Limerick have played a load of youngfellas in the league this year with varying degrees of success.
Werenât you one of the lads giving out about it and they doing the leaving and now youâre lamenting the lack of games for youngfellas
Look at your own house. The manager holding on for dear life to lads that have very little left in the tank rather than field fellas from 21 teams that have won all irelands. Heâs looking out for Liam Sheedy, not the future of Tipp hurling
The pandemic hasnât helped bringing new lads on to the panels. Theyâd have got very little time with the groups, missed out on a lot of trainings etc. Theyd have missed out on 18 months of improvement and conditioning
No I never commented on Limerick for trying out a few Leaving Certâs.
If Sheedy felt they were good enough theyâd be playing. Its easy to blame the pandemic for guys not coming through but i think it runs a lot deeper than that and policy changes made by the GAA havenât been for the better.
Time will tell but Iâm very confident I will be proved right.
I dont know what policies youâre referring to but just discounting the effect of the pandemic isnât rational.
The base skill levels have never been higher at all grades
The changing from Under 18 to 17 and 21 back to 20 was an abomination of a call.
The standard of these underage competitions has fallen off a cliff. Nobody even watches them anymore.
The Clare under 21 teams of 2012, 2013, 2014, Tipp team of 2010, Waterford team of 2016, Limerick 2015-2017 all had lads involved at Senior who were genuine stars at the time. All those teams got frights along the way too when winning those under 21 championships.
I wouldnât consider there to be any genuine star in the game now under 23 (Kyle Hayes was the last)
The minors from 2018 would have been directly impacted by the pandemic during their development. I watched a lot of those minor games in 2018 and the standard was exceptional to be honest and the lads are getting way more hurling with the new format.
Youâre really stretching your argument. Was he not young enough in 2018 that you had to move the goalposts to debutant?
One player like Kyle Hayes who had obvious physical advantages doesnât really disprove the argument either way
My argument is anyone born after 1998 isnât coming through.
Which ties into all the messing around with age grades at that time.
Not the pandemic no, where lads didnât lift a hurley in 18 months?
Where are you getting 18 months from?
How often would you say minor panels would have trained together in the last 18 months, or u20 panels?
Get hung up on semantics all you want.
The pandemic has had the biggest impact on lads breaking into senior panels.
Itâs far too early to start blaming policy
What was evident from the 2018 & 2019 minor championships was that Galway were miles ahead , next Leinster and the standard in munster was behind again.
The dominoes had started to fall pre pandemic.
There was no one really breaking through in 2018 or 2019 and even pre pandemic in the 2020 League.
Ultimately there was a good club championship IN 2020 for young players to stand out and for the most part they donât seem to have done so.
But they would have been minors pre the grade change. Youâre defeating your own argument
Limerick gave debuts to 4 or 5 lads from the 2018 on range during this league
The last out and out Minor Championship was 2016.
2017 was strange in that there were 2 championships one for Under 18 and one for Under 17 and it was a bit of a mess.
Limerick giving a few 19/20 year oldâs a run out in the League this year is great but I doubt any of them will be there come championship.
For the last couple of years weâve had lads nominated for YHOTY who have been only subs which is some indictment of where we are and itâll be the same this year.
Iâd agree that the decision to move U21 and minor to U20 and U17 was a massive mistake. Still affects 18/19 year old doing the leaving who are in their 2nd last year U20 and young 17 year olds who are still underage for U17 while doing the LC (if they skipped TY).
Take Wexford for instance who won no provincial minor title during the 00âs and 10âs but because of a policy to blood younger players in the senior team they had a competitive U21 team than won 3 Leinster titles in a row which created the buzz that ultimately led to progress at inter-county level. Even Limerickâs tremendously talented underage teams of the mid 10âs hadnât won all-Irelandâs at minor level before they dominated two finals at U21. Having the likes of Cian Lynch with 3 seasons of senior inter-county by 2017 created a very high standard. U20 looks weaker and less interesting these days by comparison. Just look at the poor Leinster championship at U20 in 2019 and the hidings Wexford and Kilkenny took in the subsequent all-Ireland semi-finals as a prime example of that. With U21 still in existence Wexford would have had ROC and Damien Reck and could have been more competitive.
You had genuine stars playing U21 in the recent past that were known around the country. Most casual observers would struggle to name many of the U20 players. Stars like Austin Gleeson, Cian Lynch, Conor McDonald, Joe Canning to go back to 2009. The Clare U21 team (2012-2014) and Limerick (2015-2017) would probably have been a decent senior inter-county team in their own right at that time.
Limerick and Cork in the 20s was a superb match last year
Evan Niland was the star of the minor championship in 2015, its only this year he is breaking through with Galway seniors. Brian Concannon was on the same side, last year was his breakthrough year. The standard at senior intercounty level is incredibly high now, only the very occasional freak is likely to make any impression before he is 21. When Galway won the All-Ireland minor in 2019 the same player won man of the match in the quarter, semi and final, which I think was the first time that happened. Be interesting to see how long it takes him to make an impression at senior level if he ever does.