Tyrone Club Football and Hurling

[tonesfirstandlast]

Perhaps Clonoe may walk it but a team that gets to a county final deserves some respect. I would go as far as to say that its the most dangerous forward line I have seen coming out of Carrickmore. There is frightening pace it it. There was an impressive list of subs who came on last week, add Gaby who had a knock and a returning Johnny Monroe and Paul Hughes and its a strong strong squad

Wee Roddy I can assure the Carmen have our respect, we played Carmen in the championship 2011 and it was a draw followed by a draw and extra time. Some crap and wind up merchants being spouted here. This is a 50/50 game, Carmen haven't gotten 15 titles by rolling over. We have never had anything easy from them, and Sunday will be no different,a tough battle. Carrickmore are a championship team, end of.

Knockyourmuckerin.  You would need to have a word with your manager if that is the case. He says that his only worry is complacency.
He is aleady asking around here about the other hures from Tyrone that he is playing in the Ulster Club.

[Under Lights]

I think at least one round should be played early. If this results in some players from beaten teams leaving then so be it. Tyrone seniors and minors are more than likely to be playing in the latter stages of the Championship every year so at least one round needs to be played early to give the winners a chance in the Ulster club. We now have the situation where our senior winners have to travel to Celtic park 7 days after lifting the cup to play the Derry Champions. Not fair on them.

i agree EC, and its not just unfair on the county champions, i feel to have such a disjointed and elongated club season is unfair on every club player.
every single players actual playing season is now at least 8 months long with teams involved in finals & promotion /relegation playoffs much longer again.
there will always be teams that have an extended season due to being sucessfull, but this shouldnt be the norm for every footballer in the county

at the minute its :

preseason jan-march
playing season april-november
off season (for some) december

repeat for your football career

Can I ask what is wrong with being involved with football for 9 months of the year. It is a hobby, and I love it.

i agree to an extent, but its the fact that withing those 9 months you have  periods of up to 6/7 weeks of complete in-activity from games , but have no prior notice of this, leaving it impossible to fit in other things.
The level of commitment for even club footballers at every level now is so high, they deserve a fixture schedule that they can try and plan around rather than the ad hoc nature of it currently.

Agree with this fully. We are now 7 weeks since our last competitive league game. We have basically done another Pre-Season training schedule and played two friendlies in this time. Terrible to have to done that in October Bill.

The way fixtures were just threw on top of you- The AI Semi Final Weekend- was the biggest joke. Very hard to plan life around football. I think we have had over 100 training sessions this year for 12 competitive games.

[firestarter]

As a player I can say the year is too long by about a month. A bigger problem though is the ad-hoc nature of fixtures. It is almost impossible to plan anything more than a week in advance. I can see players, particularly those with young families calling tlime on their careers earlier for this reason. Club football is the backbone of the gaa but due to the emphasis on the county team it being treated as an after thought.

[blewuporstuffed]

I think at least one round should be played early. If this results in some players from beaten teams leaving then so be it. Tyrone seniors and minors are more than likely to be playing in the latter stages of the Championship every year so at least one round needs to be played early to give the winners a chance in the Ulster club. We now have the situation where our senior winners have to travel to Celtic park 7 days after lifting the cup to play the Derry Champions. Not fair on them.

This wouldn't have been the case if the county board wern't so concerned about the gates and played each round over the one weekend now would it!

Honestly, I get the impression that some on here dont even like the sport, they want the season over and done with as quick as possible. Also seems that it's the spectators that have this early championship ambition whereas the players are quite clearly in favour of a later championship.

Can I ask what is wrong with being involved with football for 9 months of the year. It is a hobby, and I love it.

This.

The gate isnt the only concern when not playing the championship rounds all in one weekend, there is also a shortage of referees (for championship games linesmen & 4th officials also need to be referees, so that is 4 referees per game)

[blewuporstuffed]

As a player I can say the year is too long by about a month. A bigger problem though is the ad-hoc nature of fixtures. It is almost impossible to plan anything more than a week in advance. I can see players, particularly those with young families calling tlime on their careers earlier for this reason. Club football is the backbone of the gaa but due to the emphasis on the county team it being treated as an after thought.

