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From my experience in club committees and at the few county board meetings I was in attendance there never really seemed to be any thought given to the plight of the club player. Fixtures were tailored around the county team and the club players will just accept whatever is left. It always amazed me that the fixture setters where able to put fixtures at the start of the year on a Friday evening at 6.30 or 6.45pm which was in a lot of cases physically impossible for players to meet and be properly warmed up to play a match. What was ever wrong with Sunday games until the longer evenings?? Then towards the end of the year they fire in a number of Saturday games and to hell with anyone that works. Off course at county board meetings these fixtures are ratified at the beginning of the year so don't come crying through the year if they don't suit you. I don't agree with clubs chopping and changing to suit themselves but how about suiting the majority instead of the few!!
On another note, I have been told that this New Club Down position is a paid role - I mean are we for real!!! Paying someone to fundraise. Who is funding this or does it come out of the proceeds from future club Down members? Was the position advertised? Are there targets set for job performance? etc etc. If this is true then any thought I had of becoming a member is out the window!

The previous Club Down appeared to fall by the wayside when the £120 tickets were brought in by the county board. Club Down membership was £10 per month with no incentives other than a chance to buy a championship ticket whereas the £120 tickets were £10 per month with the chance of winning big prizes so a lot of people chose the ticket. There does seem to be a big press launch night for the reprisal of Club Down and hopefully it will take off. It will be interesting to see how they sell it to the ordinary punter or maybe they are going to target the business community more. Either way, my issue with the whole thing is on how money is spent. Is it just for team expenses or at some stage is someone going to say right lets get the ball rolling on a permanent base, which we own, and can cater for all of our teams. The amount of money we have fired at the Abbey, St Colmans and Downpatrick on an annual basis is crazy. Yes it will take time to buy, build and develop a purpose built facility but for the future of our county's players and finances can we not earmark monies now to start this process. Just my opinion btw.

Is Frank Dawson taking the reigns at Ballymartin? I had heard that he was and then heard that Ballymartin were still sounding out other potential managers. Can anyone confirm?

Paddy O Rourke and Steven Mc Donell in the Burren hotseat. Mayobridge and Warrenpoints managements already mentioned on here, has there been any other appointments as there seemed to be a lot of clubs looking new managers?

This has got the tongues wagging alright. IMO I understand Kilcoo's position although I do recall notification being given to the clubs at the start of the year regarding the leagues and that they had to be finished irrespective of Ulster commitments but in hindsight this was probably not going to happen. I believe that we need to come up with a schedule which ensures the league final (if we even need a final) is played before the championship final is played. The leagues start earlier next year so that should give some more time to get the games slotted in.

How scientific is training a team becoming - managers in division 1 are Sean Ward, Shorty Trainor, Ross Carr, Your man Mc Iver, Brian Burns to name but a few. Each of these lads played at the top of the game for club and county and each of these lads have other people in training their respective teams. Years ago it was that manager was getting paid that was the argument but now there is a full backroom team getting paid. Burren have 3 outside men with them - crazy stuff. How much better has it made them. How can clubs sustain this or is it just because its a new fad that this is the done thing.

Big Frank has plenty to choose from then ;-). Additional to that is St Johns and Banbridge and I have been told Leitrim but not sure about that one. Banbridge are apparently going in house this year. They have had 2 very tough years with successive relegations and need to steady the ship in order to stop them plummeting. The big clubs will probably all go for outside men but I reckon a lot of other clubs will try and go inside if they have anyone willing to take it on.

That is a massive win for Kilcoo yesterday, they must really fancy their chances now. The U21 management team is as strong as we could have hoped for IMO and it will be interesting to see how they progress with a team which didn't do much at minor level from memory. Cathal Murray is a good appointment to the senior squad and has plenty of coaching experience. His appointment leaves an obvious vacancy at Saul where he has been for the past few years and by the looks of things a lot of sidelines are going to have new faces this year in Div 1 and 2. Burren, Mayobridge, Warrenpoint, Saval, Rostrevor, Glen, Castlewellan, St Johns, Banbridge, Tullylish, Leitrim, all on the lookout for new managers so should be interesting to here what appointments are made over the coming months.

