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They must be all getting acquainted with their new club still.
countyman2022 (Wexford) - Posts: 727 - 24/03/2023 12:59:44 2466240 Link 0 |
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Football and Hurling should alternate going first in both the League and the Championship . That would be fairest. But it still won't change the fact that alot of players are less interested in football, even if they play both.
Viking66 (Wexford) - Posts: 13867 - 24/03/2023 14:01:43 2466276 Link 0 |
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Okay. What's an appropriate gap, in your view, between the start of the football league and the start of the football championship? I threw out the idea here a while ago that maybe the leagues should be run like the championships - i.e. hurling in its entirety first, followed by football - and some liked it. But even if you did that this year, football league would be starting in the middle or end of April. That'd be a four-month gap before start of championship. Is that still too much, in your view? If you started the football league any later, you'd be doing club players out of their more-or-less closed month of June for them to arrange holidays, etc. - is that a price worth paying to narrow the gap further between league and championship? Have no idea what you mean by "practically every other county". There are very, very few other counties that give absolutely 100% equality between hurling and football in terms of how their club competitions are run, in the way that we do here in Wexford. Of the four chairmen you spoke to, I'd be interested to learn how their clubs voted on the big issue of whether or not to alternate football and hurling in the championships, or whether to stick with our version of the split season. And there's an inherent contradiction in what you say about them too. Let's say all four wanted to alternate championship weeks, which would suggest football is high up in their considerations - but now they're talking about not taking part in the football championships at all? That simply makes no sense to me. Pikeman96 (Wexford) - Posts: 2621 - 24/03/2023 14:26:37 2466284 Link 0 |
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U must be fairly well respected if 4 different chairmen cinfided in you their thought re pulling out of championships. Don t think ayone in wexford would disagree hurling comes first for 80% of dual players snd clubs . But surely we are not that nieave to think we are a hurling strongholdeither now or ever really . We are actually dropping down the pecking order alarmingly questions of all the dedicated hurling men should be asked Why . Dishing football and watching it being downtrodden helps no one surely we can be competitive in both to an extent . God be with the days of the dual County player and the pride in ur club county and yourself. Can't even ne accommodated at intercounty underage anymore such a shame. I think it takes a more committed player to actually throw their lot in with the footballers from what I ve seen over the years . A county hurler demands attention and adulation and look down their nose at the footballers . The split season inter County adult and underage is absolutely destroying the club scene in wexfird anyway . . 18 y old on county can't play adult and mickey mouse tournaments until.the 20s and 17s are eliminated means championship be mid July before it begins progress me H.le Reduce the inter county season give clubs a fighting chance of survival Formertownie (Wexford) - Posts: 301 - 24/03/2023 14:39:48 2466288 Link 0 |
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You only want to be starting to hurl or play football around Easter, if that means a game or two less what about it. ExiledInWex (Dublin) - Posts: 1259 - 24/03/2023 15:32:25 2466300 Link 0 |
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Ill be honest i didnt ask them about how they voted in terms of the big issue of overall structure, i simply asked them as part of a bit of research for a meeting taking place next Monday night as to why they pulled out of the league and their answer was the same. As things stand imho we are absolutley killing football through mostly our own actions in how the club game is structured, maybe thats half the idea. I sat in wexford park for Phillip Wallaces presentation, when it was put to the floor for any points to be raised the first 3 speakers from the floor all raised the same issue saying the same thing "the split season is killing football" and eventually the chairman said listen we arent talking about that here. So essentially we are just going to ignore the elephant in the room. We have a situation where we now have a club structure league and championship where football is not only the second sport (which it will always be) but by nature of the structure its not worth even bothering with for a lot of clubs and it all stems from the split season to begin with. Genuinely i think we continue with this structure football will completely die off, Viking above alluded to fairness and hes right but clubs wont vote for fairness, just whats best for them. we are making things worse for the game, this years league proves it. tearintom (Wexford) - Posts: 1427 - 24/03/2023 15:49:47 2466309 Link 0 |
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You haven't answered my question about what you think would be an appropriate gap between start of football league and start of football championship. Again - assuming you'd still want to afford club players a closed month in June so they could plan some sort of summer holiday, latest you could start a five-round or six-round football league would be about the third week of April. That's at least four months before the championship would begin, and the gap could be even longer if club championships start later on account of Wexford senior hurlers reaching an All-Ireland semi-final or better, or the senior footballers reaching a Tailteann Cup Final. I was at the Philip Wallace football review myself. I think the chairman was right to close down complaints about the split season. It wasn't up for debate that night, and nothing could be done about it, because as I keep pointing out, it was the majority wish of club delegates on the night it was voted on. Until clubs vote differently, that won't change. And no point pretending that the split season is the cause for all football's woes. It was already on the decline before the split season was ever introduced. For what it's worth, my big takeaway from that Philip Wallace night was how few concrete suggestions were actually put forward to improve football's lot, and how few people were willing to put their hand up to try do something about it. Finally, I don't believe that any club will seriously consider pulling out of the football championships due to a sulk over not getting their way on the split season question, despite what these Chairman you've apparently been talking to might have been saying. If these really are "football men", that'd be the biggest insult they could give to the game. Pikeman96 (Wexford) - Posts: 2621 - 26/03/2023 21:58:33 2466946 Link 0 |
