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So GAA in its wisdom have made it law that both SFC & IFC can have no more than 16 teams. At least after years of trying we have the correct number of teams in SFC. Brownepat (Meath) - Posts: 532 - 02/03/2021 09:17:26 2333259 Link 0 |
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We should never have expanded the IFC to 20 teams anyway. It was a purely political decision in order to get the 16 team SFC over the line. The report which led to the championship restructuring said they'd like a smaller IFC but club interests won't allow it. CastleBravo (Meath) - Posts: 1664 - 02/03/2021 10:54:08 2333276 Link 18 |
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If I am right there's 16 in senior, 20 in inter, 15 in junior. Will be changed to 16 Senior, 16 Inter, 19 in Junior. 19 is far too much for Junior I'd think. Maybe you could have 5 2nd teams (to start) in there and make it 12 in Junior A and 12 in Junior B. The bottom-placed team in the junior plays the winner of the premier division 1 in a promotion/relegation playoff. This way the best second teams that can compete get to play in a real championship again. The weaker Junior teams aren't stuck in a championship where they'll never win but also can't be relegated and teams are playing other teams at their level where they can improve instead of stuck in no man's land LeitrimRoyal99 (Meath) - Posts: 1523 - 02/03/2021 12:25:21 2333289 Link 9 |
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Agree 100% but our club's performances in Leinster appears not to bother our county committee. This all came about when the county committee failed to relegate Walterstown when they lost the relegation playoff to Rathkenny. Conflict of interests and egos were at fault and we still had not straightened the matter out until congress intervened, thankfully. Hopefully this will eventually lead to more competitive championships but the lower end of the Junior Championship may be problematic.
MillerX (Meath) - Posts: 1080 - 02/03/2021 17:38:15 2333328 Link 0 |
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Ah hear, that was 12 years ago , they had plenty of time to sort out the Grades since. The problem with the grading is they don't know what to do with the strong town 2nd teams. To be honest I'm not fully sure myself. All need to be accommodated and main thing to keep as many people playing games as possible (covid withstanding). . One thing for sure the gap from top of junior to bottom is gigantic. A few of those should be junior B or lower. A championship won no matter, at what level is still a great feat.
Jimmycricket (Meath) - Posts: 113 - 03/03/2021 17:19:23 2333445 Link 0 |
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Surely the best thing to keep players playing is to have them playing games against teams of a similar level where there's a realistic chance of both winning and losing. This would mean open championships and leagues regardless of whether a team is a first-team or 5th team. I do understand that this leaves an issue because 2nd, 3rd teams etc. get weaker as championships go on and it disadvantages teams who play them early. But the solution to this surely is to make it more restricted so for example, you've to list 23 players that can't play 2nd team at the start of the year (even if they don't get off the bench for senior). You can maybe alter this so say for a Don/Ash, Dunboyne, Ratoath (who have/will have 4 teams) the number is 23 players whereas for Summerhill who might only have 3 teams the number is 21. There's a way to protect junior teams from overly strong weaker teams early without completely denying the majority of young players in the bigger clubs any meaningful football and then watching them die off
LeitrimRoyal99 (Meath) - Posts: 1523 - 03/03/2021 18:40:05 2333457 Link 8 |
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In full agreement of 2nd teams finding their level amongst the wider groups. There's definite merit to that approach, Say Maybe 20 sounds more realistic. I'd still feel for 2 or 3 lads who wouldn't get a kick with their 1st team and not be allowed play 2nds. They would be chomping at the bit to get out for 2nds to prove a pint. But then again I'm not providing any solutions. Id agree with possible designating 18/19 players or so who couldn't play 1st couple of rounds with their 2nd team, but after that would have to be a free for all. Also further down the grades this wouldn't apply. Jimmycricket (Meath) - Posts: 113 - 04/03/2021 08:01:49 2333478 Link 0 |
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Did they not "solve" the issue of variable strength of 2nd teams by lumping them together into one group so that nobody was at a disadvantage? CastleBravo (Meath) - Posts: 1664 - 04/03/2021 15:05:38 2333513 Link 17 |
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That's essentially playing the premier championship until the knockouts so while it was better for 2nd teams to have something to aim for, they'd still only be playing max 3 games a year against first teams
LeitrimRoyal99 (Meath) - Posts: 1523 - 04/03/2021 18:13:32 2333532 Link 4 |
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For the record, I'm agreeing with you. My main point was that the whole "2nd teams are strong one round and weak the next" was always just convenient cover for the real agenda of junior clubs wanting to remove 2nd teams from the championship entirely. Then when they "solved" the issue of varying team strength, and the supposedly weak 2nd teams were still beating 1st teams in the knockout stages they had to just go the whole hog and kick the 2nd teams out entirely.
