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Think it will be a few years before Dunloy are caught. Sadly, for the county, there is only 1 club capable of doing so. Not a good situation. Having said that, great work going on with hurling in many NA juvenile teams.

That's true to a point but my young nephew is on a team that's working hard and 'competing' but yes the NA teams are pretty good

We were invited to play naomh padraig in armoy a few weeks back at u10.5, best team ive seen at that age group by a considerable margin.

Close enough to alot of potential sam maguire winners though, you would envisage it could be neutral grounds for dublin, tyrone, armagh, derry etc.

Its 4 hours from tipp, kilkenny but teams could travel a day early as seen in games versus antrim, we live in a small country.

An antrim player called a british bastard by a waterford player during the league, hear its quite common for northern teams to hear that kind of slur.

35 years ago called a "free state bastard" in a college freshers final

35 years ago a quare stretch, you would think things have moved on. This was last year, said player had the hospitality of our local club the day before to train in, left a sour taste tbh.

An antrim player called a british bastard by a waterford player during the league, hear its quite common for northern teams to hear that kind of slur.

Not sure what the solution is. There's some really good players coming through, the lads coaching them are good and working hard but rather than closing the gap on the top teir we seem to be getting caught up by that next tier down.

I saw Anthony Daly talking about Limerick underage structures a couple of years back. What he basically said was each development squad had 25 players but that each squad at each age group was reviewed on a three monthly basis. Players who were not performing in training and matches were cut and and new players brought in to replace them. He said every juvenile match had a county assessor at it to report on all relevant players performance. ( Plenty of money in Limerick hurling ). This lead to a ruthless driving up of standards in training and matches across the board.
It is my perception of Antrim juvenile structures that players get on development squads at age 9/10 and stay there until 17 regardless of how they are developing provided they keep turning up. We may not have the pick of Limerick (and certainly not the funds) but there is no doubt that we are being caught by counties like Kildare, Westmeath etc and are not remotely close to challenging the Galways, Kilkennys etc.

Development squads at 9/10 yr old?

What sets apart down from the likes of tipp/kilkenny?
Is it facilities, interest, quality of coaching?

Thank god we didnt need anything today, tipp sauntered to victory.

Antrim defo missed neil in forward line.

Look at the 2nd half against kerry in croke, thank god we had a big lead cos we folded like a deck of cards.

Big win, secures div 1 status.

First 25 mins i feared the worst but laois seemed to die after that, brutal conditions.

Dunsilly was  fine today.

Brave bit of snow fell and melted in belfast and was followed by plenty of rain, pitch will cut up pretty bad if it goes ahead, get the rugby studs in the boots no mouldies

Cheers lads will try to correct it.
His brother was playing cack handed last year and it took a few months work to change it but we got there in the end and his striking has noticeably improved since.

Watching the tipp game this evening i did notice a few players dipping with the toe in though

 During the lift does it really matter whether the toe of the hurl points in or out?
I seen a vid of martin fogarty suggesting he prefers the toe to point inward and is in the minority supporting this.
Reason i ask is my young lad lifts with the toe pointing in, hes very strong for his age group but his mentor is pulling him every opportunity and telling him to always have the toe facing outwards, should it be corrected or tell the mentor to beat it

That exact area, i went to that school when it was corpus, now mentoring my boys in the same spot.

They have a 4g muga already, this hall is south of that in the grounds of corpus christi school.

Looks like davitts are getting a new indoor 4g pitch to go along with the rest of the facilities at davitt park, lack of facilities certainly no longer an excuse at the club.