Antrim Hurling

[ha ha derry]

if any body is talking to gary pappy tell him to bate the p**h outta ballycran. up dunloy!!!

[ha ha derry]

credit to ray matthews... best bit of reffing i,ve seen this year. pity other refs wouldn,t take a leaf out of his book.

[johnneycool]

if any body is talking to gary pappy tell him to bate the p**h outta ballycran. up dunloy!!!

Taking the defeat well there ha ha!!

[Franko]

credit to ray matthews... best bit of reffing i,ve seen this year. pity other refs wouldn,t take a leaf out of his book.

Are you ray matthews?

[milltown row]

Not sure Milltown. I actually fancy a Westie final. Two good semis alright. We'd be young enough for U21 but not inexperienced. A number of very capable hurlers. St. Gall's are very good up the middle. Conor McGourty, Burkey and Anton McCaffrey (I take it he plays) are capable of winning games. They hit 5 goals against the Johnnies. Most defences would struggle to keep them out. However, Conor and Burkey will be playing some amount of games this weather. Interesting last 4. Wouldn't rule any of them out.

Seriously St Galls beat a woeful St Johns side made up of minors. Both teams were shockingly poor. I just cant get over how many of the players on each side who could not do the basics of the game.

I wouldn't say St Galls are that strong up the middle, mcgourty plays a lot of loose ball and im not sure who the Burke fella is. Poor attendance yesterday too, is this competition meaningful anymore?

Is that why yis didn't enter a team last year?

Truthfully, I'd go for an U20 comp. An U20 league and championship. The problem is with the U21 comp is that clubs say "Right you're out of minor - go and play senior" with this side competition (U21) to play too(I'll come back to this). No league, just championship. Burn out etc being the reason. It's a case of being thrown in at the deep end at this stage. Sink or swim when some players need more development. How many players are lost after minor? I would also like to call a major BULLSHIT on the "they went drinking" line of thought. This is a common and lazy misconception about us city boys.

City clubs, unlike country clubs are not tight-knit. In most (and I'd like to stress the most) cases where players are lost, their group of friends are not at all involved with hurling. From minor to U21, you could have 3 games in 3 years. Your hurling club is not the centre of the community as it is in Dunloy, Loughgiel or Cushendall. In fact, there are people from city clubs who don't see each other from one year to the next. Great friends during a minor championship campaign - hardly know them a year later. Why?

Well, it seems accepted that you just turn up to senior training and you go from there. Nonsense. That is ok in country clubs where everyone knows each other but in the city, that doesn't work. Players coming through are in the dressing room thinking "I don't know anyone here, FCUK THIS". Then the fall out of the loop.

Clubs have to work on blending them through.

good post Hardstation, you surprise me sometimes

yes a lot of players that come through the juvenile teams are lost after senior. we have actively tried to stop the rot by entering more teams to fix the problem. As you say players come into a senior dressing room and my feel intimidated by older seniors, reasons being, not knowing them. not from their area and school. so no past relationships have been made with them.

it takes a lot of phone calls and effort to bring these lads to training and get involved with the senior set ups. Villages and Towns don't really have this problem. they all went to the same school and are usually related (I'm not being funny) to someone in the committee senior team or management. ok there is a drink culture but every club has that problem.

times have changed. when we were 16 we had to play senior games due to numbers. but now days clubs are lucky to keep 3/4 players after minor that will actually play on the senior team!!

our club has been lucky as all the good juveniles that won minors competitions are the back bone of both our senior teams. success is the main reason why we have kept a lot of players.

But we have lost a lot of good players over the years,  they are sometimes unavoidable

[the colonel]

Sounds like a good plan Hardstation but for some clubs it wouldn't work as its hard enough to some games played never mind introducing another league.


Look at St Galls with the fixtures they have at the minute, add in another league and it would be tough to compete (although st galls would be one of the clubs who could benefit from such idea's).


