Antrim Football Thread

[imtommygunn]

Probably similar demographic to Carryduff. Big, more affordable, commuter area for Belfast.They have now got huge numbers too.

[JimStynes]

Massive numbers. Gaelfast not needed in that area obviously. They should focus on Polegalss, Antrim town, Lisburn and those other places with big populations and struggling to get 15 players.

[Na Glinntí Glasa]

Massive numbers. Gaelfast not needed in that area obviously. They should focus on Polegalss, Antrim town, Lisburn and those other places with big populations and struggling to get 15 players.

Agreed. getting into the primary schools in those places is vital to keeping the games going.

Its easy for places like ourselves, Loughgiel etc to keep the interest going. Its part and parcel of the community and our way of life and dont need that help but areas like Antrim, Lisburn etc do need to get the help as theres a massive area of players that could get involved.

[delgany]

St.Patricks, Lisburn have begun to turn the corner with numbers, due to demographically changes. At senior level, they have a S A reserve team fielding for the past two years. 5 of U21s played senior football, last year.  Obviously won JFC in 2019. Senior Ladies showing incremental improvement. At underage they went through a sticky patch with numbers but numbers growing steadily, upto U12/13 once again, fielding stand alone teams.
Club is well organised for continued growth.

[JimStynes]

St.Patricks, Lisburn have begun to turn the corner with numbers, due to demographically changes. At senior level, they have a S A reserve team fielding for the past two years. 5 of U21s played senior football, last year.  Obviously won JFC in 2019. Senior Ladies showing incremental improvement. At underage they went through a sticky patch with numbers but numbers growing steadily, upto U12/13 once again, fielding stand alone teams.
Club is well organised for continued growth.

Hopefully, they can get some more help from Gaelfast and really start pushing on. There are 3 large Catholic primary schools in Lisburn that I know of and there is massive potential for big numbers of children playing GAA. Antrim is the same with well over 1000 chidden in their 2 main primary schools but they struggle for numbers. It's the same couple of men doing the work in those clubs. They need help.

[whatwillbwillb]

All great suggestions lads, however that Elephant is still in the room, is Gaellfast now going to be used as the Trojan Horse that inspires the " The Cultural Renaissance " that Pearse & Plunkett etc kicked off all those years ago? Bannside thoughts?

[bannside]

There is no doubt one of the upsides of such high participation numbers outlined by TR in the interview is the anticipated cultural renaissance coming down the tracks.

Paddy O Hara in his report into Antrim Football back around 1990 highlighted the absolute necessity to kick start GAA in South Belfast, North Belfast, Lisburn, Twinbrook/Poleglass and Antrim town. All massive catchment areas either doing nothing at all or massively underachieving.

Of these, St Brigids and St Endas are flourishing. The others still have work to do. (A massive plus is the Lower Falls area with Davitts getting its house in order).

No matter what priorities Gaelfast has laid down, there will be diffetences of opinion. Take quality over quantity just as one example. Would 10 coaches be better giving 25 schools fifteen hours a week each....10 x 25 x 15 equals 3750 man hours per week) or give 77 schools x 10 coaches just over 4 hours a week each. I dont know the answer, just asking a question. Which policy has a better chance of producing the next Kevin Niblock or Brian Fenton.

And if you were to develop that thought, would it merit focussing this energy and committment in the underdeveloped areas as a priority.

Whilst Gaelfast is all about developing an interest and love of our games, ultimately its success or otherwise will be measured in how our county minors under 20s and seniors are performing in 10 - 12 years. And that will not happen unless there is an ambitious joined up plan for post primary schools, and coordinating the natural progression of the potential senior county players through an additional 6 or 8 year programme (with a renewed interest in school / proper development squad activity or lack of).

As a county we do face into a challenge. If there were flaws in the system, they need to be highlighted, addressed and corrected. Though not necessarily on this forum for the world to see.

[delgany]

There's just under 100 PS and 30 post primary schools in the maintained sector in Antrim, so gaelfast can focus on quality.
The big issue to tackle is transferring that investment in schools into the local club, that takes a long term investment of people connecting the club and school, in some areas that is not an issue,  like Dunloy for example. Establishing a Gaelic games culture in e.g poleglass/ twinbrook/ lisburn takes a very sustained amount of planning, organisation and commitment. It takes at least 3 generations to get to the level of Carryduff /St.Endas are good examples.