Irrespective of whether the lad got off or not I think that the GAA is now in a ridiculous situation with regards to people getting sent off. Anyone who was at the county final knows he deserved to be sent off and should be punished accordingly but the appeals process in our sport is a joke. In rugby and soccer if your sent off then that's it unless it was the case that you shouldn't have been sent off and it can be appealed. In GAA we look for loopholes in every part of the appeals process, with solicitors and top legal brains on the case like its a court of law. It's completely ridiculous. Look at Connolly with Dublin. Young people are sitting watching a match and seeing men get sent off and then seeing them play the next game. How are you supposed to teach discipline. I was at a match last week where one lad theatrically dived in order to get a member of opposition sent off. His manager was disgusted and took him off immediately and told him if he ever done that again he would never play for him again. I thought that was a great reaction from the manager but how many would do that. We all love our great GAA games but surely to god this legal rigmarole needs to be hit on the head.

Mike Tyson - my point is that unless Loughinisland got confirmation that they would get to refix this match after the deadline then it was a very big call to make not to fulfil the fixture and giving the significance of the result IMO it was the wrong call!!

That's a very big call on Loughinisland's part. Surely this was agreed ages ago so why the last minute change. If they really wanted promotion then this should have been sorted and they should have played away. Poor decision from them IMO.

Was at both senior semi finals over the weekend and was pleasantly surprised at the amount of fast attacking football rather than the negative defensive stuff off late. Both Kilcoo and Clonduff were by far the better teams on the respective nights. For me Burren and Bryansford have flattered to deceive when getting to this stage in the past few years and Kilcoo definitely have got the mental upper hand in this fixture before a ball is even threw in. I thought their defence was solid on the whole and when they attacked it was at pace with Conor Lavery pulling the strings and then  when the two Johnstons appeared it was game over. I must say though that I was surprised at Burrens positional selection from the start and thought they were slow to make changes when clearly they had better players on the bench to add to an attack line that just wasn't functioning. Clonduff on the other hand against Bryansford after conceding two goals made a switch which won them the game. They switched a couple of defenders and the second guy put the clampers on Conor Maginn and that was Bryansfords biggest threat neutralised. Obviously the sending off for Bryansford had a big impact but for me Clonduff worked tirelessly throughout the game and were by far the better team. So for the final and off course Kilcoo will be strong favourites but the local derby factor may well have an impact on this and Clonduff wont allow Kilcoo to bully them like Burren did. Should be an interesting match.

Yes Speculative it is not the forum for nominations but saying that anyone would be better isn't much use. These are admiral thoughts but are you going to pursue these visionary people and ask them for their input to see what ideas they come up with and either bring these ideas to the county board or join the board yourself. Why don't you lead the way and become the start of 'The New'.

I have held off until today before reading the backlash I knew would come on this discussion board. And yes, we were well and truly hammered but honestly what did you expect!!! Did people somehow think that just because it was championship that we were going to unearth some wonder players out of somewhere or that our league form was going to just disappear. Its quite simple, we just didn't have the quality, ability or talent available to us to put it up to a seasoned experienced good football team like Monaghan on their home turf for 70 minutes. Surely we can all call for heads to roll but unless you are either prepared to step up and take the various positions or have people in mind to do so then what is the point in ranting about it. We are typical outside the wire supporters, when things are going well we jump on the band wagon and when things are going bad we stick the knife in and turn it as much as we can. So as a result of Sunday, who is going to step up to affect change? Who is going to run for the various positions we are calling heads to roll in?

Rosskarr you are obviously pushing at something here. All clubs were notified of fixtures (including starred games) well in advance of the league even beginning. To suggest they were only starred a few weeks ago is completely inaccurate. The county go on a training weekend every year before championship, as does every county, which was pencilled in before the fixtures were announced and you hardly expect county players to play on the Friday night of that weekend so its either scrap the fixture or star it. I don't think clubs have been treated to badly this year in respect of access to their county players in the league. At the end of May we will be almost half way through the league and Friday week will be the first starred fixture that's going ahead. For clubs to start complaining at this stage is a bit ridiculous. They get rid of county managers on a whim and complain that county isn't good enough and then when county try and prepare for championship they throw the dummies out again.