Irish soccer - aligned season

[Happyhonkaman]

This is going to affect a lot of adult clubs and players too. I know locally we have 2 teams, a senior and junior team in the Munster Senior League.

The Senior team is a lot less competitive without the sprinkling of 5 or 6 GAA players. The junior team also has a few. Now that alone mightn't seem too bad as others get a chance, but what happens then is the second team gets pulled with fellas having to go up to the seniors. You then have 9 or 10 lads getting no regular game time and inevitably call time on it for the year or worse.

There's also the social aspect to it. Winter is miserable in Ireland at the best of times. The soccer gives an outlet to lads. And I know people can play 5 aside and other things but it's not really the same as the team environment, training, matches during winter. Maybe a few pints after as you have the post mortem of where things went wrong.

Seems ill thought out to me.

Love it.. Irish sport in a nutshell!

 

[topper]

The split in the opinions between Dublin and the rest of the country are more to do with the days sports are played on. Things are also far more polarised already, I cold write a thesis on it having seen it in action. What it boils down to in my opinion is that GAA remains a community endeavour, it is intrinsic in every village, town, city and people feel a real connection with their club. More importantly there is a team for every child regardless of ability. I know there will be replies to this saying its not the case because I know of a team that froze a fella out but as a general approach it is the case, and certainly is at the club I am involved with.

Soccer on the other hand is driven by the top clubs and filters down, by the time it gets to the bottom no one gives a monkeys about them one way or the other. Everything is driven by this deluded nonsense about elite levels, they all somehow think these kids are going to make careers in england despite it only applying to a few lads for the entire country every year, yet the entire development of the game still centres around this unattainable goal.. why? So the kids are treated as commodities, approached to join these clubs, taken out of their community and excluded from all other sports to be 'fully committed'.. then they keep them for a few years and release 2/3 of them again.. sent back to their community with their tail between their legs for not being good enough in some dope from home Farms eyes, and their confidence destroyed. There are lads my young fella has played with who have had 3 clubs at 12 years old.. Robbie Keane didn't lick this stuff off a stone!

The DDSL encourage this nonsense allowing Shels, Home Fram, Crumlin etc play their teams from the year below in Division 2 a year up, and displace teams of kids the correct age to make the space for them. I have never in my life seen an organisation eat itself actively like soccer, absolutely mental stuff run by morons

Aaaaahh, rant over


Before anyone suggests it, my young fella has been at the same club since he started playing, and isn't affected by the above. It is just my own observations from watching it all unfold in front of them.. and his coaches are decent lads trying their best to do the right thing and keep it somewhat fun

Superb post

 

[Twiceasnice97]

there is a serious discrepancy between the rural and urban game and the urban has no interest at all in understanding that

about 3 months ago i happened to be beside a really nice lad in a coffee shop in Limerick who was a massively enthusiastic development officer for soccer.
He was in Munster to discuss the move to summer soccer.

a small group were discussing the issue and the consensus was broadly in agreement.

so after about 20 minutes i asked him how would the idea work in clare.
he looked at me and said there was brilliant work going on in Clare and was hugely excited about clare soccer feeding into treaty and galway utd over time.
I asked him how summer soccer would work for a particular club which is very rural but has brilliant facilitys and really good players. To be fair to him he knew the club
he was puzzled and didnt understand what i was getting at.
so i pointed out to him that my nephew plays for them and that summer soccer will mean that himself and at least 2/3s of his team mates will choose hurling ahead of soccer any time there is a clash of any kind and that some of them at the higher levels of hurling will simply quit.

It had never so much as crossed his mind that rural clubs could be essentially made defunct overnight.

How can you not think about something like that

 

[Happyhonkaman]

there is a serious discrepancy between the rural and urban game and the urban has no interest at all in understanding that

about 3 months ago i happened to be beside a really nice lad in a coffee shop in Limerick who was a massively enthusiastic development officer for soccer.
He was in Munster to discuss the move to summer soccer.

a small group were discussing the issue and the consensus was broadly in agreement.

so after about 20 minutes i asked him how would the idea work in clare.
he looked at me and said there was brilliant work going on in Clare and was hugely excited about clare soccer feeding into treaty and galway utd over time.
I asked him how summer soccer would work for a particular club which is very rural but has brilliant facilitys and really good players. To be fair to him he knew the club
he was puzzled and didnt understand what i was getting at.
so i pointed out to him that my nephew plays for them and that summer soccer will mean that himself and at least 2/3s of his team mates will choose hurling ahead of soccer any time there is a clash of any kind and that some of them at the higher levels of hurling will simply quit.

It had never so much as crossed his mind that rural clubs could be essentially made defunct overnight.

How can you not think about something like that

Its not just a rural thing TAN.. my young fella is lucky enough to have been born with a group of really decent kids in an urban area, so they are the nucleus of the A teams in soccer and both GAA codes, and going well in all 3. If the gun was put to their heads tomorrow morning I reckon we would lose 2 of the entire group to soccer, the rest would all pick GAA in a beat. Of the 2 that would stay I reckon one of those would probably go with GAA only that his dad is the soccer coach!

My own fella would probably wonder why I even asked him the question, but at the same time they enjoy playing them all so lets keep them going at everything for as long as possible and let them develop the range of skills that comes with each sport.. when choices have to be made down the road so be it.