Kilkenny GAA Thread

Wexford seem to be doing a lot right underage and development wise. They have a state of the art training centre, must be 7/8 pitches with easily 4 floodlight pitches, gym, meeting rooms etc. and i believe they have an all weather pitch under construction in the centre of excellence, Billy Ocean might be able to confirm. There county board have a full time commercial manager and seem to be doing the best they can financially. There underage squads are stacked with good coaches. Id imagine it will be only a matter of time before they come strong again, they are very similar to us underage most years, they bet us in minor and i think it was a draw under 20 this year, it is tip for tap most years.

I'm not saying there's not problems with the game. There's a lot, ie ,throwing, steps, spare arm tackle.

But the nonsense he spouts about kilkenny having no chance against big powerful counties with bags of money gets on my wick. As I said, only couple of years ago he was predicting years of domination for the Dublin footballers after a win over kerry in the league. Look at them now ,beaten in successive game's by little old Louth and westmeath. Why ? Its the generational players like Fenton, mannion ,mccaffrey,Mccarthy etc are gone and their replacements are nowhere near the same level. Same as kilkenny. Not rocket science.

100%

A few paragraphs of whataboutery followed by an admission that to be successful now, you need huge amounts of money.

The look the other way BS needs to stop, if the GAA wishes to remain an amateur 32 county organisation, it cannot allow vast sums of outside money (much of it undeclared to Revenue) pumped directly or indirectly into county set ups to dictate success for a county (or clubs).

I have dozens of posts here demonstrating I am not a worshipper of all things Cody, but I salute his Corinthian ethos, that every player and backroom staff understood that (outside of out of pocket expenses) you were in the set up for no financial gain.

The GAA must have ground rules on county team spending and for me the only solution is to place caps.

Even the greed fuelled American sports understand that you cannot allow teams outspend their rivals by vast amounts. They understand that to allow that will kill competitiveness.

Money is also the main reason why the rules are being gamed, hordes of well-paid coaches and analysts constantly coming up with ever more clever/cynical ways to circumvent the rules for on field advantage and cod match officials.

I don't often agree with you but you're spot on here. The most ridiculous comparison I've seen in a long time. Alonzo seems to think county hurling teams have an open transfer market!! Wasn't jp also involved when Limerick were in crisis and fighting with each other?

Then goes on about it being impossible for small counties to compete with the Dublin footballers when Louth and westmeath have beaten them in the last month!!

Does money help? Of course it does but if you don't have the players you're at nothing. If we had a jp in kilkenny at the moment it wouldn't make some of our more moderate players into superstars to compete with cork or Limerick.

"Anyone claiming that Limerick's success has little to do with the countless millions JP has sunk into the county is as delusional as someone claiming Chelsea's success had nothing to do with Abramovich"

Note the important bolded bit.

I never claimed that Limerick's success is soley down to JP's millions, I simply stated that anyone who believes those millions haven't given at least some assistance to their success is delusional, and I stand fully behind that.

To the self-righteous posters that believe pointing out the vast financial imbalance that exist between counties is "slanderous" (ffs?) and naively believing that Limerick's success is solely down to hard work and uniquely talented players, I repeat, anyone believing the countless millions JP has sunk into Limerick hasn’t been a significant contributory factor to their success is delusional. They just want to believe
in fairytales that if any county wants to match Limerick's success, they just need to get a talented crop, knuckle down and work hard.

Vast chasms in spending between counties will ruin competitiveness and runs contrary to the ethos of the GAA.

Rather than huff and puff about “slandering” the great Limerick team (and great they are too, no question), why don’t you answer the every simple question I have raised?

Should, the GAA allow vast chasms in terms of funding between countries?

Finally, if you are correct and Limerick’s success is solely down to a uniquely talented group who have worked their socks off to achieve their success. Then they should have nothing to fear from a level playing field whereby every county competing for the Mc Carthy cup is subject to annual team budget cap (adjusted upwards pro rata if they reach an AI semi or final).

Yeh, let's break up Kierans and instead have 2/3 semi competitive teams play in the A and 2/3 more in B competition.

Whatever is wrong in Kilkenny at the moment, blaming Kierans for it is madness.

The move to u17 and u20 has meant that the u19 schools competition has little impact on either competition as the best schools players are a bit too young for the 20s and way too old for minor, so blaming Kieran's for our lack of success at underage is wrong. If the minor went back to 18 (or better still 18.5), as it should, I'd be confident our success rate would go way up due to the impact of having so many Kieran's and CBS players having just finished the schools competion, battle hardened and in top shape.

As for the constant whine here that Kierans' net is too wide and they are unique in that. They arent.

Take a look at their two biggest rivals in last 15 years, ASR Limerick and Pres Athenry.

ASR teams are always stacked with players from 10/15/20 kilometers from the school (inclding some of the very best young Clare players). Declan Hannon treked the 25k from Adare to ASR for 6 years.

