Age grade debate: 'A fella can go down the street with two children at 18 but he can’t play junior hurling with his club?'
U18 CRUX: Cork GAA's well -attended meeting on Age Grades
THEY counted 47 different speakers at Tuesday’s special meeting of the Cork GAA board. Now that figure might be out by one or two, but the meeting ran for almost two hours and trying to identify every speaker and their club was not helped by a temperamental microphone. “I can’t hear a thing being said”, bellowed someone from the back.
So what age did Cork clubs wanted the minor grade set at — U17 or U18? Decouple or not decouple? Or maybe somewhere in between. If such a space can even exist or can be permitted to exist by those above in Croke Park.
As Cork chairman Marc Sheehan spelt out early following two calls from the floor for a vote, “we have to consider what comes back from the floor tonight, and there may be some modifications we, the executive, can then propose”.
The final speaker of the night was Cork CEO Kevin O’Donovan. He spoke articulately. His tone was rooted in the practical. There was one point he made, though, that we thought a touch unfair.
Kevin said he had heard words from the floor like “survival, nail in the coffin, death knell, and kill us off”, in relation to fears held by poorly populated clubs and the impact on their adult teams if they are prevented from fielding U18s.
“Maybe a little bit less of the hyperbole and a little bit more of the practical solutions to rural clubs who are wondering where will we be in a decade,” said O’Donovan.
Clubs had been expressly asked for their views. And so if delegates felt such language was merited to represent their club’s view, they were entitled to do so. As Jim Hanley of the Beara board pointed out: “Big clubs can handle their 18-year-olds not playing adult. Small clubs can’t. And it is not that decoupling at U18 will see off any small club. But small clubs are dying a death by a thousand cuts. This is just another one.”
Hanley's comments captured the split in preferences expressed during the meeting. Almost everyone wanted minor back at U18. But therein lies the crux of the matter. The clubs with healthy playing numbers said they could understand and agree to decoupling at U18. Smaller clubs cried over and over again that they could not. Those that opted for the status quo and retention of U17 as minor came from the latter bracket. They were Castletownbere, Meelin, Naomh Abán, Rathpeacon, Rockchapel, Russell Rovers, and St Oliver Plunketts.
Head over heels about U17 they are not. But at least it allows them to hold onto their 18-year-olds for adult fare.
A more popular viewpoint among the smaller and medium-sized clubs was to give a thumbs up to minor at U18 but were against decoupling at that age.
We counted 13 speakers for this approach. Here’s a flavour.
Donie Lyons, Brian Dillons: “We are struggling to field teams to play junior. Why try and put the death knell on us? Why try to kill us off? Some of the clubs are over 100 years in existence, my own club included. If you put decoupling restrictions on us [at U18], it will be the end in another four or five years’ time.”
Milford’s Sean Carroll: “We have heard a lot about the future of youngsters, we also need to talk about the future of clubs. Decoupling at U18 will be detrimental to rural clubs.”
Pat Malone, Éire Óg: “It would seem to us that Croke Park has put a gun to people’s heads and said, if you want U17 there is decoupling, and if you want U18 there is decoupling. Maybe this board and other boards around the country should go back. A fella can go down the street with two children at 18 but he can’t play junior hurling with his club. I don’t think that’s right.”
The struggling clubs had a sympathetic ear from those not as hard-pressed for numbers.
“You are tying a noose around their neck by putting in decoupling,” declared Denis Harrington of St Finbarr’s.
“There should be some sort of recognition of smaller, rural clubs,” said Liam Martin of Glen Rovers. “There is no one size fits all. We should do everything in our power to try and be as favorable as we can to everybody’s problems. Good luck with it, it is not an easy conundrum.”
It certainly isn’t.
Not that we were short of ideas to try and unscramble said conundrum.
“Could we give the U18s a choice?” asked Dripsey’s John Feeney. “Either they play U18 or they play adult competition.”
Or perhaps allow U18s play adult league, but then decouple for championship, as Freemount’s John O’Flynn suggested.
Or try U18 decoupled for a year and if we didn’t like it go back to U17. That was the Erin’s Own take.
As should be now clear, we had frustration. We had goodwill towards that frustration. We had possible solutions to resolve the frustration. We also had figures.
“There are roughly 200 Cork clubs fielding minor teams,” began Killeagh delegate and former Cork U21 manager Damien Irwin. “Let’s say there is 20 on each panel. That’s about 4,000 minor players currently. If we don’t decouple and stay with the status quo, let’s say 1 in 10, 400 people, will end up playing adult next year.
“Look at the potential fall-off. The fall-off is about [3,600] players. You could potentially lose 90% of current minor players because we won’t have a meaningful series of games for them [at U18]. That is the drain from the GAA we have to pay particular attention to.”
This was a theme picked up on by GDA James McCarthy.
“If we don’t have U18 next year, we are going to hemorrhage players from the bigger clubs to the smallest clubs going. They are playing more games for their secondary schools than they are for their clubs.”
McCarthy pointed to another worrying trend created by the gap from U17 to adult.
“What coaches were developed at U19 level this year? In clubs now, we have the U17 coach and we then have the adult coach. There is no coach in between because there is nothing to coach. We are developing no coaches in our clubs.
“70% of our clubs are going for outside coaches. A coach comes up to U17 with his team and then gives up because the next gig he’ll have to get is with the adult team and that is an awful step up.”
At the end of the almost two hours, Kevin O’Donovan told the meeting he wanted Cork to run an U18 competition in 2023. It wouldn’t be decoupled. It would instead be a bridging competition to allow time to find solutions ahead of 2024.
A solution to appease the spread of views expressed would be a Solomon-scale solution.
In the words of the Glen Rovers chairman, good luck with it.
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