Burnout

[ugliragman]

Thought Mc Hugh's article in today's Irish Star made a lot of sense. Too many players are being burned out too young.  16 year olds shouldn't be playing senior football.

[never kickt a ball]

Can anyone post this article or elaborate more on what he said?

[tayto]

i think fellas should be either senior, u21 or minor. that way it'd be easier to run off competitions and maybe give more games to those who want them. squeesing in u21 competitions at the end of the year in the space of a few weeks dosent make any sense.

[cavanmaniac]

Agreed tayto, too many teams and managers look at the short term picture and over-tax young talent. The 16-21 years of age stage in a young player's life, when he should arguably be most protected as he's still physically developing, is ironically the exact time when the GAA places the greatest demands on him. Very often these are the players on an injury scrapheap/burned out/no hunger by the time they're 27, when they should be peaking and coming into their own as sportsmen.

The solution is to make players stick to their underage groupings, no U16 playing minor, no minors playing U21 or senior etc. It wouldn't solve it buty it'd be a help. Predicatble a motion to this effect was shunted to the margins at Congress some years ago, the place where good GAA ideas go to die...

[Gabriel_Hurl]

At the moment - the only rules are:

A player eligible for the under 12 grade shall be ineligible to play in the under 16 or older grades,

and a player eligible for the under 14 grade shall be ineligible to play in the Minor or older grades.

Penalty : Team - loss of game. Player - 4 weeks suspension

[tayto]

It's also that age grouping that has the highest drop out rate.

It's especially obvious for dual players, I overheard some dublin players at a match last year and they were saying apparently Conal Keaney was playing for ten teams when he was in college. Dublin u21 + Senior hurling and football, Club u21 and senior hurling and football + college teams. Madness.

The player welfare officer, can't remember his name, is on the case, we'll be hearing more about it soon i'd say. I'd prefer to limit players to one panel then  lose u21 altogether. Senior management would get first choice on u21 players obviously.

[David McKeown]

Cavanmaniac its a great idea in theroy but at the same time there is an argument that rules like that would prevent some especially rural clubs from fielding teams at a number of levels which would properly result in even more player drop out.  Something needs to be done unfortunately I cant see keeping everyone at the their own age level as being the answer.  This is especially true for kids at younger levels where the big/skillfull kids can dominate games at their own level and need to move up an age group in order to remain interested and develop.

[tayto]

I wouldnt mind at younger age groups so much, but when you get to minor, u21 and senior i think you should only be on one panel, not two.

[pintsofguinness]

cavan

The solution is to make players stick to their underage groupings, no U16 playing minor, no minors playing U21 or senior etc. It wouldn't solve it buty it'd be a help. Predicatble a motion to this effect was shunted to the margins at Congress some years ago, the place where good GAA ideas go to die...

I can only assume that you're from a massive club. 

[Spiritof98]

Its huge grey area, and I for one can admit that I can't see a proper solution, stopping u14 palying under u16 and u16 playing minor will kill a lot of rural clubs in the Armagh area and im sure it would do the same around the county

[Fionntamhnach]

A single level underage enforcement would be impossible to police unless you wanted a lot of underage teams to fold. The practicality of restricting them to one age level above their own however is more practical. I know that here in Tyrone the underage competitions are staggered, U14 and minor competitions are held over spring and early summer while the Under 16's (and previously U12s until the introduction of Go Games) don't start until late June so unless you club reaches an U14 or Minor semi-final or final, you're not going to have much overlap.

[never kickt a ball]

Martin McHugh called the over use of underage players child abuse and I think he's right. If you do a foundation course which people have raised in other threads you will get the token push about child protection. This is probably something which following further research will be clamped down on in the future. Then we will look back and and wonder how it ever happened. I hope he is wrong about Mark Lynch who he claimed was going through the motions on sat because he felt was burned out. Anyone at the match who can comment on this claim.
Finally what do you mean TYP when you say underage players playing below their grade? Can you elaborate?

[Gabriel_Hurl]

A bigger problem is probably underage players playing below their grade! 

Well then they are an overage player - not underage

[cavanmaniac]

cavan

The solution is to make players stick to their underage groupings, no U16 playing minor, no minors playing U21 or senior etc. It wouldn't solve it buty it'd be a help. Predicatble a motion to this effect was shunted to the margins at Congress some years ago, the place where good GAA ideas go to die...

I can only assume that you're from a massive club. 

I'm not actually but I can now see the point you and others make about it killing off smaller clubs.

That said though, I still think protection of young players and working imaginatively to ensure that they're healthy and interested enough to play effectively well into their 20s and early 30s is something that would stand both the GAA and its members better in the long term, as opposed to the shorter term gain of having viable underage teams at every club?

Besides, if clubs could get past the need to win as single standalone entities and see the bigger picture that is proper, sustainable development of young players over winning an U14 Roinn B, amalgamations of neighbouring small clubs would more than take up the slack of partial underage teams having no competition to play in?

[Captain Scarlet]

they should scrap the u-21s. the lads at that age are gettin loads of football as it is but apart from that in my club we really couldnt compete if we didnt let minors play. thats done in leixlip but they can field 3 seperate panels where we have to overlap.

its up to the individual case for the club to respect their players.