This is it in a nutshell for me ( i am a player also)
The ideal season would be  about march/april to september/ october , which is only slightly shorter that it is now, but with scheduled free weekends within that, not the way it is now where you cant plan anything at all (holidays,weddings,stag dos, family or work commitments ,club functions & fundraisers )within these months in case it may or may not clash with fixtures.

[The Trap]

There are no easy solutions to the fixtures situation but it really does seem to be getting worse and was very bad this year due to:
Tyrone getting to National League Final
Tyrone beat by Donegal and getting run in back door
Minors making All Ireland final
Club championships having to be crammed into very short space and leaving no room for league fixtures

Next year Tyrone have been drawn in prelim round against Down in middle of May - that is going to cause the same kind of chaos next year.
Maybe the club leagues should start earlier - most clubs play friendlies or Ulster League games anyway. Personally i would like to see the club championship start at end of May/start of June but only if there were about 8 league games played. The way it is at present there is no time to enjoy a win as the next round if more often than not the following week. Even for the winners of the O'Neill Cup on Sunday they will play Ballinderry a week later.
Overall though it is a very difficult situation but it wasnt always like this - it has become worse over the last decade due to:
Tyrone success
The Back Door
Games called off because of Minors and Under 21s
Failure of the CCC to stick to the rules (7 and 13day) or stand up to county managers
Failure of the CCC to use common sense (A LOT OF THE TIME)

If Ciaran McLaughlin etc are serious about the sport this is something they need to address URGENTLY.

[blewuporstuffed]

In fairness to ciaran Mcloughhlin, the last time i remember the fixtures running anyway smoothly, i believe he was the one in charge of them at the time!
They have appointed a team of people to look at the fixtures issues and try and address some of them.
They have held a series of meetings with club players to try and tease out the major issues.
THE major one for everyone i think is not knowing from one week to the next what the fixtures are and when they are likely to play again (or have a free weekend)
the job of fixture planning is a difficult one, but the communication to clubs & players needs to be much much better.

[Wee Roddy]

Is Harry McClure involved with Clonoe this year? It would be a big day for him with the cub playing if he was.

[giveherlong]

In fairness to ciaran Mcloughhlin, the last time i remember the fixtures running anyway smoothly, i believe he was the one in charge of them at the time!
They have appointed a team of people to look at the fixtures issues and try and address some of them.
They have held a series of meetings with club players to try and tease out the major issues.
THE major one for everyone i think is not knowing from one week to the next what the fixtures are and when they are likely to play again (or have a free weekend)
the job of fixture planning is a difficult one, but the communication to clubs & players needs to be much much better.

This is the big one. If players knew in advance when the free weekends where they could make their plans around the games. I also think the fixtures committee should have a plan a plan b mapped out, eg if Tyrone are beat on Sunday there will be Round of games, if Tyrone win round of starred games.

It's very unfair on whoever wins on Sunday that they won't be able to enjoy/celebrate as the county board have left them in the situation that they have a 6 day turn around. I know the Ballinderry players were able to saviour their win on the Sunday night and Monday but won't be the case for Sundays winners

[stalwart]

lads, clubs have to take a look at themselves- if league football could be played without county players this situation wouldn't arise- football is held up for county players so play away without them- over recent years its fair to suggest that Tyrone are going to be in around the mix until august.  Midweek fixtures could be played regularly and on different nights thus attracting bigger crowds and revenues- The current system doesn't work and isn't fit for purpose - things must change otherwise lads will just walk away from football but blaming the co board all the time isn't the solution- clubs must be prepared to play more games without county players- mickey will not allow mid week games to involve them whilst they are training. No automatic relegation but at least the majority of players and clubs will be happy- Iv yet to see a team relegated or promoted through the leagues that didn't deserve it. 

