MuckrossHead
County: Donegal
Posts: 2405

1576478 In the pantheon of non stories this is right at the summit.

As for the lads who arranged time off work I'd say all they had to do is ring up & say I'll be in after all. I treat this nugget with a bit of suspicion as Ardara were due to play at home @ 5.30 in the evening when the vast majority of people would have their day's work done.

A lot of the Ardara bucks are based in Dublin though. I'd say other clubs have similar problems.

Lockjaw (Donegal) - Posts: 9155 - 18/04/2014 10:28:02    1576633

18/04/2014 10:22:28
s goldrick
i can see a time in the not too distant future when the county set up will be run by a seperate body to the club scene. i.e. county will be semi professional . once you make the county team then its goodbye to club football. it will be like the rugby provinces only there will be more teams. you could have dublin, kerry and cork on their own, they rest would be amalgamations. Wont be enough teams for that to occur and any professionalism will still be based on all countys. Even if gaelic/hurling were to go semi pro/pro players will still play for clubs as there wouldn't be enough games for them with just inter county games,
Rugby provinces have internationals as well and the provinces have 30+ games a season so don't need club games and players will sometimes play club if returning from injury etc

ormondbannerman (Clare) - Posts: 13473 - 18/04/2014 10:55:50    1576649

Jimmy will win matches, by making his players not play matches.......

All hail Jim McG

JayP (Dublin) - Posts: 1772 - 18/04/2014 13:45:33    1576716

JayP
County: Dublin
Posts: 693

1576716
Jimmy will win matches, by making his players not play matches.......

All hail Jim McG

Well done JayP.

Facts totally wrong, totally unoriginal & completely lacking in humour all in one post.

Quite an achievement.

MuckrossHead (Donegal) - Posts: 5028 - 18/04/2014 14:04:24    1576722

17/04/2014 19:26:15 doublehop
Every county is pretty much the same. This has nothing to do with Donegal really, and more about the introduction of the qualifiers. Club players training all year and then playing the entire club championship off as a blitz freezing in September and October.
County managers have way too much power in the game right across the board. And the guy is right about clubs being powerless as they can't be seen as disloyal to the ambitions of the county setup. The only solution is for a central fixtures list. One that county managers have to live buy and doesn't cause any antagonism.
I mean if you talk to any club delegate who voted out McGeeney more will probably tell you about his management teams attitude to the clubs than anything to do with the performance of the county team. Once things went a bit backwards all the resentment came back in a serious backlash because all the sacrifices the clubs were making was for nothing.
Forget all the BS about a few matches you can't watch on the couch. This is the most serious issue faced by the GAA right now by a long long way.Is every county really the same? Plenty of countys can manage both club/county quite well.
How many countys playoff club championships in September/October? Very few and most countys play quite a few games through summer.

ormondbannerman (Clare) - Posts: 13473 - 18/04/2014 14:12:20    1576729

The club/county thing has been a problem here for quite a while. What it boils down to is that JMcG wants to keep his players fit, the squad is not that big after all. They got home on Thu night after a tough hard week in Portugal & then had to face into league games less than 24 hours later. The clubs were asked not to use their county players but they opted for postponement instead.

Now my main criticism here is of the clubs. Why not play the league games over the summer without the county men? It would give the weaker clubs a rattle at silverware & give all club players a chance to play during good weather.

It was the same with the championship. JMcG was quite happy for the first rounds to be played early but the clubs said no. It is all very childish & needs to be sorted by the County Board telling the clubs to play as directed.

MuckrossHead (Donegal) - Posts: 5028 - 18/04/2014 14:27:42    1576734

"the County Board telling the clubs to play as directed". Thought the clubs, through their reps., ran the association. Not the other way round. Clubs can get rid of the board but no clubs no assoc.

