The County Board Complaints Thread

[Reservedcitizen]

My idea for new clubs

Primary Schools be designated to the existing club and the new club. Players must play for their designated club

A GDA be appointed to work full time with the new club and their designated schools

Year 1 - set up go games teams for 7-12 year olds

Year 5 - have a fully functional underage set up for 13-18 year olds

Year 10 - have a fully functioning adult section and club in general

Dream big and deliver

That is a big dream and not realistic in building a sustainable club with that timeline.
Year 1: U6s and promoting in the Junior infants in the designated schools. Focus on getting a solid start. If you try to field teams from U7 to U12 in year 1, it is destined to fail as they won't be able to recruit enough players and it gets off to a negative start immediately. If you can sustain one group at U6 for a year, the motivation will be high to push on the following year
Year 2: U7 & U6.
Keep going up 1 year each time with that first group that started.

All they would need for the first 7 years is a green field with basic toilets and training facilities. Wouldn't even need a full size pitch.
For year 8, when they are playing U14, they would then need to be getting access to a full size pitch, but after 8 years and hopefully 8 good groups of parents, fundraising/goodwill would be achievable.
Slow and steady.

 

[Killyoursons]

setting up a new club is not easy, but where there is a will there is a way

The city is dotted with clubs with facilities but little or no players. Ballyphehane, Redmonds, Liugh Rovers, Ballinure, Rochestown, Delaneys, Mayfield to name a few

Why couldnt Dripsey club be the base for a second club in Ballincollig, Rochestown for a second club in Douglas, surely Riverstown/Sallybrook area has the facilities to do the same. It can be done

My idea for new clubs

Primary Schools be designated to the existing club and the new club. Players must play for their designated club

A GDA be appointed to work full time with the new club and their designated schools

Year 1 - set up go games teams for 7-12 year olds

Year 5 - have a fully functional underage set up for 13-18 year olds

Year 10 - have a fully functioning adult section and club in general

Dream big and deliver

Thanks for this RnB. Something like this, maybe on a timeline closer to Reservedcitizen's suggestion, might be the best option. In practice I wonder about designating schools for certain clubs. First, who would have the authority? Second, with some of the small clubs you mention I wonder how effective it would be, at least in the short term. Take Dripsey - are there enough primary schools close to their pitch to make the scheme work?

None of this is to say it can't work, or shouldn't be tried. At the v least it should be discussed now. Put another way: player retention in some of the biggest clubs is a problem for those clubs, for the players lost and for Cork GAA as a whole, and it is all but impossible for those clubs to solve this problem by themselves (even if you think that in some cases they could be doing better).

 

[Henrys Fonda]

That would be counting 10 at U7 football, 10 at U7 hurling, 10 at U8 Football, 10 at U8 Hurling, etc.
Add in ladies football and camogie and you could be close to 100 teams from u10 down alone.

Don’t know what teams are there, the article didn’t specify

 

[TonyCork80]

Horses for courses really. It's tempting to say something like a club should be capped at 2000 members or something but the reality in Dublin is land. If you look at the sweep of the southside from Lucan to Cuala you have Crokes and Boden with over 5000 members, Ballinteer, Jude's and Cuala in the 3500 to 4000 bracket. Lucan, Davis's and Olaf's with around 3000-3500. That's 8 clubs that are probably in the biggest 10-15 in Ireland. Not to mention the likes of Pats, de la salle, Kevin's killians, wanderers, stars, TSS/Faughs, Mark's, Anne's, Croi ro naofa, Shankill and Clanna Gael.

If you tried to split up the bigger clubs you wouldn't even have room for them to have clubhouses, let alone pitches.

 

[Killyoursons]

Horses for courses really. It's tempting to say something like a club should be capped at 2000 members or something but the reality in Dublin is land. If you look at the sweep of the southside from Lucan to Cuala you have Crokes and Boden with over 5000 members, Ballinteer, Jude's and Cuala in the 3500 to 4000 bracket. Lucan, Davis's and Olaf's with around 3000-3500. That's 8 clubs that are probably in the biggest 10-15 in Ireland. Not to mention the likes of Pats, de la salle, Kevin's killians, wanderers, stars, TSS/Faughs, Mark's, Anne's, Croi ro naofa, Shankill and Clanna Gael.

If you tried to split up the bigger clubs you wouldn't even have room for them to have clubhouses, let alone pitches.