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Apparently talking to, ok thanks, your takeaway from that night was how little there was to improve football but have a go at someone who's actually gone off their own bat to do a bit of research and put a bit of work into it! And I'm not sure how you jumped to the conclusion that the teams that pulled out of league football were all clubs who didn't get their way on the split season and are sulking considering they are most definitely all hurling first, I was being honest in saying I didn't ask them that but I'd be fairly sure they all voted for the current split season. They're not pulling out over a sulk, they're pulling out because they don't see the point under the current structure. I never claimed the split season was the cause of all of football woes, just that it's adding to the problems. And I've previously given you an answer on how the league should be structured, you even acknowledged it in a previous post! Run off hurling first and then football league, it' was an answer actually agreeing with a proposal YOU put forward on dates that had nothing to do with June, you must have forgotten in your haste to dismiss every suggestion on the thread to help football in the county. You didn't happen to be one of our esteemed county delegates/board members who were so concerned about football that night they all left the meeting early!! An emergency meeting called to try and come up with a plan to help save football and half the board have a more important meeting to get to. Maybe you missed some of the proposals put forward so, absolutely there can always be more and more people to put their name forwards but the irony of Phillip Wallace giving his presentation where his takeaway was that footballs biggest problem is the "perception" of football within the county and indeed the county board that "no one really cares about football " followed by the county board delegates there getting up and leaving to got to an important meeting wasn't lost on people. tearintom (Wexford) - Posts: 1427 - 27/03/2023 08:48:59 2466968 Link 0 |
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Hmmmm. Let's try get things back to a reasonable tone here. Monday morning is over now. :) Anyway, to answer your points in order: - as somebody else already said, you must be "well got" if at least four different chairmen are talking to you about the inner considerations of their clubs. But fair enough, some people are indeed "well got", so let's take it that you're one of them. - either way, any club that first votes to keep the split season and then complains about the football league coming too early really does have to be careful what they wish for. - okay, so you were one of those who liked my idea of running the hurling leagues first, followed by the football. Apologies for not remembering - I don't take notes of everybody who agrees of disagrees with me on things around here. But bear in mind you'd still be looking at a gap of some four and a half months from start of football league to start of football championship, or possibly longer, depending on our inter-county sides. To me, that's not substantially different enough from the near six-month gap we currently have, to make any real difference. But feel free to disagree. - I happen to think myself that a return to alternate weeks championships should at least be trialled, but my club decided to vote the other way, as did a majority of other clubs. But unlike some others, I'm willing to accept a democratic majority decision on what's probably one of the biggest things the clubs still have the power to decide. - No, I didn't leave the Football Review Meeting early, but what I know about that it this: the meeting started at 7.30 and was estimated it would run for about 90 minutes. At 9 p.m., the four or five delegates who'd be representing Wexford at Congress a few weeks later had to go meet incoming President Jarlath Burns in the other office in Wexford Park. The Football Review meeting then wrapped up at about a quarter or 20 past nine. So, four or five out of 15 or 20 Board officials missed the last few minutes of a meeting that lasted almost two hours. It's hardly the sort of mass "turn your back and walk out" event that you suggest. - Finally, I put my name down that night to take part in one of the working groups to be formed. Did you? Pikeman96 (Wexford) - Posts: 2621 - 27/03/2023 13:18:59 2467062 Link 0 |
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Yourself and Tom seem to splitting hairs over procedural and format issues. The fundamental problem in the county as regards the footballers is that we have the population we have. Nationally there are less children as a percentage of that population that there was. Assuming there are still the same percentage of those children who have the necessary hand/eye coordination etc to make top sportspeople, there are therefore less of these. As time has gone on, there are numerous other sports accessible to kids these days than were in times gone by. Rugby, gymnastics, swimming, martial arts, basketball etc etc. So therefore less of these are playing GAA than they were. As a dual county we will suffer more from this drop-off if hurling and football were equally split as a smaller number is then halved. Finally Hurling is now also more popular in more clubs in the county than was the case in years gone by. Kilanerin/Tara Rocks , Castletown/Liam Mellows and most of the clubs in New Ross District spring to mind. So in the case of our Football first underage playing population this half of a smaller number is reduced yet further. Has it not occurred to everyone that the biggest problem Football faces in the county is largely demographic? I can't think of any player who chooses Hurling, Rugby, Soccer, Basketball ,Martial Arts etc etc over Football because of the format of our Championship or Leagues. So as an organisation the GAA needs to encourage