2016 All Ireland U-21 football championship

[Jinxy]

Why are people so upset over the grade being changed to u-20?
Will the difference be noticeable even?
The grade was changed to reduce the pressure on young players who are playing for too many teams.
Don't get the outrage myself.

The majority of the best players at U-21 level are senior players. The non senior U-21s can become better footballers by testing themselves against those senior players.

No senior player will be allowed to play in the U-20 grade it will totally dilute the grade. If you want to reduce pressure you scrap the O'Byrne,FBD,McKenna cup competitions or the sigerson cup instead of the U-21 grade.

Explain this to me in more detail.

Best players taken out of any grade dilutes it.

That's not going to happen though.
The best players in the u-20 grade will be the best players in the u-20 grade.
Going by some of the logic expressed in this thread, we should replace u-21 with an u-23 grade because it would increase the standard.
Some of the best players involved today in both semi-finals would have had another year or more at u-21 anyway.

[Syferus]

Why are people so upset over the grade being changed to u-20?
Will the difference be noticeable even?
The grade was changed to reduce the pressure on young players who are playing for too many teams.
Don't get the outrage myself.

The majority of the best players at U-21 level are senior players. The non senior U-21s can become better footballers by testing themselves against those senior players.

No senior player will be allowed to play in the U-20 grade it will totally dilute the grade. If you want to reduce pressure you scrap the O'Byrne,FBD,McKenna cup competitions or the sigerson cup instead of the U-21 grade.

Explain this to me in more detail.

Best players taken out of any grade dilutes it.

That's not going to happen though.
The best players in the u-20 grade will be the best players in the u-20 grade.
Going by some of the logic expressed in this thread, we should replace u-21 with an u-23 grade because it would increase the standard.
Some of the best players involved today in both semi-finals would have had another year or more at u-21 anyway.

You're going around the roundabout a bit there, Jinxy. The best U20 players in Ireland will not be playing at U20 IC under the new system - at least a very good portion of them won't. And if they do, then the senior team suffers from the lack of players that would make their panel but for the fact it would make them ineligible to play the last year or two with the lads they've played with since they were pre-teens.

Some of the best today may have been U20 but the majority of the star players were U21. Too many blows delivered to the grade at once to say it hasn't been severely diluted. Duffy had his agenda for years, plain to see. It's a pity the delegates were so gutless as to not listen to the people who sent them to the conference.

[Rossfan]

Who told the delegates not to vote for the u20?

[timmyot501]

2 excellent games,  4 excellent teams and one excellent venue. A good day even if the monaghan result didn't go to plan. But cork were excellent and the big lads up front probably got them over the line and made the difference. We missed a few too many in the first half which meant we ended up chasing the game. In hindsight also we prob went for a couple of goal chances too early when only 3 or 4 points down. But in fairness cork always responded with a great score. Should be a good final.

[Hound]

Very little between the 8 provincial finalists, any of them could have found themselves in the All Ireland final, so well done to Mayo and Cork for being the 2 to do so.
Hopefully you'll have a competent ref for the final (which would rule out the ref from the first match today).

[From the Bunker]

Very little between the 8 provincial finalists, any of them could have found themselves in the All Ireland final, so well done to Mayo and Cork for being the 2 to do so.
Hopefully you'll have a competent ref for the final (which would rule out the ref from the first match today).

Yeah from reports all 6 games really came down to hunger as to who won their respective matches.

[Kuwabatake Sanjuro]

I know he made one or two mistakes today but John Hickey from Carlow really is head and shoulders above all other referees on the inter-county panel from what I've seen of him. Hopefully he gets a chance to do some meaningful senior championship games.

[straightred]

I know he made one or two mistakes today but John Hickey from Carlow really is head and shoulders above all other referees on the inter-county panel from what I've seen of him. Hopefully he gets a chance to do some meaningful senior championship games.

I'm not so sure. In both games their were crucial bad decisions. Mayo were robbed near the end on a free not given but it turns out not to matter thankfully. In the cork game there was a similar situation were Monaghan should have had at least 2 very scorable frees near the end (same incident) but got nothing and instead got a 45 which they missed. The way it turned out that was the difference between a cork win and extra time (monaghan lobbed a 21 yard free into the box in the last minute).

Another hobby horse of mine is steps. In the 1st minute monaghan were pulled for steps and I thought fair enough. He then forgot how to count and let it go time after time.

2 very entertaining games with very little of the stuff that goes on in the senior game. I'm not sure about the cork black card as it could have just as easily been a yellow but their no 14 should have been off so I suppose that balances out - I'll go for Cork in the final but only because of their size. the no 15 was outstanding - a star in the making.

[Farrandeelin]

Will the final definitely be on Saturday the 30th?

[From the Bunker]

Will the final definitely be on Saturday the 30th?

http://www.gaa.ie/football/gaa-football-all-ireland-u21-championship/

[Maroon Manc]

Two brilliant games yesterday, its a shame they don't show the provincial finals too.

I thought the best two teams won on the day although Mayo were very fortunate with those 2 late frees but they did deserve their win. Cork took some outstanding points in the second half and they were deserving winners, as mentioned by another poster there a ridiculous black card for the Cork corner forward near the end as one of the Monaghan players fell into him.

I'm surprised to see Cork are 8/15 favourites, thought the betting would be closer than that although Cork do look to have the better set of forwards.

[Syferus]

The team that beat Roscommon will win the AI for the seventh straight year this year.

[Rossfan]

Syfín up rhubarb arises again.
That's a most annoying record though - a bit like the healthiest corpse in rthe graveyard.

[Tubberman]

We have that record at senior since 2012 - we know all about it :-(

[INDIANA]

Congrats to Mayo yesterday.

Dublin threw the game away but with it being such a limited outfit we did well to get that far. I think overall Mayo had a better balance to the team even though we have 3-4 excellent individual players. Typically better balanced teams win semi finals.

Murchan- Clayton- O Callaghan and Basquel will all be senior panelists at some point but considering they standard of senior players we have there no guarantees.

Mayo a good side. I picked out DOC as being miles better then his brother last year ( was laughed at) and yesterday proved me right .

Not as flashy a Mayo team as previous years where they'd run away from lads who put it up to them. Good backbone in the team. But unfortunately are the inside forwards on this team going to make the difference at senior level for Mayo?

I'm not sure about that. And I'd have my doubts. But hopefully they will for Mayo's sake.

Should be a good final.

Best of luck to both teams but I hope Mayo win