Gaa Fan (USA) - Posts: 749 - 18/04/2014 14:44:25    1576745

Muckcross, the admin decided to not let through my reply to you, but I referred to Dublin suffering the same problem and decided all league games go ahead without county players. Means lads aren't idle for weeks. Seems to be a better situation since the county board ruled on it. Added bonus fringe players get game time

JayP (Dublin) - Posts: 1772 - 18/04/2014 14:55:29    1576751

ormondbannerman
County: Clare
Posts: 7097

Wont be enough teams for that to occur and any professionalism will still be based on all countys. Even if gaelic/hurling were to go semi pro/pro players will still play for clubs as there wouldn't be enough games for them with just inter county games,
Rugby provinces have internationals as well and the provinces have 30+ games a season so don't need club games and players will sometimes play club if returning from injury etc

If you had a 14 county superleague with home and away matches, that's 26 games in the league per year. you could also have a cup competition , there would be more games there.

of course the other alternative would be for the bigger CLUBS to go semi-professional and eventually do away with the county and provincial scene altogether.

s goldrick (Cavan) - Posts: 5518 - 18/04/2014 16:37:51    1576788

as I see it, you cant have the best of both worlds. Supporters have got to understand that to be competitive against the big teams of the GAA, you have got to make sactifices. It is as simple as that. Dublin are on the verge of brushing everyone aside again this year. This will certainly happen if teams dont prepare 110% for the championship, and that is at the sacrifice of club games. I dont know the exact details of players who were given the time off work only to discover that the games were pulled, but I would like to hear both sides to the story before we do a kangaroo court on the whole thing. McGuinness has his friends and his opposition, and there is a bit of this behind this story.

I think that anyone who wants donegal to go up to croke park and do well this year, and also wants the club thing to tick over uninterrupted had better cop on to the facts, that teams are now training as professionals in order to be competitive, and this is even no guarantee of a win. If you go out to play the way certain other counties prepare, it is going to be a brutal year in terms of an eventual hammering.

I wish the game was amateur but i am afraid that it is not. I therefore will not criticize the county set up for trying as hard as they are doing. In donegal, 50% of the population play soccer to the same level of competitiveness as GAA. This is reflected in the disproportionately high level of success of donegal players in the leauges across the water. That is why there has got to be a core strategy for the players who decide to stick it out in the GAA as we dont have the pool of players that other counties have.

Donegalman (None) - Posts: 3830 - 18/04/2014 17:27:22    1576802

Plenty of countys can manage both club/county quite well.
How many countys playoff club championships in September/October? Very few and most countys play quite a few games through summer.

Well I'd only really know the Kildare and Dublin county scenes but I'd imagine most Leinster and Ulster counties are the same. It's probably a lot different in Connacht and Munster playing the league in March and then two matches in the provincials before July with a month or so in between them and of course only a small handful of teams going into the first round of the qualifiers. Leinster and Ulster provide 12 of the 16 teams in the first round of the qualifiers. Any counties who make progress in that are going to struggle to play off their club games.

doublehop (Kildare) - Posts: 4172 - 18/04/2014 20:22:59    1576842

All it proves is how fragile Donegal's squad currently is...

Any injuries to starting 15 player and they are in trouble

That why they are doing this... to wrap up their county players in cotton wool

Now I'll get grief off the Donegal boys... but my point is accurate

Donegal did marvellously well to win an AI with such a small group

We all saw what happened last year when key players got injured... They were awful at times

Got relegated, well beaten in Ulster, dodgy back door performance... hammered by a far better team in Mayo

Jim knows that if any of his starting 15 get injured then they will suffer the same faith... they don't have the players

Hence what's going on up in Donegal at the minute...

jimbodub (Dublin) - Posts: 20600 - 18/04/2014 20:47:41    1576853

Look this situation is because Donegal do not have a big squad and any injury to first team members will result in Donegal not getting to Croke park come championship. Can't have it both ways. Either you want your club games or you want county team to do well.

