Underage beatings draining confidence, says Treaty boss

Limerick senior manager John Brudair is seriously concerned about the state of underage football in the county.

Limerick’s football graph has plummeted in recent years and Brudair says the woes across the lower age grades is having a negative impact at senior level.

The Limerick U21 footballers have failed to win a Munster championship game in three years, while five campaigns have elapsed since the county’s minor side last claimed a victory.

Of greater worry to Brudair is the severe hammerings suffered by both underage teams this spring. The minors went down by 6-15 to 1-7 to Cork, before exiting the championship after a seven-point loss to Clare.

Diarmuid Sheehy’s U21 side fared little better when crushed 3-15 to 0-8 away to Cork.

“It is worrying the beatings the underage teams took this year,” admitted Brudair.

“You would have to ask why that is the case. With Kerry and Cork, they go for the jugular with the weaker teams to get those games done and dusted early in proceedings.

“If you don’t stem that tide early your confidence will drain. I think that was the case in the minor game with Cork this year. The game was over after 10 minutes. If you don’t stay in those games, that is what will happen against sides of supreme talent.”

Brudair pointed to the development squad program in place in Cork and stressed Limerick must follow this template to stop the rot.

“Cork have development programmes in place that are very well structured. Look at the underage success it has contributed to. Most of the Cork minors and U21 sides would be on development programmes from when they were 13 or 14 years of age. We haven’t those structures yet. They are being put in place and we would hope we will see the benefits of them in years to come because we cannot continue to take such beatings at underage. It is not helping anyone.

“You could also make the argument that Tipperary have leapfrogged us in the Munster pecking order as a result of their underage advances. You often see that underage success doesn’t stem onto senior success, however.

“We had it in Limerick where we won three U21 All-Ireland hurling titles on the trot, but that never led to an All-Ireland senior title.

“It is hard to judge the gap between Cork, Kerry and the rest of the Munster teams. If we are realistic, both Cork and Kerry are way further down the line than us in terms of development. In Limerick we are in transition. All you are hoping for in Munster is to take one of those teams at the right time, the right occasion to get that Munster title.”

One major positive for Brudair and his management team was the decision of veteran midfielder John Galvin to commit to a 16th campaign.

Galvin, 34 in July, took time out earlier this year to size up his inter-county future and Brudair accepts the team can no longer be moulded around the Croom native.

“John has been back training with us for the last five or six weeks. He is a great man who just gets on with things and trains hard.

“You can see the younger lads are really enjoying him being about the place because they have heard so much about him. But to actually train with him is a different thing.

“The reality is you can’t build a team around him given his age and the fact he is only back six weeks. We don’t know if he is championship-fit yet.

“We’ll judge that over the next three weeks. It would be impossible to build anything around him. You just hope he plays to his ability and contributes to the overall team performance.”

He added: “We blooded a huge number of players during the league, something like 33 players. 50% of the squad is new by comparison with last year. We have given them some exposure to what is required at inter-county level. We need to keep that going now with the challenge games we are playing on the run-in to the Tipperary game.”