more young people to play GAA sports first and foremost. Initiatives like the tickets for the London game, fireworks and lightshows for the Kilkenny game etc etc are only good in that regard, whatever some posters may think. Hurling 365 is another good one, especially in our local national school as we alternate weekly between Hurling and Football. Getting parents onside is also very important, as it is they that will bring their kids. I do know that cost is a factor which is putting some poorer parents off believe it or not. Membership can be significantly higher than membership of local soccer clubs for example. Our population as a county has increased relatively to some counties, but decreased relative to others, especially those with cities and large urban populations. Nationally GAA isn't doing as well in these urban areas. So if we can target resources to the towns at county board level, especially New Ross, to encourage more players from those areas, especially from poorer backgrounds, then that would surely stand to our county teams. The flip side of this is there will be resistance from clubs like ours in rural areas. It's a hard one Pikeman. Who would be an administrator!!! Viking66 (Wexford) - Posts: 13867 - 27/03/2023 14:06:48 2467081 Link 0 |
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Great to see the change of opinion of football clubs now on the split season that its killing football. It was great when so called football clubs were winning hurling championships over the last number of years . But now its killing football when you have so called hurling clubs winning football championships Oulart, Monagear, Ally. murt1982 (Wexford) - Posts: 12 - 27/03/2023 14:36:29 2467091 Link 0 |
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Fair enough. And yep, i did put my name down alright, was good to finally get a bit of feedback from it finally last week. And trust me, im not well got at all, simply know one of the chairmen personally (outside of GAA through work) and rang another few asking them straight out as a follow up to the football development meeting. They were clubs i would be very familiar with and have a good few contacts within the clubs. See ye tonight all going well!! tearintom (Wexford) - Posts: 1427 - 27/03/2023 14:57:37 2467100 Link 0 |
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Thanks to Viking for bringing some sense to the discussion. And thanks to Tom for calming the waters! :) Pikeman96 (Wexford) - Posts: 2621 - 27/03/2023 17:19:15 2467136 Link 0 |
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OK to add a bit more of nuance to the discussion. ExiledInWex (Dublin) - Posts: 1259 - 28/03/2023 10:28:58 2467237 Link 1 |
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Agree about the coaching. I'm only a mentor and we are blessed with a manager who played intercounty underage and has researched all kinds of drills in his own time, which he's only been able to do because one of the other mentors is an HR expert and she handles all of the liasing with parents, attendance records, booking pitches and astro etc etc. But as far as the course I went on myself went there were lots of American style acronyms etc, and stuff that anyone with common sense would know, but no real substance to make me or anyone else there a better coach.
Viking66 (Wexford) - Posts: 13867 - 28/03/2023 18:06:11 2467445 Link 0 |
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You are 100% right in what you say. It has to start with coaching and underage coaching in the clubs, indeed that has to be the main focus going forward. My point about the current club season set up isn't that it's the sole problem, but rather one of the problems contributing to footballs issues and one that's going to cause further issues for the development of football. There were a couple of takeaways from Phillip Wallaces report. The main takeaway was the perception of football within the county, "whats the point"? We now have a club scene where less clubs than ever are taking part in this years adult football league citing the very reason Philip Wallaces report identified "whats the point" so effectively we have developed a club structure that is actually adding to footballs biggest issue. One of the other issues raised was again player pathway, the teenager who has been coached and ahs shown promise, whats his pathway to pushing on and improving, again we now find ourselves in a situation where we have 6 county title winners from last year, many of those teams made up of young and upcoming footballers who aren't playing any football this year whatsoever until September where some may play for 6 to 8 weeks, again one of the reasons being our structure. So no its not the main issue but it is an issue but one that's been identified as such. People say the current structure is great for dual clubs, maybe it is for dual clubs who have both codes at the same level or close enough with dual focus but for the majority of clubs in wexford thats not the case with practically every club being hurling first, even traditional football clubs now taking that approach. But getting back to the coaching that is the biggest issue, one of the tasks faced now is trying to get someone from each club to at least meet up and consider developing more football coaching at club level, that means asking clubs to put someone forward, clubs who now don't even see the point in putting an adult team forward, so you see the circle that's developing here. To get more football and more coaching we have to change away from "whats the point" and at the moment we have an increasing number of clubs deciding "whats the point" I get that people are probably sick of hearing me go on about the structure, I do firmly believe that we can be successful in football but it will always be second fiddle, as a 100% dual man im fine with that but we need to identify every blocker that's out there to developing football, coaching is the biggest one and particularly at underage but we need to give kids at clubs a point to it all, every kid at every club begins with dreams of making their clubs adult team and their county team, I know I did, we need to get clubs who have previously at least showed a passing interest in football to get back to that rather than falling away completely which is my fear. tearintom (Wexford) - Posts: 1427 - 29/03/2023 11:13:53 2467522 Link 0 |
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Apologies i meant to say that 3 out of the 6 county title winners from last year arent playing any football until September!