royaldunne (Meath) - Posts: 19449 - 19/04/2014 08:58:39    1576891

I agree with Jimbob on the point about Donegals squad being fragile

ziggy320001 (Meath) - Posts: 2432 - 19/04/2014 10:18:08    1576907

Sorry but how many players are in the Donegal squad? 15, 18, 20? They aren't a junior club team, if someone gets injured the next man needs to step up and step in, they're not half-wit players from 16-30 I assume? Otherwise why does Jim have them in the squad, just for training purposes? Deary me wans need to wake up and smell the coffee, Jim first and foremost

tiempo (UK) - Posts: 16 - 19/04/2014 11:52:00    1576928

Martin Breheny of the Indo once wrote that the GAA doesn't deserve players like Sean Cavanagh. No.
The GAA doesn't deserve the nameless club players who get treated with contempt just to accommodate the schedules of the inter county player.

joncarter (Galway) - Posts: 2692 - 19/04/2014 17:02:02    1577045

This is the main group of players who I think will play most of the time for Donegal.
Durcan,the two Magee's , For McGlynn , Lacey,Thompson P Mc Grath ( if fit)MMcHugh Brother Ryan Declan Walsh and Leo McLoone. That's 10 players for the back line, all except Ryan McH hold An AI medal. Midfield Rory Kavanagh, Big Neil CToye and M McElhinney Again a choice of four. The forward line can consist of Murphy,CMcFadden P McBrearty Ordan McNelis David Walsh Hugh McFadden Dara o Connor. That's 21 players and some can be used in different positions eg, Leo or Mark 'McHugh can play in the forwards as can CToye or Rory Kavanagh for that matter.
So I would not say that the squad is that fragile , we might have as strong as squad as most counties Thinking back to 2008 and everybody here tipping Kerry to beat Tyrone as they had another team sitting on the bench Truth is they haven't and Tyrone won handy enough in the finish.
What could stand to Donegal this year is experience and Croke Park should hold no fears for them if we get that far. I think we can win on Sunday and the first round game is massive in Ulster so a win Sunday would put us in a good frame of mind for the Derry game

SamOnErrigal (Donegal) - Posts: 1427 - 21/04/2014 20:51:49    1578213

jimbodub
County: Dublin
Posts: 12294

1576853
All it proves is how fragile Donegal's squad currently is...

Any injuries to starting 15 player and they are in trouble

That why they are doing this... to wrap up their county players in cotton wool

Now I'll get grief off the Donegal boys... but my point is accurate

Donegal did marvellously well to win an AI with such a small group

We all saw what happened last year when key players got injured... They were awful at times

Got relegated, well beaten in Ulster, dodgy back door performance... hammered by a far better team in Mayo

Jim knows that if any of his starting 15 get injured then they will suffer the same faith... they don't have the players

Hence what's going on up in Donegal at the minute...


Totally true. Credit to the lads for winning the all ireland, playing 7 games to do it, blah blah.
Our team is on the better side of average, but not that much better than most of the other teams in ulster, and 2 leinster teams. Mayo, Cork, Kerry and Dublin obviously are where you want to be at come championship time re squad, handy draws etc. I know that you can only beat whats put in front of you, but it helps a lot with avoiding injuries etc. So yes, the county board made a decision last year to suspend club competitions for this reason. We dont want to go out again and get hammered, its not good for morale so in order to be competative, you have got to make some hard decisions. There are many club players who are unhappy about this, and they are right to feel put out, but there is no other game in town when it comes to preparing a small squad to compete at the requisiste level.

Donegalman (None) - Posts: 3830 - 22/04/2014 12:58:28    1578408

To say that there are only 15 players that JMcG could field is wide of the mark.

At full strength we have about 20 players that I would quite happily see on the field, but after that it gets iffy & truth be told most counties would be in the same boat. The only team with an embarrassment of riches is Dublin & then it is only in the forwards.

I go back to my original point, why not play league games without county players?

MuckrossHead (Donegal) - Posts: 5028 - 22/04/2014 18:31:30    1578696

MuckrossHead
County: Donegal
Posts: 2413



I go back to my original point, why not play league games without county players?

Because it is the pre season that is needed for championship football.

Donegalman (None) - Posts: 3830 - 22/04/2014 19:43:02    1578727