Congress this year

[Glensman]

Could anyone direct me to where I can read what rules/motions were passed etc this year.

Cheers

[Rossfan]

As expected - despite our Co board inexplicably voting to abolish U21 at this of all stages.
However is it not time to look at making Minor U19 and not allowing U19s to play U21?

[Farrandeelin]

Anything else happen today or was it just the minor/u-21 that was voted on?

[never kickt a ball]

Some people don't seem to really care about young players or just remain blind to evidence.........

U-19 proposal rejected at Congress
Jan 27, 2008

Saturday, January 26. 

The motion to scrap the minor and under-21 grades in hurling and football in favour of a new under-19 competition was rejected at Special Congress in Croke Park on Saturday.

Motions 16 to 20, described by GAA President Nickey Brennan as "one of the most important issues to come before Congress in year", proposed a two-year trial of the new under-19 grade in both hurling and football to counter the effects of player burnout.

Despite impassioned pleas from several county board delegates from around the country, the motion was overwhelmingly rejected on a vote of 115 to 58.

While most delegates agreed that burnout was an issue that needed to be tackled, Galway and Tyrone representatives objected to the scrapping of the minor and under-21 grades, insisting that the proposals failed to deal with the core issue.

The proposals put forward were the culmination of months of work by the Player Burnout Task Force headed by Doctor Pat O'Neill, who presented a detailed briefing on the risks associated with the phenomenon before the issue was debated.

Antrim secretary John McSporran spoke passionately in favour of the proposed changes.

"These injuries are becoming more common, more frequent and young lads are becoming damaged with the excessive amounts of training," McSporran said. 

"For two years we have been asked to consider this. It will free up time which is relevant to other topics which will be discussed today. I urge people to give it that chance for two years to amalgamate the two grades."

Other counties to speak in favour of the changes included Dublin, Roscommon and Cavan, while Mayo, Tipperary and Kilkenny and Tipperary voted against the motion.

The motion required a simple majority to be passed, but in the end went down by a two to one majority.

Speaking to reporters after the decision, GAA President Nickey Brennan suggested that the matter could well be revisited at a Special Congress later in the year.

Brendan Harkin from Tyrone shown at Congress (by RTE news) suggesting there was no evidence TYP:

"However Tyrone's Brendan Harkin felt that pre-match training and preparations were the key issue to be addressed rather than competitive games.

He said: 'We are trying here to deal with competition rather than preparation. The motion is not dealing with the real core problem which is over-training and over-coaching and this certainly needs to be addressed.'"

[Rossfan]

Some interesting changes........


2. The National Hurling and Football Leagues will now also have to be completed over eight (ten in the case of Division 4) weekends.


7. The period for which inter-county players will not be expected to fulfil club fixtures has also been outlined:
         a. maximum time period of 20 days for All-Ireland finals
         b. maximum time period of 13 days for all other fixtures.

2- Does this mean that the NFL games have to be played in successive Weeks?
7- Surely this means that in effect County Players will not be available till a team is out of the Championship unless there's a big big gap between their Inter County Games.

As for the U 19 thing -I think most Co Boards felt this proposal was totally biased in favour of Third Level Sector which seemed to be exempted from any blame for burn out.

[youngfella]

its a fair point, however its a small club. There might have to be some cross-over. Mangers should be more understanding of there players, and recognise that if a lad is training twice a week with the county then that should be enough for him. Furthermore minor, u21 and senior should all be combined reducing the amount of stress on the younger lad and causing the older boys to up there game and act as role models for the lads.

[orangeman]

This thing about no collective training in November and December is a joke ! How are managers going to prepare for the year ahead  - it's ok for clubs to close down during Nov Dec but counties ??