Its completely wrong. The job of a soccer club is to provide for the community. It takes from the community so it has to give back. The chances of a young lad making it pro is not a reason to have a selection elitist policy for 7-8 year olds. What Home Farm should be doing is spreading the wealth in coaching education and helping all the clubs around them bring everyone up a few notches. This is the coming model and will eventually replace “development” squads et al. Development is a questionable term as many are actually regressing elite players and wasting the time and money of organisations.
I think you are doing the typical GAA thing here of thinking the GAA has a handle on community development over other sports. It doesn’t. It just talks about it more.
Thats completely ignoring the wrongness of selecting players at 8. There is no evidence whatsoever that we can determine elite ability at that age. None.
Athletics seems to be doing a great job. Lads in Crokes were saying that kids who come back after a winter or two training with Dundrum AC have often made huge progress.
Waiting list in Dundrum is so long it is closed.
any lads experience in setting up a sports club. Say you got a few other interested people. Is it hugely time consuming ?
You make some fair points but I’m not really for turning here.
The reason I picked those 3 clubs is that they are around my area. I know of smaller soccer clubs in the area who have a similar ethos but on a smaller scale, ie if your not good enough for the u8 first team bye bye. I also know of smaller soccer clubs with a more inclusive approach
The bottom line is that kids of 7 or 8 are too young to be dealing with this type of rejection.Making excuses about professionalism etc does not stand up. It is a game of football and they are 8 years of age. Ir should be craic and not much else. u14 is a different situation because the kids are 6 years older and better equipped to deal with these type of situations
Do they have results in under age football. I always got the impression under age football attracts a lot of lads trying to vicariously live out their Alex Ferguson fantasies.
Thats just because of doing athletics. My warm ups resemble athletic warm ups.
Thats not to say the coaching isn’t brilliant at that club, but its the same as someone going to soccer training and coming back with a much bigger aerobic capacity. Thats what the basic training delivers.
Why don’t Crokes learn enpugh about Athletics to do it themselves???
Cork the same. My friends young fella plays with Temple. They move good lads into “academy” and the rest just play u11 league div4. While the elite lads play an age grade higher but maybe div 2. Its bizarre carry on.
But tge “academy” lads get 2 extra sessions a week. The height of stupidity.
No I get that the club is to provide for the community, and I genuinely dont think that the GAA has the handle on the community over other sports. Point being is that soccer set up is different than GAA. There are lads from all over the country playing for St Kevins, they arent a community based club in the same manner as a GAA club is.
I agree, they and the other elitist clubs should be involved with the smaller ones in their area, and I do not know if they do that or not. If this was about some run of the mill club turning away 8 year olds, then yes, I’d wholeheartedly agree. But these are 3 of, if not the biggest underage clubs in the country and have a reputation for it. And like I said, if they picked their players at 8 and left it at that, then I’d also disagree. But they dont, there are players still joining them at later years so it’s not like if you get turned away at 8 then you are finished. I agree, you cant determine the players development just at 8, but at the same time, they cant just accept every single 8 year old that turns up, even if they wanted to, I’m sure the resources arent there to handle every kid that turned up. I’m not sure what they can do really, they obviously have a limit on the amount of kids they can take in.
as I said, if it is happening in smaller clubs because the player isnt good enough, then I fully agree with you. I just think it’s different for the 3 big clubs you mention there.
and just to further that, I wouldnt be happy sending my 8 year old to one of those clubs anyway. 8 is far too young to be sending a kids into that sort of “professional” type set up. I’d far rather them play with their friends in their local team and develop at their own pace, and if good enough, then move on when a teenager to one of those clubs. A lot of parents probably want to see their kid involved with these clubs for the prestige it brings, when at that age it matters fuck all really.
Every 2nd club is at this shite Gman.
I realise these lads have found themselves in a position probably because of their own hard work, but they really should not exists.
Unless somebody can present to me how in other ways they deliver back to the community they live in then what they do is wrong.
And yes, they should have more teams, if they are getting the demand.
And very often the coaching is total bollix at these “academies”. I worked with one private one in Cork briefly here in 2015, load of shite. Stealing peoples money they were.
I dont know enough about the ins and outs of soccer clubs turning away 8 year olds or academy set ups to know if it is more common than what I would have thought. If it is more prevalent in smaller set ups, then it is a joke. As stated, my points were on the circumstances of the 3 of the biggest clubs in the country. I dont know enough about them to say they could handle fielding more teams. I think with the reputation and name they have garnered for themselves, it could destroy other small clubs if they could take everyone in, as every dad who thinks their son will be the next Robbie Keane will send their kids there.
I could imagine the coaching at these is scutter in some cases as you have seen.
Limerick underage soccer follows the FAI 7 a side and 9 a side model to u12 but then becomes is a free for all, with certain clubs offering inducements to transfer such a taxi pick-up for training, boots, introductions to scouts etc.
Strongest sides at younger ages will be the big suburban clubs. Thereafter transfers and attrition to GAA & rugby leave the strongest sides with the old city clubs by 16s.
The coaching standard is awful. Tactics consist of placing the quickest strongest player up front and knock it over the top for him.
