FORMER inter-county referee Pat McEnaney believes clubs will continue to haemorrhage players unless the GAA returns the minor grade to U18.
McEnaney has been successfully coaching his club Corduff’s minor sides for most of the past decade and is behind a motion they will put before Monaghan’s county convention to have club football returned to the original age grades.
Corduff’s proposal is expected to be backed up by similar motions from several other clubs in the county.
While their focus will be on bringing their own county back into line, it creates further momentum behind a return to U18 following the news that Armagh club Silverbridge will propose a motion for national change that they hope makes it to Congress.
McEnaney says the thinking behind Corduff’s motion is that clubs are struggling more than ever to convert players into senior footballers once they leave minor, which is now U17.
“You’ve a kid who’s so used to playing first team football, U14, U16, U18, and then he struggles for a few years to make his first team in his club. That’s where our biggest fallout of players is.
“To me, by moving to U17, that gap has become bigger. That’s my biggest concern about U17 football. We need to go back.
“U18 is the first real competitive challenge we should be putting people under, and give it a better position. We’ve always played our U18 finals before our senior final and it always got a better standing, I think we’ve watered the whole thing down.
“We’re losing bigger numbers and it’s lost its presence within the county, is my view on it.”
The former All-Ireland final referee pointed to the example of Kildare, who have bucked the trend and stayed with U18.
The majority of counties moved to U17 in line with inter-county competitions but McEnaney believes the route to change may be through club games rather than inter-county.
“The GAA is one giant organisation. It’s like an elephant, you take small chips out of the elephant, you don’t go after the big elephant because there’s too many rings to go through.
“Start within what you have a better control of, within your own, where you have more of a say and more of an impact for your own clubs.
“If that’s successful and it works in Monaghan, and it works in Kildare, other counties might start to look at it. When you go to Croke Park, you need more presence, you need to have big numbers supporting that idea.
“To me, you have to look within your own county at your own structures. It might be a good test.”
When the change was made, there was a feeling in the north that it was to suit teenagers undergoing the Leaving Cert examinations in the Republic.
McEnaney says that while he has more research to do before making a final presentation to Monaghan county board, he has found no evidence of that.
“I’ve talked to some head school men looking after teams and teaching Leaving Cert. It has no impact on Leaving Cert students.
“You take the year we have now, in fourth year, how many students at 19 are doing the Leaving Cert? What’s that percentage? Is there still a bigger percentage doing it at 18? There’s a bit of research to do around that before I go to the county board.
“We used to have a league campaign until May and then for a couple of months, you just stopped playing, and the lads doing the Leaving Cert would maybe train one day a week for ya.
“It was actually bloody good for him, to get out training, it kept their heads right.”