Pres Athenry, although not as wide a radius as ASR or Kierans, still draw in players from Clarinbridge, Claregalway, Craughwell, Ardrahan etc, all miles away from Athenry, bypsasing nearer schools. Aaron Niland made the 15km daily trek to Athenry, bypassing a number of nearer schools.

Ditto Flannans, Colmans, and Peters (back in the day)

But look, I'm not going down the Kieran's rabbit hole, Im discussing the unfairness of vast difffrences in funding between counties.

Kierans have won 10 of the last 15 Croke Cups going back to 2010 ( not played 2 years due to Covid) so that's a base of players born 1991- 2009, that's converted into 2 minor all Irelands in 2010&14 and an u20 in 2022. So to me those Croke Cups present a flase picture.

Would you not think it's better for Kilkenny for players to spread around getting proper exposure getting competitive games rather than 1 or 2 schools stockpiling all the talent.

It would of course be better, but how do you actually implement it? You're asking either the young lads or the parents to make a decision and if a young lad has his heart on going to Kieran's, how does a parent say no?

Assuming you're correct, ill ask you one simple question. In 5 years time when the majority of this Limerick team are retired or well past their best ( 2014 minors will be 35 years old) , do you think they'll be within a country mile of winning an all Ireland? Assuming jp is still "financing " them.

Quaid, dan morrissey, wod will be retired, Byrnes, hegarty will be 37, lynch, gillane, morrissey, finn ,Peter casey 35, Barry Nash, Kyle Hayes 32/33.

I can't comment on specifics but there's definitely a gap and lack or correlation somewhere.

In relation to your last question,

No,

I saw the Roinn D AI Final between Ballyhale and Mount Sion and the idea that say Jake Mullen would be better served playing at that level of hurling is absurd.

One of the reasons I feel that so many excellent young Galway players over last 10 years never made it is that an an unusually high number played for small clubs and small schools.

Sean Mc Donagh looked to me to be the finest underage prospect I'd seen in at least a decade back in 2019. But he was playing schools at C level the following year and Junior hiurling for his club. Cant have helped.

Look at the 2008 AI KK minor team, we got Walter Walsh and nothing else off it, partly because so many of them were from small junior and intermediate clubs. Digressing a bit here I accept but playing at a low level of schools and club is not ideal for a good young player.

And and as a poster has already correctly pointed out, how the hell would you even go about "spreading players around different schools"

Good young hurlers deciding to travel 10/15/20km to school in Kierans is far from unqiue to Kierans as I have already shown.

I think Flannans Harty Cup final team this year contained just one player from Ennis!

And AFAIK no one in Limerick or Galway or Clare is whining about ASR and Athenry and Flannans attracting a lot of the best young hurlers in their counties.

Look, that's my tuppence worth on Kierans, I posted yesterday for the first time in a while to discuss rules and the impact of financial resources on hurling and really that's my main interest at present.

Im certainly not interested in engaging with posters who wont debate the issue of rules and the impact of vast finances but just get indignant that by even raising the issues for discsussion that I am somehow ludicrously "slandering" this great Limerick team.

Look at the Limerick main 22 or so players of the last decade. Quaid Intermediate Club, Finn Intermediate Club, Nash recently relegated to Intermediate, Hayes Club only senior a couple of years, Hegarty Junior Club, Flanagan Junior Club, Cathal O'Neill Junior club. I think that's a very snobbish attitude myself, if there's a good hurler on your hands try do everything to nurger his talent regardless of his club or school.

You’re right but to be fair Danesfort,Clara, Bennettsbridge, Village, O loughlins, Dicksboro, are all in close proximity of St Kieran’s …. Kilkenny is not a large county and as ned said how can you stop a parent from sending a kid to the school of their choice.

well Ned I agree entirely with what you are saying. I just feel this should always have been the case as regards honesty and openness. I presume every GAA member is a trustee and therefore be privy to more info than we were getting. Ned do you not think they are feeling the heat and might be changing things up to ward off the revolution?

I believe they're actually scrapping the nearest school rules for bus eligibility actually. So it's going the opposite way.

http://Minister Foley announces the publication of ‘School Transport 2030’ – the review of the school transport scheme https://share.google/YDMUcqfHgPhvHFYOK

It's Kieran's fault that students are choosing to go there, not because they are poaching students from around the county but because they are successful and it makes young lads think that's where they need to go.

The biggest issue for Kilkenny has been the change to u17 and u20. Back in the day lads who were on the schools team were also on the minor (u18) teams and there was a seamless transition between the teams and the training done with kierans was standing to them.

Now, a player on a kierans team is too old for u17 and too young for u20 so they have a year where if they don't do something for their club they are getting lost. We haven't figured out what to do with that age group of u18s, while other counties have got their development systems right allowing them to bridge that gap.