[Kickham csc]

Its an interesting debate here and one that has many rights and wrongs, depending on your own point of view.

How do you feel that its worked out for your own club KCSC? Your footballers have been paying for a manager for a number of years now since Micky Moran was it? correct me if im wrong here.

Do you feel that bringing in paid managers over this period of time has brought the senior team on or do you think otherwise? Its interesting to hear that side of things from clubs who bring managers in rather than source your own club. Since they started paying managers should, in that passing time, the club not of been investing as well in coaches to take that mantel on down the line. Or has that not been done at all?

Im not having a go at your club by the way, I do want to understand the long term plan of a club that pays managers year on end and if theres an end goal other than hope that they bring success (by using the unpaid underage coaches hard work to develop the kids)

We dont pay managers and i would oppose it in any shape if our senior hurlers or footballers or camogier managements were paid. Im in one of these set ups and have been for the past 7 years now.

I dont want paid. I dont go to the pitch for training and to matches twice a week for money. Ive been offered money to take other teams and turned it down as i couldnt care less about another club and how they do. I dont care about the development of their minors or U14's but i do care very much about our own players and wanting to see them do well and its why i spend countless hours doing it.

I think it has worked TBH. My father and uncles have championship medals, and they always said during the wilderness years that the club doesn't need to be winning championships every year, the minimum standard is that they are really competing for championships and winning a few. To that end we are now competing at the highest level and are starting to win Div 1's and O'Cahan Cups. Much better than before.

The biggest impact to the club IMO was Sean McGettigan.

If we look back 20 years ago, Creggan were a mid table div 2 team, picked up a couple of intermediate championships, with a lot of young talent coming through, but could not get out of Div 2. Our internal managers were really committed but we weren't getting the best out of the team.

We brought Sean in and he really changed the standards within the club. Simple things like moving training from Tues - Thur - Sunday afternoon  to Tues - Friday, early Sunday morning training. Really forced the young ones to make the decision - Drink or football. Now we have a really strong culture towards, fitness, training and playing. That change IMO, only happened due to the outside voice.

Sean changed the system of training, a lot more with the ball in the fitness training and our preparation for games etc improved.

Bringing Micky Moran in was not a case of Creggan breaking the bank to get over the line. Micky was recovering from a very nasty public divorce from the Mayo county  and the press were hounding him. We needed someone in and he wanted a lower profile club to get away from the press but still coach.

He is married to Rita (McAteer) and he spends some time in Creggan and the arrangement was perfect. He further improved the standards and we started competing at the business end of the championship in semi finals etc.

I could go on but the outside managers have definitely improved the club, and even though we haven't won the big one, we are seriously challenging to win it.

The knock-on effect that this has had in the clubs is also important. Our players now have expectations in regards to how training should be run and what it takes to be successful. This has influenced the hurling team as well, as the dual players would not be happy working hard in football and pissing about in hurling. It is no coincidence that the hurlers improved during this time. talent was there but standards improved too.

Last point, when every manager comes in, the juvenile coaches would spend time watching the coaching sessions and taking note of approaches etc and then the approach, would start flowing into the underage coaching sessions. So the outside managers helps the development of underage coaches.

Our club have a number of good coaches, but they seem to enjoy working with the youth. Sean McAuley is a good example. Played for Maghera, Queens and Antrim and would have been influenced by some of the best coaches around Ulster. Sean has a passion working with underaged teams and doesn't enjoy working with seniors as much.

The club puts a lot of effort in making sure the underage coaching structures are in place, the same focus as the seniors. So all in all it works well

[bannside]

Sorry Delgany I dont think sending coaches into 100 schools a week represents quality. I think that represents the exact opposite of quality!

Some clubs have established excellent links with their local primary school, indeed Dunloy are a shining example of what can be done. And there are a dozen other clubs who dont need to rely on Gaelfast (although why not enjoy it when its available). It must be said the majority of the clubs I have in mind are SW or NA.

