Probably unhelpful at this stage. CB were never going to turn down what was put before them, particularly when it was not going to cost them anything more than other years. Had they done so, and the same result played out yesterday, it would probably be all over social media that they had turned down D McGrath and look what happened.
There’s an element of insider trading to the above too. You could question the objectivity and actions of an individual in a prominent CB position.
Eitherways, it’s unlikely this management would have wished to stay on no matter how the year went, and probably impossible to do so now. It’s akin to a club set up where a group of parents follow a strong team up the line and then step aside.
On the other side of the coin, there is still potential in the players that we knew had it before yesterday. One swallow doesn’t make a summer, one bad or good performance doesn’t define a young hurler.
As Mountrath says, how we handle them over the next 3 years is vital, but a lot of this will come down to their clubs. Accessing them centrally in this void between 17 & U20 is extremely difficult.
With the facilities that exist at the COE & the ability of Laois GAA to centralise S&C conditioning something can be done.
Would the players & clubs buy into committing to regular blocks of work together at specified times over the next two years? With individual programmes (taking account of loading from other commitments) in between these blocks. So that whoever is Laois U20 manager in 2023 has access to a pool of suitably strong, athletic and mobile players in December 2022. A group fit to train and spending time on developing a system of play, rather than a group training to get fit.
Is this even possible? The same players will be pulled between club, school, college & county u20 during that time as it stands.
