Your opinion on Intermediate and Junior football

PaurGasm

I'm new to GAA in Dublin...And that means I dont have the slightest clue what the difference is between Intermediate and Junior football...

Im gonna join a club and see where they put me but I want to know how you guys would say the difference between Junior and Intermediate football...

In fact, put your own stereotype player who plays for Junior and Intermediate for the craic!!!

Clareman

The grading of adult GAA teams are Senior->Senior B->Intermediate->Junior A->Junior B->Junior C. Most junior teams won't be taking things "too" seriously, most players will be more interested in keeping playing rather than training too hard. Intermediates will probably train with the senior team (3 or 4 times a week), Juniors might train once or twice a week.

If you were to ask me to stereotype a player into each bracket, Intermediate football would be a fairly fit guy who just wants to play the game, mightn't be the most skillful player ever, probably does 10k's for fun, maybe even a triathlon or 2, might also be a good player who is unlucky to have an intercounty player in his spot in the senior team. A junior player is more interested in playing the game, might have been good underage except college/work/life got in the way and gave up the game for a few years. The sessions after junior games/training would always be better btw

Martin567

Bracketing players as Intermediate or Junior surely only makes sense in Dublin where huge clubs exist, with multiple teams. In most counties, it is the club which is Senior, Intermediate or Junior and not the player. The best player in the county might be from a small junior club and so he would therefore be a Junior player.

I'm sure I read somewhere that only 5 of the Cork football team which won the All Ireland in 2010 were playing Senior football in Cork. Also, only 5 of the Kilkenny U21 team beaten by Clare in the hurling a few weeks back are currently playing Senior hurling in Kilkenny.

varberg

Thats a remarkable statistic Martin. There mustent be too many senior football teams in cork? Lads will play at the highest level they can so if they get to play senior with their club its great if their club plays at a lower level then sure thats fine too.

In the bigger clubs they often have senior and intermediate or junior teams and having been at a couple of matches at junior level in dublin i have to say its highly competitive and a lot of intermediate and junior players and teams take it very seriously. Most would train regularly and have regular games.

mightyreds

Clareman wrote: »

The grading of adult GAA teams are Senior->Senior B->Intermediate->Junior A->Junior B->Junior C. Most junior teams won't be taking things "too" seriously, most players will be more interested in keeping playing rather than training too hard. Intermediates will probably train with the senior team (3 or 4 times a week), Juniors might train once or twice a week.

Dunno about in clare but in kildare our championship is graded like this senior>intermediate>junior>senior B>intermediate B>junior B>junior C.
The B championships have been renamed to Reserve A,B,C,D but have the same concept.
I wouldn't say junior players have a passing interest either peter kelly who won an all star 2 years ago with kildare is playing junior football and emmet bolton who won an all star last year with kildare is playing intermediate.
So there is a level of fitness required but as clareman says senior is the fittest and the best, rightly so and then it filters down but if you were playing junior i wouldn't be looking for a pub team either we played junior football for 6 years and trained extremely hard and still took us six years to win it since we've been doing ok in the intermediate too could of made a final this year but were unlucky not to.

Tom Joad

Its one of them "how long is a piece of string questions really..". It varies hugely from County to County and in some counties a significant portion of the county team can be from intermediate or even junior results.

An example of this was the intermediate and senior county finals were on in Cavan on Sunday and there was more current county players involved in the intermediate final than the senior!!

Hammer Archer

It really does vary all over the country. In Meath it's Senior - Intermediate - Junior A - Junior B - Junior C - Junior D. Some clubs' first team play in Junior B and, next season, Donaghmore/Ashbourne's reserve team will be Intermediate. Junior A is probably the most competitive of all the grades so players certainly do take it very seriously.

theoneeyedman

Martin567 wrote: »

Bracketing players as Intermediate or Junior surely only makes sense in Dublin where huge clubs exist, with multiple teams. In most counties, it is the club which is Senior, Intermediate or Junior and not the player. The best player in the county might be from a small junior club and so he would therefore be a Junior player.

I'm sure I read somewhere that only 5 of the Cork football team which won the All Ireland in 2010 were playing Senior football in Cork. Also, only 5 of the Kilkenny U21 team beaten by Clare in the hurling a few weeks back are currently playing Senior hurling in Kilkenny.

I don't know if this is strictly accurate....most of the Cork players you mention would be players from junior clubs but they would all probably play for divisional teams in the senior championship.

Clareman

When Clare won the All Ireland in 95 Bodyke and Kilnamona were both intermediate/junior clubs and had players starting that day (Doyle and Hegarty), Tubber had a famous son who scored the winning goal also It's not unusual from someone from a non-senior club to win a senior All Ireland, in fact most of the Clare intermediate team who won the All Ireland last year played with senior clubs.

The_Kew_Tour

Clareman wrote: »

When Clare won the All Ireland in 95 Bodyke and Kilnamona were both intermediate/junior clubs and had players starting that day (Doyle and Hegarty), Tubber had a famous son who scored the winning goal also It's not unusual from someone from a non-senior club to win a senior All Ireland, in fact most of the Clare intermediate team who won the All Ireland last year played with senior clubs.

Is that allowed? Must be. Just thought though Intermediate meant what it said on tin.

Clareman

The_Kew_Tour wrote: »

Is that allowed? Must be. Just thought though Intermediate meant what it said on tin.

I think they've changed the gradings on it, once you aren't an intercounty senior player you can play intermediate I think.

robbiezero

PaurGasm wrote: »

I'm new to GAA in Dublin...And that means I dont have the slightest clue what the difference is between Intermediate and Junior football...

Im gonna join a club and see where they put me but I want to know how you guys would say the difference between Junior and Intermediate football...

In fact, put your own stereotype player who plays for Junior and Intermediate for the craic!!!

The standard of Junior A football in Dublin is very high.
I am from Tipp and some of the Junior A teams in Dublin would easily compete at senior in Tipp.
Castleknock won the Junior A championship there last Sunday and Ciaran Kilkenny was not even their best player on the day.
The equivalent of the average Junior B team in Tipp would be found in AFL 9 i.e. Division 9 and maybe the Junior C or D championship.

The good thing about Dublin clubs, especially the big ones is that some of them can have 4 or 5 adult teams from Div 1 to Div 10 so there should be a team to match your level.

Martin567

Clareman wrote: »

I think they've changed the gradings on it, once you aren't an intercounty senior player you can play intermediate I think.

Kilkenny & Cork are still excluded from playing any senior club hurlers.

premierstone

Martin567 wrote: »

Kilkenny & Cork are still excluded from playing any senior club hurlers.

Yeah they keep changing the rules, initiallty Tipp were part of that but because of the genius's that we have on the county board relegation was removed from Senior Hurling many years ago( back this year but too late) so Tipp have 32 senior hurling clubs, 32 I kid you not! Which meant that they couldnt actually field a competitive Intermediate team, didn't win a game in 7 years, so Tipp were loosing interest fast and were actually looking at withdrawing from the competition.

So two years ago they were granted the same status as all other counties bar KK and Cork and now they are AI champs! TBF to Tipp they did put in their own restrictions that you had to be a certain age and couldnt be part of any other Tipp panel that year, but they actually didn't have to do this.