Return of minor grade to U18 likely at next GAA Congress

Cork's Donal Herlihy gets past Meath's Niall Smyth in the Electric Ireland All-Ireland Minor Football quarter-final in Thurles. Photo: Diarmuid Brennan/Sportsfocus.

The return of inter-county minor grade to U18 appears a strong possibility at next year’s Congress.

A host of counties as well as Munster GAA are lining up to put forward motions calling for the change from U17.

The provincial council had already agreed to put forward a motion to this year’s Congress. However, it could not be discussed as the previous proposal in 2023 failed to receive 33% support and as per rule couldn’t be debated again for three years.

Munster GAA will be resubmitting the proposal for Congress in Wexford in February and several counties are set to join them. In 2023, Kerry, Longford and Tyrone made the joint proposal to revert minor level to U18 but with no decoupling between minor inter-county and adult club. Kildare had tabled the idea of U18 and U17 championships but U18 as the minor grade.

It is the province’s belief that there should be decoupling for the duration of the minor inter-county championship. Last December, Munster chairman Tim Murphy explained the motion originated from a review of the academies in the six counties. “We discussed it in a number of meetings and at our meeting in November we had unanimous support from the six counties who asked us to on behalf of the six Munster counties to bring it forward to Congress 2026,” he said.

“So, the essence of the motion is inter-county minor will go to U18 but this decoupling will also be part of that so that for example an U18 player who is hurling or football can’t play with their club, their adult team for the duration of the county's involvement, but after that then they can.” 

Decoupling would be a requisite for the likes of Cork and Connacht GAA chief executives Kevin O’Donovan and John Prenty, who have warned about the potential for burnout without the restriction.

It is nine years since the last U18 championships when David Clifford scored four goals against Derry in the football final in Croke Park. Cork won the U17 competition that year, which became the standard grade the following season.

In Munster, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford have adopted U18 as their minor grades. Tipperary were the last of the five to change this year, while Clare may yet join them.

Meath and Tipperary became the 20th and 21st counties to move back to even grades. Another seven organise theirs at both odd and even grades, while just four apply odd ages. One of them, Laois, could revert to even numbers next year.

A return to U18 at inter-county level may also see the All-Ireland minor finals played on a bigger stage. Part of the reason why they were removed as senior final curtain-raisers was the fear the deciders were putting too much pressure on 16- and 17-year-olds in what was supposed to be a development competition.

A proposal by Fermanagh to reinstate them as the undercards earlier this year was defeated heavily and received less than 16% support. In May, Central Council agreed that while they would keep an open attitude to senior final curtain-raisers, “the possible fixing of minor finals before senior finals, as was previously the practice, is not currently feasible.” 

However, the games may yet form part of each code’s All-Ireland senior semi-final weekend along with the Tailteann Cup and possibly the Joe McDonagh Cup, should the second-tier hurling competition conclude later in the inter-county window.

To facilitate that, the minor competitions would have to finish a week later. This year’s Limerick-Tipperary minor hurling final took place on June 27, the weekend before the senior hurling semi-finals. The same gap existed between Cork’s win over Tyrone in MFC finale on July 5 and the SFC last-four fixtures.