Down Club Hurling & Football

[ranch]

Any scores from the Junior championship games this weekend?

[passedit]

Any scores from the Junior championship games this weekend?

    Round 2
    St Colman's Drumaness 2-8 V 5-8 St Paul's
    Mitchels 1-11 V 1-10 Killyleagh
    Teconnaught 4-10 V 0-8 Aughlisnafin
    Bright 6-10 V 1-6 St Michael's
    Ardglass 4-21 V 1-4 Ballykinlar
    Dromara 1-6 V 0-12 Aghaderg

[downjim]

Burren 9.9 CPN 0.4 a great start to Warrenpoints 125 weekend

[DaisyCutter]

Rubbing it in their a tad downjim...
I can't mind a bigger score line being accumulated in a Div 1 game in my memory? Can anyone else on here mind a bigger score line?
Did u get to the game downjim?
Was it a case of Burren being on form or were the Point as poor as the score line suggests?

[whitegoodman]

I can't for the life of me see how games like these will help either team or football in general in the county for that matter.  It will get worse next year too as the clubs likely to come up are not even near as good as the clubs likely to go down.  I was going to ask for my money back at ht ffs!!!

Time to go back to the old tried and tested.

[downjim]

Glenn cant even make the quarter final of intermediate yet they could be playing senior next treat.

[downjim]

It's time to let second teams into the senior leagues. Ive no doubt burre bridge and kilcoo would have excellent teams in junior league. It might not help smaller clubs but why prevent players whowould want to play a better standard develop further.

[islandchampions08]

The ACPRL is a better standard than div 3, if the top 5 teams is div 3 played in the ACPRL div 1 they would not finish above 4th position in the league , the county board should never have changed from the 10 team leagues them leagues meant every team had to play right to the end of the year as in div 1 top 4 and bottom 4 a few years ago was only a few points difference. if st johns do well and get promoted to the top division they will get ate up by burren , kilcoo , bryansford etc there is simply to much gluff in class

[thewobbler]

The ACPRL is a better standard than div 3, if the top 5 teams is div 3 played in the ACPRL div 1 they would not finish above 4th position in the league , the county board should never have changed from the 10 team leagues them leagues meant every team had to play right to the end of the year as in div 1 top 4 and bottom 4 a few years ago was only a few points difference. if st johns do well and get promoted to the top division they will get ate up by burren , kilcoo , bryansford etc there is simply to much gluff in class

It's not the county board who makes change, they just implement it. The proposal for change came from one or more clubs, and was approved by a majority of clubs.

You really have two sets of selfish needs working together to push through a change like this.

First is the clubs who want to protect their D1 / D2 status, and would rather play in a weaker version of what they're in, than maybe take a few years at a lower level to work themselves back to the necessary standard for a tougher league.

The other ones are the clubs who just want to play at a higher level than they've achieved, just to see what it's like and the kudos that goes with it, rather than work their way there.

I'd guess most clubs in the county belong to one of those groups. After a few years of getting beaten around like wet lettuces, the number of clubs in the second group will get smaller. At that time we might again be able to revert to a league structure that places teams at the right level, improves teams and conditions them for bigger challenges.

Only 6-7 years ago Down league structures were regarded by central council as the model to follow. As I mentioned earlier on in this thread about Championship structures, there's too many people in the GAA who want to meddle more than they want to play.

[supersub]

Coming from a club who have been in division 2 recently and are in danger of going there again, I certainly do not want Rostrevor anywhere near the second division. It will be of no benefit whatsoever to the club. Last season in Division two some of the scorelines were ridiculous and we won it at a canter, next year with any decent teams from Div 2 already being promoted to Div 1 for this season, if we go back down again (no offence to the clubs in there) it will be a joke. Don't understand why anyone would want the leagues this way. You want it as competitive as possible as far down the league structure as you can. It simply isn't the case with this one. Similarly I fear for whoever comes up from Division two this season as they will be on the end of a few hammerings for sure. That said, Rostrevor have enough time left to get themselves out of this situation and it is still in our own hands.

[islandchampions08]

Not one team in division 2 could compete with the top 12 teams in division one.

[qubdub]

It's time to let second teams into the senior leagues. Ive no doubt burre bridge and kilcoo would have excellent teams in junior league. It might not help smaller clubs but why prevent players whowould want to play a better standard develop further.

Couldn't agree more. I think the best model is to introduce one or maybe two extra divisions and incorporate all senior teams into the All county league structure, including IIs and IIIs teams. There are clubs whos thirds would easily beat some of the division 3 teams. I know in Armagh they split their Junior league in two, which meant the weaker teams at the bottom had more competitive football and the stronger teams likewise weren't cruising to facile victories every other weekend. If we took this approach things might level themselves out a bit. Granted at the top of the division there are also massive gulfs. I suppose this time next year will paint a more accurate picture of where things are at.

[umpire]

A rip roaring game in Petit Park this evening with the Reds winning by 2 points as the Town lost their way in semi-darkness second half. 1.8 to 0.9

[Town Gael]

It was a tight game but the standard of play was poor. A shocking amount of wides in the first half cost the Town but no argument with the result.
The Reds just wanted it a whole lot more. Off the ball stuff wasn't nice-

[wildrover]

Rostrevor 1-08 0-09 Castlewellan
Entertaining enough game by virtue of the close score-line and the lively Rostrevor crowd in Petit Park this evening. In wet conditions handling was fairly poor on both sides and the turnover count was huge. Massive win for the reds and it breathes life into their battle for survival. Town were fairly lacklustre and barring the first 20mins when they kicked 7-8 wides they never looked energetic enough to deal with a pumped up home team. Best for Rostrevor was there No 6 and Brian Cole up front. Castlewellans best performer was Barry Travers. A few off-the-ball incidents but all handbags really.