The Tipperary GAA Discussion Thread

evolvingtipperary101 · 01-11-2023 9:02pm

New Football Manager and backroom team:

Tipperary Senior Football Management Announcement - Tipperary GAA

01-11-2023 10:11pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121308759#Comment_121308759

Is he related to Bubbles?

evolvingtipperary101 · 02-11-2023 12:20am

Jesus … the management committee won’t like that…

Billy Ocean · 02-11-2023 12:33am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121311165#Comment_121311165

I listened to Tippcast today, sounds like some of the Kiladangan lads dropped didn't get contacted by Cahill to let them know which obviously put some noses out of joint.

evolvingtipperary101 · 02-11-2023 9:43am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121313374#Comment_121313374

Well if Cahill talked to them like he did shannahan and connors they might have done a media tour of interviews that dragged on, going into all the details of the phone calls also.

cahill never managed the players and he did say on radio that the Tipp panel was disbanded before the club championship last year. Everyone knew new blood was coming.

evolvingtipperary101 · 03-11-2023 11:08am

Bets of luck to Niall O'Meara - a top servant to Tipp. Great attitude on and off the field. Has spoken with insight on really difficult subjects the last few years. Congrats on your baby boy.

Niall O’Meara Retirement Announcement - Tipperary GAA

Niall O'Meara hurling goal vs Kilkenny 2019 - YouTube

Paddico · 03-11-2023 1:54pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121313343#Comment_121313343

Not the most inspiring but lets see

evolvingtipperary101 · 03-11-2023 4:36pm

Liam Sheedy: I'm very uneasy at clear signs that hurling is in trouble (irishexaminer.com)

The way our year is structured now works okay for the clubs consistently challenging in the latter stages of competitions, but it’s not much good to the clubs that endure early exits, with their championship involvement more or less over as soon as it commenced. In a way, the current structure is another factor hastening the rise of the superclubs. A Premier League effect. Strong getting stronger, the rest forgotten.

I know there are people reading this already on the attack. Another pundit complaining about the split season, just looking to guarantee his soft seat for more of the year. Hand on heart, nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t buy these club v county arguments. Ultimately, we are all club players and people first and always will be. We start in the club and finish in the club. In some cases, club involvement allows you the honour of involvement with your county team and you get to represent your club on the wider stage which brings immense pride to parishes. So forget club v county and them versus us, this is about We as an association.

I’ll always be a Portroe man first. This year, I got involved helping out with the juniors and U19s/U21s, as we are hitting a flat patch after some wonderful years. That can happen to any club. We are committed to building a strategic plan in 2024 to try prevent similar lean periods going forward. But over the course of this season, I’ve seen many things that concern me, with worrying signals for our game at all levels.

I am going to write here mainly about the Tipperary championships as they are the competitions I am most in tune with. But I’d imagine the picture is similar across most counties and is worse in some. I just feel we are not supporting the need for regular competitive matches at all age groups. And before long, we will count a huge cost, in young people lost to sport.

While Kiladangan and Thurles each played seven championship matches including last Sunday’s replay, the majority of teams in Tipperary (16 out of 32 across Senior and Premier Intermediate) were finished for another year after five weeks and three championship matches. For reigning county champions Kilruane and my own club Portroe, seasons were over after 14 days and two matches. That does nothing to grow the game and raises the question if there is a better solution that allows players play more games at more suitable intervals after training for months. And I don’t mean meaningless league games that satisfy nobody.

There is a litany of unintended consequences of the split season. Back to our Junior Bs. We had three matches scheduled in quick succession. It was always the case, for as long as I can remember, that the top team in your club would have played a match before the second team as it kept the gradings honest. However, as the Junior B championship is now on a tight deadline, two rounds were played early, before first teams had played, which meant that teams were loaded and it pushed out the marginal player to the bench. In a matter of days, the championship is over, the juniors are gone out of the field and some guys have got no meaningful action at all. It reeks of getting matches played to meet timelines rather than the needs of clubs and player retention and development.

There is too little for players to look forward to. Long stretches of training, then seasons completed abruptly. A box ticked. We need to slow down. Maybe if we took a breath we’d truly see the consequences of our decisions.

We failed to field a team at U19 which was very disappointing but is a plight not just affecting our club, but seen across the country and very evident with amalgamations at U21B level. Three of the nine teams in north Tipperary in this grade are amalgamations: Lorrha/Shannon Rovers, Ballinahinch/Templederry and Moneygall/Clonakenny.

Last Monday we played our only U21B game of the year, losing out to our near neighbours Burgess in extra-time after a great contest. The competition was to be run on a group basis with draws already made but this had to be changed due to the replays in both county finals at Senior and Premier Intermediate. These dreaded deadlines to the fore again despite the fact that the U21 county champions can go no further into a provincial competition.

