Seconds teams

[general_lee]

What's the thoughts here? Over the years senior clubs in Armagh have dabbled with entering a seconds team in the junior leagues/championship with varying success and they've started doing it again the past year or so. I can see the reasoning behind doing so (reserve football is a joke for anyone seeking meaningful football). Does it go on in any other counties? (I know Tyrone allow it) What's the feelings from proper Junior clubs?

[From the Bunker]

Sport is about patriation. If you want a sub-bench with as many in the Dugout as in the stand, well you've lost the whole meaning of having a club.

There will always be great members who are not great players who should have an avenue to play football for their club.

Second teams also provide an avenue for players to progress to the Senior team and for Senior players on the slide to continue playing into their elder years.

[Ethan Tremblay]

They will certainly become more prevalent in county's where club teams have their acts together.

Our club would have lost a lot of players between minor and senior, simply because the majority of players were not physically nor mentally mature for senior football. The stigma of playing b football seen them go to alternative junior teams instead.

Our underage teams seem to have a lot more players than ever, I would imagine we will have a new junior team within the next 5 years to accommodate these players.

U20 competition in armagh is shambles also and is a footnote in the calendar, again giving those players stuck between minor/senior less of an avenue to transition. Junior football for an 18 year old is a good starting point.

[Milltown Row2]

We've done it over the years in both hurling and football.. after dropping out of the senior team and playing reserve football back in the day it was a decent club day out, reserves before seniors and few pints and head home, super Sundays..

Then the kids changed, they'd rather sit on a senior bench than turn out for reserves, standards dropped and interest also..

We went down the road of reserves playing in lower leagues, definitely better than the reserve set up, but you need a pool of 25 players, just in case of call ups to the seniors, not all clubs have that.

But we've been back to the reserve set up but with the reserves on after the seniors! No buzz about it, ref'd one last year, it was brutal

I much prefer a second team in a league, in fact I much prefer them competing for junior and intermediate if they are at that level, but ensure no messing with team selections come championship, teams have to be strictly graded and assessed before season starts.

These lads that don't make senior ever, deserve to win an all county championship also, I can see why they can't progress into Ulster, that's understandable too