amateur irish park football - summer season?

ditpoker

i play in the UCFL and played in the LSL for a few years too. Every season is the same, pile the fixtures in during august and sept with weekend and midweek matches, then from november - march play at max 1 game every 2 weeks MAX, usually with a 5 - 6 week lay off over christmas and new year due to weather and flooded pitches and then, come april and may, its 2-3 games a week to try and finish off the season by mid may. given that the eircom league has gone to a summer season, why, why, WHY, dont the amateur leagues follow suit?

also, what would it take for such a dramatic change to come into reality?

ciaran76

I was told it would not happen as many teams at under age level would struglle to fill a team at some points in the summer because of holidays and GAA or other sports !

Mad_Max

Yep for the underage leagues it probably just wouldnt work.

For the likes of the LSL and other adult leagues I personally can't see the problem with it. 95% of the people in these leagues are working and so only have 4 weeks holliers, so max of 4 games missed. Most people wouldnt take more than 2 in the summer tho (generalisation of course ).

I play with a team that has a fair amount of students so for us it might be hard but still its better than playing Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday as we have been doing lately.

We've had to play games/play against teams without the full 11 because matches are the far side of town and kickoff is like 6.15. Its ridiculous.

Even if they started the season at the start of February it wouldn't take the full summer.

norm

Playing LSL for the last 11 years. Still hanging on. Last couple of seasons we've seen no games for 8 weeks over the winter. And thats on private pitches! Summer footie wouldn't be bad. I'd miss the aul' 10 foot lunges though:D

bohsman

Ive played a half season or so of summer soccer - well trained anyway, wasnt good enough to play regularly. Pitches were rock hard, my feet were raw for months, other than that it was good training in the summer, instead of that freezing pain as you breath and ending up soaking and muddy you just sweat buckets, I definitely preferred it to winter football.

As far as underage went itd be great if it was workable, skill levels would shoot up.

Mad_Max

bohsman wrote: »

As far as underage went itd be great if it was workable, skill levels would shoot up.

Thats a very very good point! Playing on sodden, wet crappy pitches in windy conditions encourages the lump it attitude.