It’s obvious clubs are struggling with numbers at this age and I detect a strong drive to kill off U21 altogether at club level. But there is a massive retention issue between 17 and 23 and to me merging U19 and U21 into an U20 grade will not help. If we are to have any chance of retaining these young people, we have got to give them a meaningful calendar that extends over months rather than weeks. Many of these lads play soccer and rugby where the games schedule is on a different level.

Have you a better chance of retaining a player if they are still playing at 21? Of course you do. Though you’d have an even better chance if we could guarantee them more than one game.

Of the 18 players on our U21 panel, five played their only game of the year last Monday. We had four more players who trained with us but could not play because they are 16. In the upper echelons of the GAA, they are rolling out rules around playing ages that might work for big clubs overflowing with players. But for the small club fighting hard to survive they are not fit for purpose.

We talk a lot about player welfare and give players one game in the whole season. The social environment these youngsters have to deal with is multiple times trickier than what I experienced growing up. Gathering with their friends playing hurling is among the best things they can do and we have to facilitate them doing it more regularly. Funnily enough, there has been progress in this regard at juvenile levels. Our 13s in Portroe played 20 matches this year, between hurling and football. Then, at the very ages we are most vulnerable to dropout, we shut off the supply.

The evidence is mounting that we have serious challenges but are we doing enough to tackle them head on? I am fortunate to work with leadership teams in business environments. Passive and silent leadership are not sought-after styles in the business world. Nor will they get the association to where it needs to go in the years to come, I can guarantee that. We hear very little from our people in positions of power. And when we do there is not much of substance.

Our clubs have some of the best facilities of any sporting organisation in the country and beyond Ireland - a credit to the people who made it happen. But they require a steady flow of talent year in year out putting those pitches and ball walls to good use. There is no point in Willie Mullins or Aidan O’Brien having the best facilities in their yards if they don’t have the horses.

I am genuinely concerned about the journey we are on and where it will lead us to in the next 10 years. It needs immediate attention and a vision for the future from the top down that builds from the bottom up. We hope the GAA will always be embedded in our communities but we can’t take that for granted. And can’t casually allow our young people drift away.

We have loads of capable, qualified people in our association who have the best interests of hurling at their core. They should be given the task to look at how we are structured and see if there is a better way.

I haven’t even touched on the lack of attention our sport gets now for more than half the year. Are we doing all we can to market Gaelic games where you have barely started talking about the hurling final and you are straight away observing a muted build-up to a football final one week later?

In hurling we have the best field sport in the world but the game is being starved of oxygen and is rapidly losing ground in the national psyche. Do people fully appreciate what would be lost to our national identity if this continues?

Standards will drop too. The elite player is being asked to train 12 months of the year. Burnout is inevitable. Ultimately the quality of the sport will suffer. And it’s unlikely we will see many more TJ Reids or Noel McGraths as careers that long will just not be sustainable. What a travesty that will be.

Do we seriously believe the model we have is serving all our players? Those on the attack will point the finger too at the county manager, a group I used to be part of. The argument is the county manager needs too much control to allow club and county seasons work side by side in harmony. I don’t buy it. When we won the All-Ireland in 2010, many of the Tipp lads played in divisional finals a fortnight before. They played an even more intense match behind closed doors in training the week before the final. You can get injured anytime.

This needs loud, vocal, decisive, stellar leadership. We have got to create a vision of where we want to go to ensure we continue to be the heartbeat of communities right across the country. Our future generations depend on us. We can play a leading role in making our country a better place to live based on the values we equip our people with from a young age in the field.

Ticking along, steady as you go, will not win the day here. There are issues underneath the bonnet that need addressing and quickly. We are keen to get our arms around it in Port but a vision for the future is required across the country and quickly.

This should be a time when we are looking to grow the game outside its traditional bases and awaken 50% of the counties that have little or no hurling clubs or matches. Yet we are in a situation where numbers of clubs are dropping dramatically in the traditional counties. My question is who cares. Who is building an immediate plan to stem the tide?

***

Why I’d twist rather than stick with the split season

1. We do not have the optimum model that best serves the creation of a meaningful games schedule across clubs.

2. We are driven more by completing the games schedule to deadlines than providing meaningful programmes for players, especially at the critical age bracket from 17 to 23.

3. The number of club amalgamations is very concerning. The association is built on parish rivalry and God forbid we would lose the Port and Burgess rivalry any time soon.

4. The inter-county hurling championship is run off too quickly. We need to showcase our best players and our most compelling product over a longer period while accommodating a proper club schedule of games.

5. A split season of six months is of little relevance to a club that is finished playing championship hurling after two games in 14 days.