tearintom (Wexford) - Posts: 1427 - 29/03/2023 12:08:57 2467541 Link 0 |
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Won't quote your longer post but glad to see you and I are now finding at least some common ground! I agree there's no quick-fix solution and it all has to start with working with the very young players. Hurling 365 has been a great success and we need to encourage clubs/schools to do the same for football. Better football coaching courses from the Coaching Office and more participation in them would be a huge advantage too. However, the Coaching Office will tell you that maybe 80% of requests they get for courses are for hurling courses only. Maybe a policy whereby every course contains both hurling and football elements would help here. But some places where we're still a bit at odds too. Let's not fight over them! First, I can't deny there's a perception out there of "what's the point?" and that football plays second fiddle overall in terms of supports and structures, but I believe that perception is misplaced and unwarranted. As previously stated, we're one of the few counties that has the exact same structures for hurling and football in club competitions, and who therefore afford club players the exact same opportunities to play both. Okay, some have issues with the timing of one of this year's competitions, but the opportunity is still there to play football if they want to. My own club, for example, is fielding two teams in the football league, despite the fact that we won't have any championship football until at least the end of August either, and that we'd primarily be seen as "a hurling club" at adult level. At county level, I know there have been issues in the past, but in recent years, I believe all Academy squads and inter-county teams have had the same supports and structures in football and hurling too, bar the odd logistical hiccup like a supplier not delivering gear on time. And doubly unfortunately, this happened to a football squad, so there were immediate complaints of "it wouldn't happen to the hurlers", despite the fact that it could just as easily have happened them instead. Finally, adult club championships - would like to see at least a trial return to alternate weeks myself, but would maintain that even with that, dual players (i.e. vast majority of them) would still only be playing football for six or eight weeks. That's on the assumption that their clubs would concentrate on hurling in the week of a hurling match, and football in the week of a football match. There'd be a longer gap between their first week of football and their last week, but there'd still only be six or eight weeks of it overall. But remember, some clubs would still concentrate on hurling even in a football week. Again, my own club as an example - in "the old way", for as long as we were still involved in hurling, we'd have only one short football training session (maybe 30 minutes) a fortnight, on the Thursday or Friday night before a championship match. Everything else would be hurling. Over six weeks, that's just three hours of football training. But since split season was introduced, we've been having two full football training sessions a week (approx. 90 minutes each) that start as soon as we're finished in hurling. Say there's two weeks of a gap between our hurlers finishing and the football championship starting, followed by six weeks of football championship itself - that's eight weeks of three hours each, for a total of 24 hours of football. And obviously that number goes up for each subsequent week as well. Since the split season came in, we've won a county final in one grade, lost a county final in another, and reached another semi-final as well. Prior to that, we hadn't reached even a semi-final in any grade in donkey's years. So overall, the split season has actually been a big benefit to ourselves for football, rather than a hindrance. Anyway. Long post! Time to stop! Pikeman96 (Wexford) - Posts: 2621 - 29/03/2023 13:35:40 2467566 Link 0 |
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I honestly think at underage football training happening in most clubs. The old fashioned view is that kids don't need football coaching, just throw them a ball and they will work it out.
zinny (Wexford) - Posts: 1900 - 29/03/2023 14:47:52 2467593 Link 0 |
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Correction to above - in "the old way", the short football training sessions were once a fortnight over the course of maybe twelve weeks, not six. But still just six football sessions, for a total of only about three hours of football training over the whole football championship campaign. Pikeman96 (Wexford) - Posts: 2621 - 29/03/2023 14:50:53 2467594 Link 0 |