Congress

[muppet]

Agree way last poster with regards to our minors up in Derry getting v few actual minor games so playing seniors gives them a decent number of football matches for the season!
In fact lone shark I think u have got this totally wrong!!!
Clubs produce these talented county minors then get punished cause they can't use them!!!
And as for this burnout nonsense
We have soccer players in our club who okay 30 games plus a year then their football matches on top of that
So a talented minor playing club senior is not the problem!
The issue is the county taking our talented minors, flogging them to death in pursuit of an all Ireland minor title! The average county minor will start in jan /feb with county and continue till they are put out of c'ship
This will take approx 6 months!!
How many games these lads get???
How many flogging sessions will they undertake?
Let the lads PLAY football!!!
Congress and "corporate gaa" don't give a flying f**k about the club scene!!
All about the county!
This is wrong!
The gaa was built round the parish, the club!
Pity the prawn sandwich brigade of our association have forgotten this as they continue to feather the nest of the county scene!!!!

So then you play all of them right?

[AZOffaly]

Minor footballers and hurlers already play far too many games and clubs need to realise that for a variety of reasons, playing minors at adult level is not only not ideal, it's counter productive.

I'm well aware that there are a lot of clubs where a seventeen or eighteen year old might be one of their best fifteen players, indeed last year I was involved with a senior club where arguably an eighteen year old was Player of the Season at adult level. However it's a zero sum game - the same amount of games will be won and lost as always, and for every game you win thanks to you promising youngster one year, you'll lose to an equivalent player on another year.

Yes I know that there are some smaller clubs who are cut to the bone with numbers, but experience has taught me this - for every club that genuinely, honestly has mobilised every healthy young man aged between 19 and 38, there are ten clubs who will cry about "the numbers aren't there" but in truth there will be ten lads sitting on bar stools in the town while the match is on. When they say "the numbers aren't there" what they mean is that "the numbers of talented lads who require no work on our part aren't there".

Now maybe your club is the one in ten that literally has got every healthy young man down to the field and still can't make up fifteen, and if that's the case, then you need to amalgamate. That's nothing to do with minors, that's just simple maths, because it means that you're always one holiday, one family wedding, one illness or one injury away from giving a walkover - that's no way to be.

Like it or not, these lads are the ones for whom burnout is the biggest issue, and I don't doubt for a minute that there are other games that they should be cutting out as well. However in many cases these lads are playing football and hurling, playing championship with schools, county minor, and then playing minor club as well. If you're asking me should county minors be barred from playing club minor league and championship, then that's a completely different story - I don't agree with that at all. However in terms of the heirarchy of importance for a seventeen year old footballer or hurler, adult club league games are the lowest of the lot, and that's as it should be. Of course they should be cut out.

That's harsh. What do you mean 'that require no work'? What 'work' do you expect the club to do to get those lads off the bar stool and back into the club. In my experience clubs are trying very hard to get lads to play, but if you have a lad that has lost interest, or had no interest to begin with, what are you supposed to do? Kidnap him and drag him up to the pitch. I don't think it's fair to suggest that clubs do no 'work' to get players up to the field.

By the way, I would be a supporter of a motion that limits 17 year olds playing Senior Football or Hurling.

[Lone Shark]

To clarify, no I'm not talking about dragging lads down who have no interest - I'm talking about creating an environment where lads who are a bit off the standard required will still get something out of taking part and might be helped to get back up to the level where they could actually contribute on the field. The guy who sits in the pub watching Stoke vs Swansea, who gives out about the GAA and who hasn't played ball since under-12 is a lost cause, I get that. However I'm talking about:

(1)The guy who used to play but either gained a bit of weight or got an injury. Now if he goes down to the field he might find that the seniors and juniors are training together, and he might as well have just been plonked into a Kerry county session, he's so far off the pace. Or that the juniors don't train at all, so he has no chance to try and get back up to speed.

(2) The guy who is enthusiastic, might play a bit of soccer or rugby, but you can't dress it up, he just isn't any good. He'll fill out a jersey, but will probably be second best to his marker nine days out of ten.

(3) The guy who just isn't interested in giving up his social life from April until September, all for the sake of a bit of ball. He's in his late twenties, attends a wedding or a stag every third weekend, and isn't going to tell his missus, a schoolteacher with the summer off, that they've to go on holiday in November all because there might be a match on at any given time in July or August, depending on how the county team goes. Neither will he tell her that he can't go down to the pub to meet the gang because he's playing the next day. It's easy to say that junior ball caters for these lads, but we all know that there are junior managers who fancy themselves as the next Jim McGuinness too, or even players in the dressing room who decide they want to set their own standards.

