Immigration of club players

[Conrad]

Immigration has taken its toll on Offaly club hurling down through the years and with the state of the economy at the moment it is sure to hinder most of our club's championship hopes. It would be interesting to make a list of senior clubs effected and lads leaving to distinguish which teams will be mostly effected in the coming year..

[beirut]

I know one of Drumcullens best players last year is off to Australia Sunday after the Leinster Final...

[pedro]

Shamrocks have been missing Stephen Delaney and Stephen Dunne. Both now in Australia.

Delaney an excellent hurler when committed to training would easily have walked onto a county team if he had the interest. That interest was not there and often not there for the club either but still he was a very good club player who would rack up the scores. He also offered alot to the football. Very strong and well able to score from distance and excellent under kickouts, he wouldnt be a high energy player but he is still a massive loss to both teams.

Stephen Dunne another dual player who played in 2005 county final against Rhode giving Eoin Byrne a torrid time. Indeed some might say if he had got some game time in the 2007 county final the result may well have been very different against Tullamore especially when Cathal Daly took over in the second half, a player like stephen Dunne would of caused him alot of headaches and prevented him from covering for Keane and McConway who were struggling. A good footballer and a very good hurler. Not the silkiest of players but always gave a huge effort and energy to the team. Best suited around the midfield sector where he carried ball very well and linked defence and attack very well.

A club like Shamrocks trying to keep football and hurling going at senior level cant afford to lose players like these. There is talk of other key players leaving Ireland in the coming months which would be a disaster for the club.

[Lone Shark]

This is going to affect every club to some degree. Any clubv that only loses one or two players will probably be ahead of the pack to be honest. Even those that have work may find themselves under pressure to commit to the same degree as employers out there know the way the job market is and nobody is going to want to be seen as the guy who doesn't do overtime or weekends when there could be layoffs down the road.

All that fussing over a handful of guys every year going to play Aussie Rules is fairly shown up for a triviality now.

[Conrad]

This is going to affect every club to some degree. Any clubv that only loses one or two players will probably be ahead of the pack to be honest.

Very true lone shark.. If you look at county champions Coolderry, they seem to be lucky enough to have a fairly homebound group off lads. I only know of one player (damien murry) to immigrate and still he was around when it came to crunch. Probably abit fond of their mammys..
Mollycoddled you could say..

[Fargo Boyle]

My heart bleeds for the big senior clubs who have lost players! (please note sarcasm)

It is not the senior clubs who are suffering with lads leaving, its the small junior and intermediate clubs that will suffer on all fronts. Small clubs playing lower grades are relying on 17 and 18 core players as they struggle on.

Senior teams at least have the draw of playing at a higher grade where players have a chance to impress on the highest stage. Unfortunatley at lower grades there usually is just a core group of lads who struggle on for the club with little reward except the joy of pulling on the jersey.

In alot of cases senior clubs have the resources available to bring back lads from the states etc. to play in important matches anyway.

Lets face it but it is the small rural clubs that will suffer most during this emigration as to lose even one player could mean the difference to being able to field a team or not (sorry OP but i think you meant emigration)

[Long John]

Yes I agree very much what has been said by Fargo. Small clubs losing one or two players is a massive blow. I wouldnt so much agree with the sarcasm about the bigger clubs where he is referring to Shamrocks. From what I see here, the geographical area may be big enough but they have a very small pool of actual players to pick from so I think it would be quiet unfair to mock the idea that they would not be affected. The reality is, they pulled a few people from the stands to fulfill some junior fixtures (notably against Clonmore harps in the group stages) and had a senior football team run off 17 players, and by all accounts 5 or 6 of them would be junior level but were forced to be used due to lack of numbers. Its actually a credit to them that they did as well as they did. I would fear that they will be back in intermediate in both codes in the next two years due mostly to a lack of numbers. They had to award walk overs in the junior hurling due to being unable to field a team also.

But getting back to his point about junior clubs with maybe only one team struggling, that is a very fair point, any team that cannot field a team is a very sad day for any club.

