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Irish Hopefuls

  • 17-09-2016 1:33am
    #1
    tintagel
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1 ✭


    First post and do not want to be critical but I do not see anything on here, re upcoming talent!!

    ,4 years to Tokyo, can we have more athletes make it, than this year?

    Barr will hopefully be on the scene again, English should be there or there abouts, anyone else? young Kevin McGrath looks promising, maybe 2020, too soon....McMahon,Mulcaire, Neville, Scott, Moses. a few names to mention.... prob forgot some folk, field eventers going well this last few years, sommer Lecky, Ryan carthy Walsh, brendan o donnell


Comments

  • #2
    glacial_pace71
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 301 ✭✭glacial_pace71


    Irish athletics is a small community in comparison to, say, GAA or rugby,i.e. it's not that easy to just turn a spotlight on Kevin McGrath and say "oh those 800m times relative to those 1,500m times should be improving at xyz rate ... yada yada ..." and find at least a half-dozen people on the forum who could tell you when they last saw him train, when his pet goldfish died, what he had for breakfast and so forth.

    If you believed the hype the kids got from back in Tiblisi they'd be strewing petals at the feet of Cíara Neville, or walking backwards whilst bowing before McGrath etc.

    Perhaps it's some Cork-Waterford thing but Sam Healy is being talked of as if Thomas Barr was past it already!

    Tokyo should not be the target for much of our young talent but there'll be so much lazy media latching-on to any success at junior events that it'll feed an expectation far beyond what they should be expected to deliver.

    At least with a footballer you can say that "yeah, he was the greatest thing since sliced bread at U-15 level, but he was 5'9" then and still is now: all the other lads have developed ..." or for the rugby lad perhaps something like "he was great in that Leinster Cup quarter-final but that frame couldn't take the muscular development needed to get to the next level. Shame ...". With athletics the amount of effort, determination etc needed is so far in excess of what is demanded by other sports. You can be an average footballer and retire with sportscar, trophy spouse etc but you could be an exceptional athlete and still not get a sports scholarship. It'd be wrong to list a bunch of kids' names here for the inevitable "where are they now? ..." thread in 4 year's time.


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