6. The county player is being asked to train close on 12 months of the year. We are without question going to limit the longevity of their inter-county playing careers.

supernova5 · 03-11-2023 7:38pm

great article, I wholeheartedly concur

03-11-2023 8:27pm

A lot of problems and no answers. I was talking to someone who's involved with a dual senior club and he was bemoaning the problems of competing in both. With tongue in cheek I suggested that they drop the football and concentrate on hurling with a game every second weekend instead of every weekend. Obviously I was cut short but this article reminds me of the conversation. Trying to have intercounty players involved with club and county is what's making club championship so difficult to balance. Could there be a case of playing without your county players, imagine 16 senior teams all playing each other , the same for intermediate . Clubs might complain that the costs were too much . Would the ordinary club players rather this, I think every one would love this except the clubs with county players. Liam is a little wrong in forgetting that kilruane also had a North championship to try to reach the knockout stages . Another solution might be having 3 groups of 6 instead of 4 groups of 4 , every team gets 5 games with 4 coming out of each group so as to keep the groups alive for longer

Lost Ormond · 03-11-2023 9:09pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121321607#Comment_121321607

I rhink there has to be a case where we do play more club games without players involved in the inter county game as we cant hold up the games for several dozen players between subs etc because 1 player is involved in a county team.

johntune · 03-11-2023 9:59pm

Sheedy is being disingenuous when he said he released players for a divisional final in 2010. They didn't get to train once with their clubs and it was only a few players.

In reality under Sheedy's reign (and others) and before the split season club players got one divisional match and maybe 2 if lucky, played in April between the intercounty league and championship. They then had to wait until the intercounty season was over until the club championship could restart which could be the middle of September.

Club players had to start training in January to be ready for 1 or 2 matches in April and then keep training until it resumed in September.

Club players now have a set calender, can plan holidays and have a competitive league to play before the championship starts.

There are now a brilliant set of fixtures for u17s and under. Sheedy makes a great point in relation to u19s,u20s,u21s. They need a similar sets of fixtures that u17s have. Tipperary Bord na nOg have done a terrific job with the u17s and below and should be given the u19/u20 grade as well.

There was a big meeting of all clubs a couple of weeks ago in the dome and there was a big discussion on retention and putting proper fixtures in place for 17-21 year olds. If Sheedy felt so strongly he should have made an appearance.

03-11-2023 10:52pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121321917#Comment_121321917

The set calendar is great and brings great order and players can plan their summer, but that's where part of the issue is , the summer goes by with no games.

johntune · 04-11-2023 12:15am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121322166#Comment_121322166

League matches happen over the summer. A nice amount of matches to build up for the championship.

The club championship starts in August.

evolvingtipperary101 · 05-11-2023 10:36pm

Hurlers who remove their helmets during a game will be requested to leave the field if a new playing rule motion is approved next year.

evolvingtipperary101 · 08-11-2023 12:04pm

Sat, Feb 3 - v Dublin, Parnell Park, 2.30pm

Sun, Feb 11 - v Galway, Thurles, 4.00pm

Sun Feb 25 - v Westmeath, Thurles 1.45pm

Sat Mar 9 - v Limerick, Gaelic Grounds, 7.30pm

Sun Mar 17 - v Antrim, Corrigan Park, 1.45pm

hero25 · 11-11-2023 10:19pm

Great win for Nenagh CBS yesterday, beating St Flannans to win U17A Munster hurling title.

Nenagh CBS create history in their defeat of St Flannan's to win first ever Dean Ryan Cup title - Tipperary Live

evolvingtipperary101 · 12-11-2023 4:49pm

Good goal:

https://x.com/StreamsportI/status/1723697243054567466?s=20

laoismanj · 12-11-2023 5:02pm

Roscrea are the u21 north champions

Both roscrea and toomevara are certainly 2 teams to watch

klose · 12-11-2023 7:27pm

Tidy.

Shame there's no competition for commercials in the county, they've been cakewalking it for years now, usually come up short in munster then.

evolvingtipperary101 · 12-11-2023 8:00pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121359290#Comment_121359290

Clonmel were Munster Champions in 2015. Beaten by Ballyboden after E.T. in the all ireland semi. Ballyboden walked the final.

12-11-2023 9:02pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121358758#Comment_121358758

Is that a long ball I see before me ?

klose · 12-11-2023 9:22pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121359418#Comment_121359418

Great team and they left that all Ireland behind (still can't believe a player sent off can come back on if a game goes into E.T) I'd say it still haunts the lads.

My point is currently there ain't much competition for em in Tipp at all the last few years, no slight on them, it's up to the other teams to get to their level.

evolvingtipperary101 · 12-11-2023 9:26pm

Decent highlights here. Think both Cahill and Kelly will be on the blower to McGarry.

https://x.com/MunsterGAA/status/1723755025183457616?s=20

evolvingtipperary101 · 12-11-2023 9:26pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121359689#Comment_121359689

A rare beast, indeed.

evolvingtipperary101 · 12-11-2023 11:28pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121359787#Comment_121359787

Big Dingle test coming

windy shepard henderson · 13-11-2023 3:28am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121359808#Comment_121359808

you will see plenty of them if its dingle , maybe the penny will drop some day and everyone will start playing like the most successful teams in the game , gaelic football at the moment reminds me like crypto currency , its not actual money but everyone else seems to be investing in it so we should too