There are dozens of schools with no natural link to a club. Should Gaelfast not prioritise these schools and attempt to generate Gaelic games and culture in places it is not traditionally evident?

Just probing...Im not certain myself what the best policy would be!

[delgany]

I didn't mean that they would visit 100 schools a week, you mentioned 77 schools x 4 hours a week , what I meant was that with only 100 schools, all over the county they could spend quality time developing the structures - my poor sentence !

[bannside]

Kickhams Big Sean learned his craft at Garron Tower lol before he was poached by St Pats.

Sean Mc Gettigan an Antrim legend, his fabled story about fundraising for the original Casement Park needs to be told as an inspiration of what one man can achieve when he knuckles down to it. Hugh a chip off the old block lol.

[Kickham csc]

I obviously dropped in the Sean  ref to see who was reading my post

[JimStynes]

There is no doubt one of the upsides of such high participation numbers outlined by TR in the interview is the anticipated cultural renaissance coming down the tracks.

Paddy O Hara in his report into Antrim Football back around 1990 highlighted the absolute necessity to kick start GAA in South Belfast, North Belfast, Lisburn, Twinbrook/Poleglass and Antrim town. All massive catchment areas either doing nothing at all or massively underachieving.

Of these, St Brigids and St Endas are flourishing. The others still have work to do. (A massive plus is the Lower Falls area with Davitts getting its house in order).

No matter what priorities Gaelfast has laid down, there will be diffetences of opinion. Take quality over quantity just as one example. Would 10 coaches be better giving 25 schools fifteen hours a week each....10 x 25 x 15 equals 3750 man hours per week) or give 77 schools x 10 coaches just over 4 hours a week each. I dont know the answer, just asking a question. Which policy has a better chance of producing the next Kevin Niblock or Brian Fenton.

And if you were to develop that thought, would it merit focussing this energy and committment in the underdeveloped areas as a priority.

Whilst Gaelfast is all about developing an interest and love of our games, ultimately its success or otherwise will be measured in how our county minors under 20s and seniors are performing in 10 - 12 years. And that will not happen unless there is an ambitious joined up plan for post primary schools, and coordinating the natural progression of the potential senior county players through an additional 6 or 8 year programme (with a renewed interest in school / proper development squad activity or lack of).

As a county we do face into a challenge. If there were flaws in the system, they need to be highlighted, addressed and corrected. Though not necessarily on this forum for the world to see.

Gaelfast needs to be doing more than going into schools a few hours a week to take some teacher's PE classes for them. They need to be targeting those schools in areas that have little to no GAA culture. They need to be coaching all the classes in the schools and arranging leagues for those emerging schools and give the children games to play. There is no point in those schools playing against established GAA schools as they will be completely embarrassed. I have taught in schools and children didn't even know what gaelic football goalposts looked like. Two children out of 500 had played GAA before and it was only because their uncle brought them to Creggan Cul camps.

It is like starting from scratch and it will take a lot more than Gaelfast going in for coaching a few hours a week. Going into to schools to coach is no different to what the Ulster council coaches were doing. In school and do a few hours of PE and then see you next week again. Playing tournaments and games is what children want to do. Arranging leagues and providing transport for the children is the only way you'll get children interested in playing. In a lot of these schools the teachers and principals couldn't care less either and they certainly won't pay for buses to children to go to a GAA tournament.  Creating a link with the local clubs then is the next step so that they're transferring this new sport that they play in school to a sport they play outside of school as well.

[Milltown Row2]

What is the setup for games at school level, primary level that is?

We had, back in the day the like of the Raffo cup and league games, if memory serves me right.

Is there regular competitions/tournaments/training/league games going on? I'd like to think that its a lot more than it was in my day

I know at Secondary level it can get more intense, more so in the the grammar schools.. Seems to be more choice now though, I never went to a school that played soccer so it was hurling and football, and our teachers were the only ones that took these teams.

We'd a dedicated teacher for the hurling and he took the teams to many finals over the years, I remember as a primary 7 kid heading to Athlone for an All Ireland semi final, my eldest brother was on the team, sticks out in my memory, a Galway team, hammered us in the end though and if I can remember right we had a lot of good hurlers too!!

Do those teachers not exist anymore or do they have so much more on their plate that its difficult to do both?