ultimately the county board never rescheduled. I can see why, a random reserve league game is not really top priority when most clubs have got their fill with a good 12-15 games.]

That's absolute bollox - we made it up to 10 days left in the league season last year and Eglish were the only club to concede more than one game (3)? Now you have Killyclogher showing up as only playing 11 of their 15 games - that's because they won Reserve championship and fixtures kept being postponed which ultimately the county board never rescheduled. I can see why, a random reserve league game is not really top priority when most clubs have got their fill with a good 12-15 games. Total bollox on lip service, the games are played.

Must be an issue though if half the senior clubs can't get a team together to play a reserve game

I have highlighted the absolute definition of lip service. Add in a few cricket scores, another few DNFs and you've got a carbon copy of the Armagh reserve leagues.

As far as I am aware, all senior clubs in Armagh fielded either a reserve team, a 2nds team or both. The issue is some clubs field a team for the sake of fielding, others have to take it a bit more serious.

In Tyrone last year you're looking at double headers on primarily Friday nights and by a quick look at our website it appears 80% of games were played.

In a 15 game season that's 11 or 12 matches on avg. Might be some cricket scores as well but usually not too bad, only in a top 6 v bottom 4 scenario perhaps.

There was a right slap conceded in the last 2 weeks of the season and some games postponed that ended up never being played, but vast majority of reserve league goes to plan most years.

Intermediate and junior reserve league gets played in same format but there is definitely more games conceded for obvious reasons.

I've looked at the Tyrone Reserve League and it looks to exhibit the exact same symptoms as Armagh - some teams pay lip service for one reason or another while other teams consistently field and fulfill fixtures. Some clubs, despite their Division 1 status, don't have the numbers or resources to compete with their peers while others are more than capable.

Player retention must be an issue to not be able to play a premier reserve league?

Don't think that's an issue, I can't imagine Clann Eireann, Crossmaglen or even Killeavy wanting to pull their teams from Intermediate B, Junior A and Junior B to play in a "premier reserve league" that may or may not prove successful.

My club is one of the ones considering entering a Junior team (or at least were - I am now unsure it will happen.)

We have a lot of youth coming through and with more to come in the next few years but realistically the majority of them won't see much game time for the senior team, not any time soon.

So the current prospect for a talented 18/19/20 year old with our club is to slog it out training with the seniors but with little to no chance of serious game time.

We played about four meaningful games at reserve level this year. The other games didn't really test our players, and one or two ended in cricket scores. There were a couple of DNFs added into the mix.

From our perspective, we aren't looking to walk to a junior championship or an easy league title. I don't even think we'd have the players to compete for it. All we want is to expose players to regular, consistent, competitive football instead of the lottery of reserve football. We lost two or three really good young players to soccer last year and I have no doubt that if we had ran a Junior team last year we would have kept them on board.

I understand that junior clubs have genuine concerns but it is still disappointing how the clubs voted last week. Senior clubs shouldn't be penalised for having the resources and ambition to enter a second team in the league structure.