Neil Ewing in the Independent today

ChippingSodbury

https://www.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/the-training-to-games-ratio-in-gaa-is-a-farce-my-plan-and-fixtures-template-to-transform-the-game-of-gaelic-football-41972739.html

What are your thoughts on this? It's a very radical change he proposes. His stats on training/ playing are frightening and yes, he's from a weaker county which, in the grand scheme of things in the country, most of our intercounty players are. All of the young lads I know want to play games, not endless training.

For those of you who don't know Neil, he dedicated himself to Sligo for a lot of years and also captained them for a while. He's also a very clever guy off the field.

callaway92

He put way too much effort into that I think

The stats on training/playing matches don't come close to matching up with what I come across at the Intercounty Level. He's not counting challenge matches etc. which are very regular at Intercounty level now behind closed doors

Better people than I will comment on the changes proposed, but just a quick point on the training:

I've a friend who was a decent hurler and ended up on an intercounty team at Minor level when he was about 17. At that time, he was playing for his own minor club team, the senior club team and the minor football club team. All 4 of them mandated that he had to attend training for each team or he was going to get bumped. And, of course, training for each was on a different day during the week to avoid clashing with the others.

So, he was training 4 days a week and playing 2 or 3 games a weekend sometimes. He didn't mind it too much, but we warned him about suffering from burnout etc. It came to a head around xmas time, I remember. After breaking his bollocks for the past however number of months, he got a call on Christmas day to let him know about a training session on the beach "this day next week", with details to follow.

Turns out it was running up and down the sand dunes at 8am on new year's day.

The ONLY reason for that is to force the lads not to gargle on NYE. Literally no other reason behind it. It was the straw that broke the camel's back and he ended up packing it all in and pissing off to Oz for a year, making a fortune, enjoying himself at the weekends and playing Aussie Rules in his spare time. Best decision he ever made.

bucketybuck

To be honest, I stopped reading at the point where he said the club and intercounty seasons should be run concurrently, that it just needs some "maturity" from intercounty managers.

Good luck with that pal.

There is more than enough evidence to know that when the seasons are concurrent that the club players get treated like dirt on the shoes of those in charge.

ChippingSodbury

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119641001#Comment_119641001

It's a bit ironic that there are so many challenge games being played behind closed doors when there are people baying for more exposure of top quality intercounty games during this split season. Surely that in itself points to a big problem.

I don't know if Neil's ideas are the correct ones but in my opinion, radical ideas are certainly worthy of discussion.

One of my lads was involved in hurling and football minor intercounty this year and from Jan, he had training Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, sometimes a challenge game on Sat and training on a Sun (lucky enough Club didn't require him to train or we would have had to petition for an 8-day week). In total, I think there were 10 competitive games, over around end of Jun or so. He was dropped from one of the panels for a game because he attended some other thing and missed a training session about 3 weeks before that game (in the words of the manager, not hearsay).

callaway92

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119641190#Comment_119641190

That’s on the management though if it’s just 1 team

Its supposed to be 3 sessions max (generally 2 sessions and a match then)

If management are asking for more than that, complaints need to be made

If your son was playing dual, that’s his own choice and of course he’ll inevitably have a large amount of training sessions

greenspurs

I wonder when the 3 Associations amalgamate , will this improve it or make it worse ?

At the moment , just speaking as a "Girl dad" ...... The Camogie and GF are ok ie not clashing for training , but now with shorter evenings its the weekends that are packed.

My u16 camogie team are waiting for 2 weeks to try get a county semi final played, due to girls playing up/down , fixture clashes, the home side have no lights so it has to be a weekend throw in now (as they wont come to us, we have lights), and GF games on at weekends now also.

We asked for a neutral venue, but as above, theres so many fixtures/ training on pitches its hard to get in anywhere!

Add in, the severe shortage of refs ......... 🙄

callaway92

Exactly - Unfortunately, with an amalgamation there will now often be the case of 'hey you've been prioritising the men's game too much' etc. and fixture schedules could get weird

Ideally, more pitches would be floodlit to allow for evening games midweek now

ChippingSodbury

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119641329#Comment_119641329

The point I was trying to make is that even with a larger sample size i.e. he's involved with two teams, the ratio of training to games is still really poor

Football: Approx 65 sessions for ~7 games

Hurling: Approx 50 sessions for 6 games

That's around 9 training sessions per game (and that's including 2 round robin competitions!)

Most lads I know are involved because they like the game and playing the game, there are very few who are involved solely because they like to train...

Almost any player I heard interviewed re Round Robin Munster Hurling Champ was much happier playing lots of games over a shorter period of time instead of endless training.

callaway92

Funnily enough the people I’d have been involved with that played League/County at Meagher/Rackard/Ring level etc weren’t mad on the format. It leads to burnout having match after match - sometimes they’d have preferred an analysis session instead of a Match or heavy training on a Saturday at times

PARlance

Fair play to him for putting a lot of thought into it but my god that was a lot to take in and he probably overcomplicated it to the point that I imagine most people would switch off. I had to go back and read it again to try absorb more of it.

A few things, county and club running concurrently... It's not going to happen and I suspect he knows that deep down. A better/more realistic proposal other than "requires maturity for managers, players etc" is needed if it was to somehow work.

I suspect he has close connections with NY? The proposal for a 5 day league series final in NY is just daft if you ask me. Just seemed odd to see that angle being put forward and if it's due to connections then it would discredit the whole thing.

The idea of putting Killkenny and Dublin in the same league with the expectation that this mixing of abilities will eventually raise standards, attract crowds etc is fanciful.

I don't think college football was brought into it at all.

7's seem to be a big part of filling gaps / keeping clubs happy. 7's are grand for one offs but not something that would keep serious players interest over time imo.

I could go on.. it's good to look at other options / point of views. I probably come across as being overly negative, there are good suggestions in the article and change is needed, but from reading that, I couldn't see many buying into it.