True, which is why RnB's suggestion (to build from existing smaller clubs which already have at least some of the required facilities in place) is worth exploring, because it might offer a way of avoiding the last issue you raise. It might not be workable in every case, and it might lead to different problems further down the line (e.g., if a currently small club expand rapidly then they will bew facilities which may require planning permission, more land purchases etc). But I reckon any suggestion is going to face problems somewhere along the line, and what works in one place won't work everywhere.

 

[Henrys Fonda]

Out of curiosity, who here would leave their current club to form a new one?
Especially one in the same parish?

 

[King Dino 34]

Out of curiosity, who here would leave their current club to form a new one?
Especially one in the same parish?

Done and worth it. I probably wouldnt be involved within GAA as i am now, on the club committee, served as a selector for both the hurlers and footballers, coached the u21s, minors and 14s and 15s and 16s over the years. Also a referee, if we hadnt have formed a new club none of this would have happened for me.

 

[red&blue]

That is a big dream and not realistic in building a sustainable club with that timeline.

its realistic, just alot of work up front

Year 1: U6s and promoting in the Junior infants in the designated schools. Focus on getting a solid start. If you try to field teams from U7 to U12 in year 1, it is destined to fail as they won't be able to recruit enough players and it gets off to a negative start immediately. If you can sustain one group at U6 for a year, the motivation will be high to push on the following year
Year 2: U7 & U6.
Keep going up 1 year each time with that first group that started.

Yeah nothing wrong with this approach either except you would be going in your designated primary schools where the older players are playing with a different club

All they would need for the first 7 years is a green field with basic toilets and training facilities. Wouldn't even need a full size pitch.
For year 8, when they are playing U14, they would then need to be getting access to a full size pitch, but after 8 years and hopefully 8 good groups of parents, fundraising/goodwill would be achievable.
Slow and steady.

again nothing wrong with that suggestion, they are the details that would have to be ironed out if the new (or struggling) club was to be sustainable long term

 

[red&blue]

Thanks for this RnB. Something like this, maybe on a timeline closer to Reservedcitizen's suggestion, might be the best option.

possibly

In practice I wonder about designating schools for certain clubs. First, who would have the authority?

the county board would appoint a full time coach who would go into the designated schools of the new club and work on the ground with the new club. All kids in that school play with the new club

Second, with some of the small clubs you mention I wonder how effective it would be, at least in the short term. Take Dripsey - are there enough primary schools close to their pitch to make the scheme work?

Ballincollig has 4 primary boys schools as far as i can see, 3 relatively big schools of 250+ and one smaller one of 70+ in Classes Lake which is very near Dripsey GAA Pitch so let 2 schools align with Dripsey and 2 stay with Ballincollig

However I wonder would a cap on membership at each age work better? Say clubs can register 40 players per year and the rest can join the second club in the area. But that 2nd club must have the support of a full time GDA to help the club grow

None of this is to say it can't work, or shouldn't be tried. At the v least it should be discussed now. Put another way: player retention in some of the biggest clubs is a problem for those clubs, for the players lost and for Cork GAA as a whole, and it is all but impossible for those clubs to solve this problem by themselves (even if you think that in some cases they could be doing better).

agreed, and we have to be open to change

 

[Killyoursons]

the county board would appoint a full time coach who would go into the designated schools of the new club and work on the ground with the new club. All kids in that school play with the new club

Agreed on the need for a full-time coach. I assume your thinking is that the CCB would designate which schools go with the new/small club. That would have to be sold v carefully to the local community though. You're talking in some cases about children who are already with one club, or who's brothers or friends are already there, being assigned to another. It's possible but would need serious buy-in.

Ballincollig has 4 primary boys schools as far as i can see, 3 relatively big schools of 250+ and one smaller one of 70+ in Classes Lake which is very near Dripsey GAA Pitch so let 2 schools align with Dripsey and 2 stay with Ballincollig

That example actually illustrates the kinds of practical issues which would need to be skirted. There's one (smaller) school close to Dripsey. To make your suggestion work a school closer to Ballincollig would need to be assigned to Dripsey as well. That could face some amount of push-back. If you had boys attending Togher NS, I doubt you'd be happy to learn that they'd be handed over to, say, Ballyphehane.*

It's not just Dripsey/Ballincollig either. A quick look at that map posted a few pages back suggests there'd be a similar problem for Rochestown and Douglas.















* But at least not to Imokilly