(4) The guy who works odd hours, or away from home. Sometimes clubs will work with these guys, other times they'll just have to listen to a load of lectures about the need to travel down midweek for training and to be home every weekend, even when their work or schedule doesn't allow it. They play senior, they get lectured. They play junior, and they get fecked around because matches are changed with a few hours notice, or the game that's scheduled to throw in at 7:30pm finally gets underway around 8:15, meaning that he gets back home at around midnight.


Player (1) and Player (2) need junior specific training, ball focused, and plenty of playing time. The first guy will get playing time, because they'll want to coax him back, but no amount of patting on the back and encouragement will keep you going when you're simply in over your head, particularly alongside guys who you used to play ball with at the same level.

Player (2) - and yes, I've been that soldier for many years - is less worried about the fitness training since it's only when the ball is involved that he starts to look poor, and is always great to fill a jersey on that day when you're struggling to round up fifteen. But he'll never get anything other than the token five minutes at the end of the challenge match otherwise. Home games on a warm summer's evening are a waste of time - 25 lads will show up and his only ball time will be the half time kick around. His only chance of a run is an away game in miserable weather when the game is fixed for the same time as the International rugby, or the day after a club wedding.

Both player and manager knows that this guy ain't playing championship, but it still shouldn't mean that you play less than two hours of match football from one end of the year to the next either.

In terms of players (3) and (4), that's where management plays a huge part, and managers are often just focused on the success of the main team. They know that the promising minor is the better long term prospect, that these older guys don't match up to the exacting standards of commitment that they want to set (or be seen to set, at the very least) and that it's always handy to be able to justify your failure at the end of the year on the grounds that they were building for the future, blooding young lads. When in many cases, they were actually bloodletting young lads, exposing them to grizzled ould lads who just wanted to cut them down to size, using all their "experience".


There are probably a good few clubs out there who cater for all these guys and still have bother getting numbers, and if so, then I definitely sympathise. However I've covered a lot of ground in this country and I've seen a lot of club set ups - it's certainly not the norm.

[AZOffaly]

What you are basically referring to there is the Junior Team. Every Club that I'm aware of caters for those types of players with either Junior, or Junior B or Junior C. And to be frank I'm not sure how many Junior Managers demand senior club level commitment. I suspect they are few and far between. Certainly anywhere I've been, or have been exposed to, the Junior team is almost explicitly set up to cater for the lads you are talking about.

[Canalman]

From what I can see the vast vast majority of junior managers main aim is to get 15 players out for each  game.
Lads either want to play or they don't and no junior manager should have to cajole or "put the hand around the shoulder" of a celtic tiger cub in his mid to late twenties only too eager to timesponge someone else.

As for trying to get some non playing subs from the senior team to play junior once and a while just forget about it.

[johnneycool]

Agree way last poster with regards to our minors up in Derry getting v few actual minor games so playing seniors gives them a decent number of football matches for the season!
In fact lone shark I think u have got this totally wrong!!!
Clubs produce these talented county minors then get punished cause they can't use them!!!
And as for this burnout nonsense
We have soccer players in our club who okay 30 games plus a year then their football matches on top of that
So a talented minor playing club senior is not the problem!
The issue is the county taking our talented minors, flogging them to death in pursuit of an all Ireland minor title! The average county minor will start in jan /feb with county and continue till they are put out of c'ship
This will take approx 6 months!!
How many games these lads get???
How many flogging sessions will they undertake?
Let the lads PLAY football!!!
Congress and "corporate gaa" don't give a flying f**k about the club scene!!
All about the county!
This is wrong!
The gaa was built round the parish, the club!
Pity the prawn sandwich brigade of our association have forgotten this as they continue to feather the nest of the county scene!!!!

Its not the number of games that's the problem, its the nonsensical training placed upon these lads by the various managements they play under all trying to justify their existence and backroom team.

We've already run into problems with our county management not releasing players to train with their clubs as was agreed, an U21 league set up which in itself isn't a bad idea but a third of our U-21's are on the county senior set up (most haven't got any game time, but won't be released) and another third involved in the minor set up who either train on the same day as the games were fixed or will have fixtures in the Leinster leagues, so we're fucked either which way we turn.