Would an u20 SA league work, as some of the guys in North Antrim get enough hurling and some minors are getting games with seniors already. Clubs may not buy into it as there are other things happening. Would save travel time also.


MR we sometimes have players who go to hurl after minor and don't like the atmosphere in senior changing rooms or the attitudes of some senior players so its not just city clubs who have the problem. However, the more talented players generally are willing to stick it out and gel with senior players.

[imtommygunn]

MR out of interest how does the success of your footballers impact your hurlers?

I'd say in your club if you were a talented 18 or 19 year old it would be tough getting everyone motivated for the football as it would be so tough to get on the team. Does that mean more turn to the hurling at that age as they've more chance of getting on?

Clubs everywhere have problems retaining people. The city clubs of the last few years have had big problems though. St Galls and St Brigids aside I'd say almost every club - football and hurling - has went downhill. Why that is I'm not so sure. St Johns is possibly more exaggerated because they have had some underage success but there is no doubt they have went downhill a lot. Rossa, St Pauls and Sarsfields definitely would have too though. Gorts threatened to make big breakthroughs in both football and hurling however they don't appear to have built on it. Whether that's player retention though I don't know.

It's hard to gauge with country teams. It doesn't seem to be any worse than it ever was to be honest. I would however say the only team on the "up" in general is Creggan in football. I don't see much difference in the rest hurling or football.

[milltown row]

we have a core group of players that would come through and play hurling for the club. a lot of them are also talented footballers. we've 9 on the senior teams of both codes. we could have 2/3 more players that could be on both but have chosen to concentrate on one code. work/family/study are major factors in choosing one over the other.

i don't know of any players who hurl for the club that don't play football, but there are a lot of footballers that don't hurl after minor.

the success of our footballers has meant the hurling will generally take a back seat. Should our hurlers gain success at senior level then it will have a massive boost on hurling interests. But not so long ago St Galls was a div 2 football club and still the hurlers didn't get the same attention and we were playing div 1!!

parents will then view our club as a successfull club to put 'our wee johnny' in, when/if we achieve success in hurling. otherwise St Johns and Rossa will have the monopoly on hurling in Belfast.

I respect all the players who choose one code over another. Of course i'd prefere them to hurl and win something with the club. it seems to be impossible to be be a dual club nowdays. don't know why, but a lot of passion seems to be missing. 

[SaffronArmy]

I think the case is, parents will send their children to clubs of family members or friends or if the child is old enough, he'll pick to go where his friends play. Not sure if parents nowadays are checking up on the league tables on underage and then deciding which club their son plays for. This should then give clubs a good basis to work on, especially with the new rule brought in about transferring u18, this means that if there are any losses of players from clubs, then the club has only themselves to blame, for lack of matches/poor coaching. However, overall, i think the standard of coaching is improving in a number of clubs, and needs to built upon.

[NAG1]

Well whats the verdicts on the U21 games at the weekend, I take they are still going ahead as planned?

[theskull1]

Yes. We sought to get the game pulled forward to Thursday (which was a better option for both ourselves and St Galls) but for some reason it wasn't available/possible, so Sat it is. Should be a good double header

[NAG1]

Whats the times for that then Skull?

You would have thought that the county would have wanted to accomodate St Galls in their Ulster Bid

[milltown row]

Whats the times for that then Skull?

You would have thought that the county would have wanted to accomodate St Galls in their Ulster Bid

not only that we have two hurling league games fixed for sat afternoon. seniors away to Tir Na Og and div 4 team away to Bredagh!!!  but sure.......

[saffron sam2]

Whats the times for that then Skull?

You would have thought that the county would have wanted to accomodate St Galls in their Ulster Bid

not only that we have two hurling league games fixed for sat afternoon. seniors away to Tir Na Og and div 4 team away to Bredagh!!!  but sure.......

Are you going to start supporting Donegal again?

[milltown row]

worked last year, who do we get in the first round?