Gaa split season,killing Meath football since 2011

And you want the intercounty to have more time?

There would be something magical about an All Ireland final in December in Dublin. It’s an awful pity the 2020 finals were behind closed doors.

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I’d agree with that, the 17s, 20s idea was always a terrible idea. But you’ve the fellas who are never happy with anything crying about burnout

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If you ran the club off in a blitz on Christmas week it would leave a lot of time for the IC season

I got a memory on the phone today.

6 years ago tonight since Austin Gleeson gave one of the great underage exhibitions in a Munster Under 21 Hurling final. He and several of his teammates that night had played a Senior game three days earlier.

Did none of them any harm.

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I often played a soccer match in the morning and a gah match in the afternoon, you’d be arrested for child abuse now sure. I’d be only sour I hadn’t the same again the following day.

The professionalism of underage county now, along with the same at senior has fucked the whole lot. Then you have the lads dragged by their clubs as well, there’s no good solution

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One thing I think we can all agree on is that the GAA need to stop constantly tinkering with all of their competitions. Particularly their biggest competitions. The constant tinkering is infuriating and it downgrades this competition whatever way you look at it.

I would consider myself to be fairly clued in with most things GAA. I was asked recently about next years intercounty football championship structure. I honestly hadn’t a breeze about the structure. Let alone when it is going to be played.

I honestly don’t know where else you’d get it.

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They had to fix the problem with club though. It was gone to farcical levels. No idea when you’d play, book a holiday in what seemed a safe zone and next thing there’d be a game fixed. Then you might have 4 games 4 weekends in a row and then season over. And that was if you were lucky enough to get 4 games. One small injury at the wrong time you might miss the whole lot after training all year.

It’s not perfect, but at least this calendar gives counties time to play groups, and have reasonably fixed fixtures. Limerick were playing a round or two in April and then lads had to fuck off for three months at least before coming back to it. Some sickner champo ready and then take a few weeks off and start preseason again.

Club players at least now know when the games will be on. If they fuck off on a J1 fair fucks to them, they always did, they always will. They always should. Life’s too short to turn down opportunity.

I honestly can’t understand objections to it. The GAA needs the club. This will save them, not kill them. A push back by a few weeks would be agreeable, but either way. This is better, and all intercounty players I’ve heard interviewed agree, and the club players definitely do

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I don’t want more time for inter-county. I would advocate going from 3 competitions to 2. Get rid of either league or your Walsh Cup/O’Byrne Cup and the like. What point does the League serve in hurling now when most of the Championship is now played on a league basis. Reduce the number of championship games by getting rid of round robin and all the dead rubbers that go with it.

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Thing is lads zero chance of round robins going.

Hurling is now a league, followed by a league, followed by a league, followed by 3 knock out rounds

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Getting rid of the league would presumably bring the championship even earlier into the year?

County finals in mid November and all ireland club finals in mid February i would totally disagree with. Nearly the same as old calendar. All Ireland club finals mid January at latest.

The black card and both marks can fuck off as well.

Have you done much research on this across a broad range of counties or is that just a Tipperary hurling I’m alright jack view of the world and you’re taking a flyer in throwing out a glib comment like that?

I’ve highlighted the situation that has pertained in the Carlow hurling championship this year and @kerry1891 has referred to similar difficulties in the Kerry Hurling Championship.

When I referred to difficulties in Waterford and that there was a farcical 10 week wait between Waterford exiting the championship on 22 May and the start of the club championship on the August Bank Holiday weekend, you hailed this as a great state of affairs that the clubs had unfettered access to players across late May, June and July. That is players that were actually still around.

Over the past two weekends we have seen four finals of the All County Leagues, two in hurling and two in football, and next weekend will see three more football finals and one in hurling. Those remaining will take place over the following two weeks and while the clubs involved have enthusiastically engaged and will do so it would be wrong to presume that the leagues have been an outstanding success.

Competitive finals tend to divert attention from what has preceded them for throughout the leagues the number of walkovers, or games conceded in both hurling and football, exceeded acceptable levels. Clubs should not enter teams in league competitions unless they are certain to have the numbers to fulfil their obligations.

For example, last weekend saw the final rounds of league fixtures in most divisions of the hurling leagues but of the 22 games listed only eleven took place across the divisions with games conceded by teams who were out of contention for final places. In two cases we had concessions which allowed the last weekend’s Division 9 and Division 10 finals to take place with Ballygunner defeating Lismore in the former and Dunhill beating Tramore in the other. That Ballygunner’s third string won a league title by playing just one game, the final, is farcical in itself as they had received walk overs in all of their league games.

Last Friday’s final round game in Division 1 of the hurling league between Lismore and Dungarvan saw Lismore conceding for the second time in the competition and, following on, Dungarvan have conceded tomorrow’s re-fixed clash with Ballygunner, a decision which, depending on last evening’s result of the game between Passage and Roanmore, could decide Mount Sion’s opponents in the Division 1 final.

It is a fact that where championship preparations are concerned most senior clubs play in the leagues because they have to and there are no penalties set out for clubs who give walk overs. Few senior clubs take the competition seriously and would prefer to go their own way in preparing for the championship with games against opposition from outside the county.

Incorporated in the Waterford Rising strategic Plan is a section covering Competition Structures which, we are told, is the remit of a Task Force, “Set up to realise the unique opportunity in scheduling that would be available from 2022 with the split inter-county and club seasons”.

As a matter of priority, the said Task Force should undertake an immediate review of all competition structures in the county and if All County Leagues are to continue they must be made attractive to clubs with meaningful rewards for the victors. At present there is a trophy for the league winners in each division but no medals for the winning teams.

That there are no sponsors for the leagues is unacceptable and serves only to downplay the product. There should be some tangible reward for clubs winning the leagues such as a set of jerseys, hurleys or playing gear of some kind. All sponsorship seems to be directed towards the county teams while clubs face huge expenditure in providing hurleys and sliotars.

The said ‘Task Force’ should now be sitting down with County and Divisional Board officers seeking to come up with meaningful proposals for next year’s competitive club season.

You continually place problems with individual county boards as the problems of the split season. Go to your club’s next AGMs in Waterford and Carlow and raise these as issues

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The scheduling of the All Ireland Championships from mid April to mid July in this new split season model is inevitably going to cause these types of problems within county championships. The dominant code in the county will possibly be okay but the lesser code within the county will be disproportionately affected.

You still standing over this comment or are you retracting it?

Carlow :joy:

I’m standing over the statement because it is the case. You haven’t given any evidence to refute it

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All this time and effort just because 2 (two) lads in Carlow went to America for the summer

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