Dublin GAA Discussion Thread: Mod Note - No 'Dublin Dominance' chat allowed!

Davy Byrne will be back too and Fenton won't call it a day. He has another 2-3 years left. Mannion and McCaffrey is up in the air

I think you need to go to specsavers. The Galway player was behind Con and sort of half jumped into him. Again, nobody is accusing Galway of cheating. The ref was poor in the home stretch and it’s a very common theme in our games. You don’t agree and I don’t care.

He never even got contact on him. COC never even looked to the ref for a free....that says enough

It is a contact sport. You do know that. Right?? It's not basketball.

As Brian Cody often said - have you gone through the full 70 minutes of the game, and looked at every tackle that was made, for where there should be a free or shouldnt - or for where there could be frees if you wanted to be really strict about it.

Have to admit the only thing I noticed was a good chance missed.

There are a lot of reasons Dublin lost the game. The referee is not one of them.

The thing about the Dublin underage setup is that it is all about participation by the widest group, including those with special needs or disabilities. The funding has never been about producing for the senior team, it has been to widen the appeal of the game to the broad community. Sometimes that will result in players coming through, sometimes it won't. When it happens it is by accident rather than design. This is the big mistake that outsiders make when looking at the funding.

A successful senior Dublin team is an unintended consequence of the funding being given to broad participation at underage level. With unintended consequences, you are dependent on circumstances being right.

Yeah, most of the attention is on likely retirements of Cluxton, Fitzsimons and James Mac.

But even the ones who still have something to offer, they are at an age now where the next 3-5 years is unlikely to be as good as the previous 5 years. The likes of Fenton, Kilkenny, Mannion, McCaffrey, Costello and so on.

That only matters if your aim is to produce for the senior team. It is not a problem if your aim is mass participation and fostering a love of the game. I don't see the issue, participation is up hugely in Dublin.

Ok leave the funding to one side.

It is not 'all about' participation by the widest group. There is an emphasis on that in some clubs. In others there isnt. There is zero communication from the county board about it, in any meaningful way.

And - there is streaming in underage from a very young age; informally from u10s. That is to say, 9 year olds being told you are in the good team or you in the bad team.

Not sure if thats good for inclusiveness.

But what it most definitely does is create an elite stream of players for the larger clubs from a very very young age.

At least 10 clubs will have A, B and C teams at that age. Another 10 will have A and B teams. So you will have 20 'A' teams coming through. Which is 350 to 400 players that are marked out as being good, strong, elite whatever. In addition, there are all the one team clubs which also have their strong players.

And thats for each age group.

How can this structure not be generating players that really really stand out?

The missing link for me is two fold:

(i) what is happening in the Dublin development squads? Big grey area, imho.

(ii) this streaming from a very young age will basically cut out any late developers from emerging. The streaming in clubs is extremely inflexible - simply because its too much of a challenge to move players down, the parents complain, the players threaten to quit and the mentors throw their hands in the air and say 'why bother'.

The third thing is that an enormous amount of the better players are lost to schools rugby.

Finally - your point on inclusiveness/ funding refers to Games Development Officers; and correctly that is where they place their emphasis. They have very little involvement in developing elite players.

Nonetheless, with the increased numbers, with the sheer volume of players - you'd have to ask, why are we not seeing this having an impact.

Not at all Blanch, it's more than that. There are lots of smaller clubs that are on their arse numbers wise and struggling to put out a single team while their neighbour has 1000's of players.

Participation is all well and good (I'm all for it by the way) but the kids also need to be thought the skills of the game. If you're coaching 60 kids at a training session then there's very little going on in the way of skills. I see this first hand every week. U11 girls that can't run, catch, or solo a ball. It's basically a social club for them with zero interest in the actual game. And don't get me started on the rubbish coming out of the Go Games committee. Clubs just ignoring what they are saying and doing as they please.

Participation is a very important aspect and keeping as many kids involved in the club has to be one of theaim goals. However, teaching the core skills of the game has to go hand in hand with that.

There absolutely is outreach by the clubs, especially to schools and it's very much not the "done" thing to try out your flyer up in a school that another club feel is in their area.

But it's mostly down to parents, many of who will have no ties to the area. The massive influx of non Dubs into those areas has also led to the falling player numbers in the smaller clubs.

There 100% isnt.

The games promotion officers go to the local schools. Thats all, no more.

Your point is that they go outside their catchment area, hoovering up players from smaller clubs. (I assume thats your point).

There is no other outreach of this type. The large clubs are keenly aware they are struggling to cope with numbers and would be only too happy for other clubs to take them.

Whats happening in practice - if you look at the super clubs, they are all basically in middle class areas. And a lot of the one or two team clubs are in the lower income areas. Some parents in the lower income areas are making the decision to send their kid to the middle class club thats a bit further away. Thats whats happening, thats the long and short of it.

An advantage in what sense? What simply happens is that the one-team club plays in division 5, alongside Crokes B team or C team.

Where is the advantage or disadvantage?

Bigger pool of players to pick from and better facilities.

He definitely was one of them in my opinion.

The threshold of Galway getting frees and us getting frees were night and day.
Needs a bit of work on his hand singals too. Making it up as he went along.