A rotten hand.
Just imagine for a second that Cian Johnson went ahead and played for the Offaly senior footballers in the Championship this year. The man would be in dream land. Only in his leaving cert year, the 18-year-old Ferbane gem would be the hottest property in the whole county and he’d be the talk of Leinster and further beyond.
While his peers are playing schools’, minor and under-20 football, this lad would be mixing it with the big boys, he’d be in with the best of them because he’s just a class apart.
For a young lad growing up with a football in his hands, that’s the dream, that’s where you want to be. It’s not a possibility for the majority of lads but they still have loads of time to get there anyway so they won’t mind, but when you’re good enough to be there, of course you want to be there.
Cian Johnson is good enough to be there. He’s proved that during a sparkling underage career to date with his club and his school, he’s shown that for his county in the League and in the Walsh Cup.
But if he went there, then where the hell would that leave the Offaly under-20 footballers?
It would basically be telling that group of young lads that the competition they’re playing in is a bit of a joke and that, at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter how they get on in the championship at all.
It would diminish the honour of making it onto that team, a commendable achievement in its own right, because really, if you were good enough you wouldn’t actually be playing for them at all.
Because if Cian Johnson played for the Offaly seniors in the championship, he wouldn’t be allowed play for his county’s under-20 team.
But now the man who played all the O’Byrne Cup games and five League games will be playing for his county’s under-20 team under Offaly county board orders and it’s all turned into a bit of a mess.
“I want to play for the seniors, it’s always been my dream and the senior management want me to play for them but Offaly are just preventing me from doing that,” said Johnson to Colm Keys of the Irish Independent recently.
But you can’t be serious if you’re blaming Offaly for that. They’re making the best of the rotten hand they’ve been dealt and now you’ve player unrest creeping in as a result.
That silly rule applies to every player under the age of 20 in the country and it’s going to see lads like David Clifford leaving their own teammates and friends in the lurch by no choice of their own. And these lads that they’ve played with in the ages up along will be playing in a competition going ahead minus its best players. What a way to promote it.
This under-20 championship is all a bit of a joke. Roscommon and Laois managers Shane Curran and Billy O’Loughlin joined Colm Parkinson on The GAA Hour recently and the pair dished out some home truths about the whole thing.
“They invent a competition, and then take all of the best players out of it,” said O’Loughlin.
"You couldn't make this up if you tried now, this is beyond incredulity," https://t.co/QELvwk2PdP
— GAA JOE (@GAA__JOE) April 30, 2018
That’s even ignoring the fact that the competition will run right smack bang through the heart of the Leaving Certificate exams, with 6th year students involved with many of these teams.
“You couldn’t make this up if you tried now, this is beyond incredulity,” said Curran.
Was there that much wrong with the under-21 championship we had up to now?