And I bet its going to be spun by the CB, that they've put in place all these hurling fixtures, but the hurling clubs won't fulfill them........

[Lone Shark]

I would suggest then that you've been lucky in terms of the club setups you've been involved in. Lots of managers now, particularly paid managers, have a tendency to want to train the two squads together in order to "boost numbers" at senior training. What that does in effect is squeeze out the lads who aren't capable of operating to that standard. In some cases then Junior League games are used by the senior manager as challenge games, where the team selected contains half a senior team, and all the likely senior subs. Lads who are "pure junior" i.e. the categories named above - tend to get frozen out. Again, except in cases where special circumstances like weddings etc rule out a load of lads for a fixture that's an hour's drive away, and then the cry of "numbers are so bad" echoes across the parish.

I do take your point that there are clubs who are doing things the right way and still struggling, just the same as I'm sure you'd acknowledge there are some less-than-ideal set ups out there. In fairness, you didn't have to look far from home to see an example of very good club management, particularly when it came to things like getting everyone involved and the importance of all the different levels, but that's not the norm at all.

Equally we're in agreement that dogging seventeen year olds and pushing them into senior action to make up teams doesn't help anything.

[Lone Shark]

Its not the number of games that's the problem, its the nonsensical training placed upon these lads by the various managements they play under all trying to justify their existence and backroom team.

We've already run into problems with our county management not releasing players to train with their clubs as was agreed, an U21 league set up which in itself isn't a bad idea but a third of our U-21's are on the county senior set up (most haven't got any game time, but won't be released) and another third involved in the minor set up who either train on the same day as the games were fixed or will have fixtures in the Leinster leagues, so we're fucked either which way we turn.

And I bet its going to be spun by the CB, that they've put in place all these hurling fixtures, but the hurling clubs won't fulfill them........

Perhaps the reason for this league however was to give game time to guys who aren't on county panels? If so, then the question is who asked for it, and was there an actual need for it? I can see why that would work in a lot of counties, maybe not in Down though where three or four clubs make up the county team.

[AZOffaly]

I would suggest then that you've been lucky in terms of the club setups you've been involved in. Lots of managers now, particularly paid managers, have a tendency to want to train the two squads together in order to "boost numbers" at senior training. What that does in effect is squeeze out the lads who aren't capable of operating to that standard. In some cases then Junior League games are used by the senior manager as challenge games, where the team selected contains half a senior team, and all the likely senior subs. Lads who are "pure junior" i.e. the categories named above - tend to get frozen out. Again, except in cases where special circumstances like weddings etc rule out a load of lads for a fixture that's an hour's drive away, and then the cry of "numbers are so bad" echoes across the parish.

I do take your point that there are clubs who are doing things the right way and still struggling, just the same as I'm sure you'd acknowledge there are some less-than-ideal set ups out there. In fairness, you didn't have to look far from home to see an example of very good club management, particularly when it came to things like getting everyone involved and the importance of all the different levels, but that's not the norm at all.

Equally we're in agreement that dogging seventeen year olds and pushing them into senior action to make up teams doesn't help anything.

Or else you've been unlucky I agree that in many cases the Junior team and the Senior team train together, but that is primarily a function of either efficiency in terms of using the pitch, or an attempt to have a good session with good numbers. I don't think the Junior players are expected to be operating at the same level as the Seniors, nor do I think they are expected to show the same dedication in terms of attendance etc.  The Juniors should benefit from this sort of set up, at least early in the year. And lets be honest, Juniors training on their own, particularly in the early part of the year, would struggle to achieve a quorum for training. Again, that's more or less seen as acceptable for Junior, so I don't think any lad who just wants to play junior for any of the valid reasons you outlined above would be marginalised in that scenario.

As Junior Championship gets up and running, it's my experience that the Juniors start to train alone more, and certainly start to play challenges as a group.

I think the problem of numbers is far more related to lads that won't/can't commit to the Senior teams. That's where the good under 17 becomes a problem. I honestly don't think that the fellas who sit on the barstool are sitting on the barstool because they feel the commitment or standard of junior is too high. I think they are there because for whatever reason they just don't want to play.

[Farrandeelin]

A question...can the minors (who represent their county) play with the minor team in their clubs? Or is it only adult teams they aren't allowed play for while they are in the county panel and the county is going good? In our club, minors in their final yearusually train with the Juniors/Seniors at the tail end of the year i.e. if the minor team has been knocked out of competitions.