CastleBravo (Meath) - Posts: 1664 - 04/03/2021 19:03:15 2333535 Link 17 |
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I know it was 12 years or so ago, but my point is that the county board took the easy option at the time to increase the SFC to 17 teams, this turned out to be a difficult amount of teams to manage and it was then increased to 18 and so started a sequence of events that existed until now. Thankfully Congress has now intervened and brought rationale to the Senior and Intermediate championships. This does go to show that weak governance can have far reaching consequences and that the 'cute' solution is never the right solution. I further believe that this ruling will in the long run even out standards in the Intermediate and Junior club championships. MillerX (Meath) - Posts: 1080 - 05/03/2021 12:17:23 2333574 Link 0 |
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I wouldn't agree that it was "convenient". I don't think any "Junior" clubs had an issue with Dunboyne winning the JFC a few years ago as they were the best team over the course of the season defeating three non 'second' teams in the knockout stages. The main issue with the old system from what I could see was that you could play an O'Mahonys or a Summerhill in Round 1 who could potentially lose, say 5 of those players by Round 4 so there was no equality across the group. Clearly anyone playing them in the later rounds was at an advantage as they were weakening in terms of players diverting to their senior team. I'm sure it's happened where players ended up with Keegan Cup medals, making significant contributions, having played in the earlier rounds of the Junior championship. To be fair, that was the main argument from the so-called smaller clubs. If the 'second' teams were still strong enough come quarter final stages like Dunboyne were in 2018 and Don/Ash before them then that's fair enough. I would agree that the Premier Championships were a bad move and have now completely diluted the quality of the JFC with may mismatches taking place. The_Ripper (Meath) - Posts: 183 - 05/03/2021 13:05:46 2333579 Link 0 |
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There's just one thing wrong with that argument. When Dunboyne won all the second teams were in the same division. They played 7 games before meeting a proper junior club. The argument about second teams playing in the junior was nonsense, only two clubs have won the junior in 40 years
latouche25 (Meath) - Posts: 532 - 05/03/2021 18:24:16 2333586 Link 0 |
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it wasnt about 2nd teams winning JFC if they where good enough at the back end of the Championship fair play to them. The problem was where a strong 2nd team beat Junior clubs in round 1,2 or 3 and effectively put them out this happened Meath Hill and St Brigids in different years and then the teams that defeated them got robbed by their 1st teams and barely fielded in later rounds ........that was unfair.... Putting the 2nd teams all in the 1 Division did help that and at least now with the Premier those clubs are on an even keel and can win something as really that group in Premier is the same as the 2nd team group in Jfc used to be Brownepat (Meath) - Posts: 532 - 06/03/2021 08:38:12 2333602 Link 1 |
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I think the question myself and a few others are asking though is; if moving all the 2nd teams to their own group in the JFC sorted the varying strength issue, why did they still feel the need the need to remove the 2nd teams entirely? Second teams like Ashbourne and Dunboyne were able to test themselves against a wide range of intermediate teams before, but now with the premier there's a ceiling and they'll be playing the same few 2nd teams every single year. CastleBravo (Meath) - Posts: 1664 - 06/03/2021 17:25:35 2333622 Link 17 |
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Your question about testing their strength is fair enough but they lost all their games v 1st teams in last intermediate championship. I think that gives you the answer. And that is before the 3 snr teams came down and before they relegate 5 more teams from intermediate. You have to admit this only happened because the CB pushed out the grades to 18. But if we went back to old system of second team group of 8 in junior in a 16 team snr and 16 team ifc I would have no problem with that as long as they also take them back out of A leagues and into B leagues too. truegael49 (Meath) - Posts: 14 - 06/03/2021 19:16:31 2333624 Link 0 |
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Why would that also mean taking them out of the a leagues. Surely it's better to have teams playing teams at their own level regardless of being a first/second/third team
LeitrimRoyal99 (Meath) - Posts: 1523 - 07/03/2021 10:29:49 2333634 Link 6 |
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Because that was the deal at the time when it got passed. I personally didn't agree at the time. Second teams didn't trouble the intermediate championship but more likely to cause problems to first teams in leagues, getting them relegated, promoted ahead of them in the leagues etc. Much more games in the league and A leagues going be more important to clubs in new split season. As I said, I would be happy to go back to system as it was. You can't cherry pick the part that suits. truegael49 (Meath) - Posts: 14 - 07/03/2021 13:28:31 2333652 Link 1 |
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The premise is the same in both parts though. If you think second teams should be allowed to play first teams in the championship as it allows for the most competitive games then why would it be different for the league. To me, the choice is simple to do we want to have the best quality of leagues and championships and open it up to everybody. Or do we want to boost the egos of clubs so they can say that they are an intermediate team or a division 3 team etc. And I do understand that 2nd/3rd/4th teams start with stronger squads. So I think that you could just name an additional 5 players that couldn't play on top of what played in their first round. Over the course of a group stage there usually wouldn't be too many more than 5 players that would go up. Once you address the issue of 2nd/3rd teams not being unequally strong across the competition I literally can't think of 1 good reason to stop the leagues and championships from being open to all teams regardless of whether they are 1st/2nd/3rd teams etc.
LeitrimRoyal99 (Meath) - Posts: 1523 - 07/03/2021 18:36:46 2333669 Link 5 |
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You have your opinion based on what you think is best for you. I have mine based on what is best for my club. We are entitled to our opinions but they don't really matter. The choice at the time to clubs was Premier championship and A leagues or Second team groups and B leagues. I would prefer the second, especially with SFC and IFC at 16. (I'm guessing you prefer option 2 also). In my opinion it is better for intermediate and junior clubs. The championship was always a red herring and with stronger junior championship, second teams won't be a big issue. League is constant though and you could have senior lads playing for 2 teams every weekend. Could be multiple second teams in higher divisions at expense of IFC teams. You are proposing a cake and eat it type arrangement. In KIldare, there is second team championship and reserve leagues with no complaints. I know of no counties that have what you are proposing. truegael49 (Meath) - Posts: 14 - 07/03/2021 21:00:21 2333679 Link 0 |