[Norf Tyrone]

The Trap and blewuporstuffed cover a lot of the main reasons and points very well a few posts back.

I think it was season 2012, where the TCB had two guys produce a master fixture schedule, and it was essentially a template for the year showing when your games would be. In fairness they stuck to it 90% of the time, and it wasn't perfect, but it was a decent stab at it. However I don't think this same document was in place for this season, and it showed.

To illustrate another problem, which I've a feeling our Club will experience, and that's re the Reserve Championship. We burnt about 20/ 21 players during our two senior games, which would mean getting 15 out for the reserves will be tough. However as the game will now not be til mid October I know we have 4 or 5 young fellas away to England/ Scotland for university, and they obviously won't be back for the game. The net result is that I think we might struggle to get a team out for the Res C'ship, or at the very least we'll be asking a few ex players to tog out to allow us to field.

To me this is not just a TCB problem, but a GAA one. They need to tackle this head on, and stop rolling out the cliches. For example to me there should be no 13 day rule until Counties get to the knock out stage of the C'ship, or the backdoor. All provincial games should still allow players to field for their Club the weekend before, and the option is there for the County player's Clubs to field Friday if they so desire. This would buy back 2-3 weeks. Sure County players could get injured in their 'high intensity' training as handy as they could get a whack in an ACL game. If the GAA copper fasten this as a rule, it'll reduce the influence of managers like Harte and McGuinness on fixtures, as they are rumoured to have.

As someone says though, the biggest issue is communication. Sometimes the TCB are making decisions that make no sense to us uneducated, but do to them. Some explanation the odd time would take the wind from the sails of us whingers, and even though we might not agree, we would be in a better position to understand.

[Tyrone Gaa]

lads, clubs have to take a look at themselves- if league football could be played without county players this situation wouldn't arise- football is held up for county players so play away without them- over recent years its fair to suggest that Tyrone are going to be in around the mix until august.  Midweek fixtures could be played regularly and on different nights thus attracting bigger crowds and revenues- The current system doesn't work and isn't fit for purpose - things must change otherwise lads will just walk away from football but blaming the co board all the time isn't the solution- clubs must be prepared to play more games without county players- mickey will not allow mid week games to involve them whilst they are training. No automatic relegation but at least the majority of players and clubs will be happy- Iv yet to see a team relegated or promoted through the leagues that didn't deserve it.

Its fine saying clubs should accept playing without their best players, look at the clubs the rely heavily on their county men.  Take Moy for example without the Cavanagh brothers they would be looking at intermediate football (minimum) but with them they were able to reach the semi final of a championship.  At their peak add Mellon and Jordan to the missing players.  Its the starred games that leave them with a battle of staying up each year.  Trillick would be in a similar position without Mattie Donnelly who is one of the finest players in the county.  Larger Clubs like Errigal and Carrickmore have depth in their panels that they can cope with missing a few men but A club wants to be competitive at all times and to do that they need their best players.

Is it then fair that for example (Moy, Trillick) get relegated on league form but can unleash these men in a championship football giving them a big advantage against most intermediate sides.  I'm aware Moy have been yo-yoed between senior and intermediate without a championship win but still if there best side is capable of competing in senior championship then that's where they should be playing.

[Norf Tyrone]

Can you imagine Mickey Harte if he was told that he won't have his best players available for the NFL as there are ACL games fixed for the same day! Why should Clubs have to field in the league without their best players!

[blewuporstuffed]

whilst it isnt perfect, the starred games system is probably the best option we have, with around 5 nominated games that clubs have to play without their county players.
These games need to have clubs paired up with other clubs witha  similar amount of county players then to minimise impact on the clubs.
I know it certainly has issues (especially when players withdraw form county panels etc) but i dont think there is a better option.

[Wee Roddy]

Im guessing that the lack of response from Clonoe folk today to my earlier question means that Collie Doris is suspended. I heard it first from a Coalisland man so I passed no remarks but it has surfaced a few times in Carmen today. It would be an awful shame for the lad.