If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Decisions were made at GAA congress over the last few years to replace the inter-county under-21 and under-18 competitions with under-20 and under-17 grades. The changes would be felt for the first time this year.
The reason the adjustments came into place was to tackle the issue of player burnout – a prominent issue at the time.
For example, an 18-year-old could have been playing for his county and club at under-18 level and his club at adult level.
The same went for the under-21 age group, where a player would conceivably have been playing for their county under-21s and senior teams as well as their club and college teams at the same time.
So that was when the GAA dropped the grades a year.
The decisions were widely criticised at the time. Kilkenny hurler Richie Power was vocal with his frustrations surrounding the move. He felt that under-21 was the perfect age group for players to develop physically and mentally for the senior challenge ahead of them.
He warned that a player isn’t ready to make this transition at 20, and that’s fairly clear. On top of that, though, there is the matter that 20-year-old county players would still be good enough to play for their club and college teams anyway so the changes were a little bit pointless in that regard.
All they would be doing is depriving a bunch of 20-year-olds and 18-year-olds, who might not have been strong enough or big enough the year previous, a chance of representing their county at underage level.
These inter-county minor (under-17) games have been taking place over the last few weeks across the provinces, and they have even been taking place at club level in some counties. This came after a small minority of county boards followed suit and ditched the under-18 model.
That means these 18-year-olds are already senior. Gone are the days of the late developer.
Problems are also arising where the counties didn’t change. When the age-grade was under-18, it would have taken a very special under-16 player to make their county team. Now these 16-year-olds are the first year minors and their clubs’ under-16 teams are being hurt as a result.
This was avoided in previous years when the under-18 grading existed because the club under-18 championship generally doesn’t begin until later in the year.
In Armagh for example, a club game couldn’t go ahead last week because of the number of players who were involved with the county under-17 team.
Meanwhile, former Down footballer Benny Coulter was widely backed when he claimed that a whole host of these under-16 players now aren’t playing for their clubs at all.
https://twitter.com/BennyCoulter82/status/989604412749418498
Another issue arose in Cavan and Derry’s clash which went to extra-time on Saturday. The game saw a host of 16 and 17-year-olds play more than 105 minutes of football. It’s a little early for that.
What a battle in Kingscourt, amazing courage from both teams. Neither side took a step back. 105 mins of championship football (incl inj time) is too much to ask of 15/16 year olds though. Lads going down with cramp everywhere.
— Paul Fitzpatrick (@moefitzpatrick) April 28, 2018
It was never going to be as smooth as they’d planned…
