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.
Whoever came up with the idea of changing minors to 17s and 21s to 20s are absolutely clueless. Under 16s now part of a starred system where they can’t play for clubs. Would the @ClubPlayerAssoc not look at this? Horrendous decision to change the ages
— Benny Coulter (@BennyCoulter82) April 26, 2018
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…
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