Replying To zinny: "Are you telling me that every u18 goes into adult? There is no player dropout at this level? What is odd is that somewhere else Viking was arguing that U21 was a better indication of future All Ireland success not minor but yet we think that 18yr olds can be sprung straight into Senior Club teams. Perhaps if clubs looked at the long term and focused on development of groups of players together, rather than break them up into different terms in adult the minute they can play, they may eventually have more senior success. Clubs have enough older players still capable of contributing but there is a rush to bring young lads in and these lads give up. Rather than allow u18s to play adult how about stopping u21s from doing it and create a proper u21 championship? Would clubs still have enough players for all their adult teams? Would it mean adult players would play longer and u18s play longer? If all the clubs played all their u21s how would the winners compare to an adult team? Intermediate ?
Nothing will change in Wexford but we believe that somehow we will win an All Ireland by doing the same things we have been doing all along (sorry not even that but worse) ."
On your first line - I don't know where you got that idea from what I wrote.
All I meant is that we see now that in a week with U21 fixtures, there are all sorts of issues with those fixtures, because some of the same lads are playing adult both the weekend before and weekend after as well.
If you allowed minors to play adult, you'd have the same issue with every round of Minor fixtures as well, and they're almost every week. Even if a club only had one or two minors good enough to play with the adult teams, they'd still have concerns over them having to play midweek as well as weekend.
And for what it's worth, fixtures for minor quarter-finals were issued yesterday. Football mainly Wednesday August 13, and hurling mainly Monday August 18. So if some of these lads were also playing adult, the schedule they'd be looking at would be this: - Wednesday August 13: Minor Football - Weekend of August 15 to 17: Adult Football - Monday August 18: Minor Hurling - Wednesday August 20: U20 Football - Weekend of August 22 to 24: Adult Football
Basically, five matches in somewhere between 9 and 11 days.
Replying To Pikeman96: "On your first line - I don't know where you got that idea from what I wrote.
All I meant is that we see now that in a week with U21 fixtures, there are all sorts of issues with those fixtures, because some of the same lads are playing adult both the weekend before and weekend after as well.
If you allowed minors to play adult, you'd have the same issue with every round of Minor fixtures as well, and they're almost every week. Even if a club only had one or two minors good enough to play with the adult teams, they'd still have concerns over them having to play midweek as well as weekend.
And for what it's worth, fixtures for minor quarter-finals were issued yesterday. Football mainly Wednesday August 13, and hurling mainly Monday August 18. So if some of these lads were also playing adult, the schedule they'd be looking at would be this: - Wednesday August 13: Minor Football - Weekend of August 15 to 17: Adult Football - Monday August 18: Minor Hurling - Wednesday August 20: U20 Football - Weekend of August 22 to 24: Adult Football
Basically, five matches in somewhere between 9 and 11 days."
The first line was in reference to getting rid of u21. Getting rid of it would be going backwards and if people were really interested in what was the best for the game they would be looking at what the causes are and not blaming fixtures. I agree with you if you allowed minors to play its just moving the problem further down the age groups. The county board has to have all the data on players in U21 playing adult and those that don't play anything once they leave minor - why is nothing being done with it? Anyone interested in how the game needs to change to grow would be horrified by the suggestion of minors playing adult.