McEntee calls for change to Sigerson

Crossmaglen Rangers manager Tony McEntee believes Sigerson Cup football should be off-limits to senior inter-county players and the colleges competition should be used to develop promising club players.

McEntee did not allow star forward Jamie Clarke play for his own alma mater, University of Ulster Jordanstown, in this year’s Sigerson Cup campaign because of the Armagh club’s preparations for tomorrow’s All-Ireland club championship semi-final against Dr Crokes at Portlaoise (2.30pm).

But while he maintains that any player involved in the All-Ireland Club championship should give his clubpriority, he also contends colleges football and hurling would be serving the entire GAA world if it looked to develop other club players instead of obsessing about the recruitment and availability of big-name county players.

“I’m not a fan of university football for a number of reasons,” he said.

“For one it doesn’t allow for expansive football because of the time of year it’s played and the type of fields it’s played on.

“But the other thing is that at the moment, you have this conflict between the counties and the colleges for the availability of county players.

“The big emphasis with the colleges now is to get all your county players available to play for you and all the while very good club players attending the college are being ignored.”

Already this season there have been a number of high-profile tug o’ warsbetween college and county managers for county players’ services, while there have been calls in some quarters to place an age limit in colleges GAA because of the number of players in their late 20s and even 30s now playing in the intervarsity competitions.

However, McEntee, the subject of tomorrow’s Irish Examiner Big Interview, believes the GAA should look to go even further.

“Instead of trying to get almost a finished product like Jamie Clarke to play for your college, why not use all that time and all those resources into trying to develop a good club player?

“Maybe the Sigerson should look at moving away from focusing on county players because there’s an enormous amount of good club players who could develop in the university environment which would be good for everybody.

“You take our team for example. It should be able to compete with most of the university teams. So why not have a selection of players from the likes of Cross and everywhere else and make up a good Sigerson team that way without having all this conflict with the county teams?”