[townman]

i think most clubs will suffer from lads leaving the country as will the county team in the long run
was talking to a man in kilkenny over the christmas his club won the under 21 in kilkenny a few years ago
and he told me out of the 15 that started that final theres only about 5 of them still around i know kilkenny will cope
as they have the talent coming every year but what hope have counties like offaly,laois,wexford,or clare have with there
best young lads leaving our shores. hurling is going back to the way it was in the 40s,50's,60's,70's with only 3 teams in it
kilkenny,cork,and tipp.

[Fargo Boyle]

i think most clubs will suffer from lads leaving the country as will the county team in the long run
was talking to a man in kilkenny over the christmas his club won the under 21 in kilkenny a few years ago
and he told me out of the 15 that started that final theres only about 5 of them still around i know kilkenny will cope
as they have the talent coming every year but what hope have counties like offaly,laois,wexford,or clare have with there
best young lads leaving our shores. hurling is going back to the way it was in the 40s,50's,60's,70's with only 3 teams in it
kilkenny,cork,and tipp.

Let me try and guess which club he was talking about - would that be Dicksboro? They are notorious for having great underage teams but seem to lose them when they come to the adult ranks.

[Lone Shark]

As someone who has managed to move into the veteran stage of their career without ever having experienced what it was likely to peak, or even show potential, my emigration when it happenednever caused too many concerns. Nonetheless I do have some experience of being involved with a few different clubs around Ireland and beyond, and one thing that applies to urban and rural clubs alike is this - in 90% of cases, when somebody says "the players aren't there" what they actually mean is that "players who are good enough aren't there".

Now I know people will argue with me here, but this does not affect one type of club any more than another. Yes, some individual clubs will be more affected, but if one in four young lads from a small rural club like Doon, Croghan, Lusmagh or wherever leave it will affect them of course, but no more than one in four lads leaving from Birr or Edenderry. Every club has a certain amount of playing members at any given time, and losing a chunk of them will hurt.

Some clubs will be disproportionately affected and others will escape relatively unscathed, but we just have to accept that there will be a general drop in standard, and in the cases of some clubs, there may be a grade drop as they deal with it. That's not nice at the time but it's still not a disaster. We don't play Gaelic Games in the Olympic spirit of always faster, higher, stronger, we do it because the games themselves are enjoyable and part of our nature.

Small clubs playing lower grades are relying on 17 and 18 core players as they struggle on.

If they are, then they need to get others in who aren't playing and actually keep them involved by giving them game time. I've seen several clubs make this complaint and their problem usually is that the other guys around the area aren't at the same standard, so those fellas don't keep coming down to warm the bench. I listened to this muck of an argument in Ferbane when we only fielded two teams. (I know you're not talking about clubs of Ferbane's size here, but bear with me....) We added a third and lads came out of the woodwork wearing boots that hadn't seen the light of day for ten years because they thought there was a chance of a game. I genuinely believe that if we fielded a fourth team next year we'd fill it - but that's not the point.

The point is that those kind of guys who haven't played ball in years are lurking everywhere, including small village clubs, and if there are new bodies needed, they can be got, provided there's a realistic chance of actually playing.

There may be clubs where there literally are less than twenty adult males in the catchment area aged between 17 and 38, but if that's the case then that's an area with a population of less than 200 people and that's not viable as a club, full stop. You can't blame emigration for that.



I think the amount of people that are going to be lost to this country in the coming few years is a real national tragedy that goes way beyond GAA by the way, and I hope somebody reading a thread like this doesn't misinterpret it to be a heartless self-interested perspective on a horrible, and in hindsight utterly avoidable issue.

[Fargo Boyle]

Would have to disagree with alot of Lone Sharks argument.

There are always lads who will come out of the woodwork to play but that is no good if it means the club are going to be relegated. I mean if everyone was given a chance to play what good is that if it means losing every match in the championship and being relegated.

Bigger clubs can take losing one or two influential players better than smaller clubs playing at a lower standard. I mean if a county standard player was to leave a small junior club that would affect them more than a county standard player leaving a team with 9 or 10 of such players e.g Rhode. One county standard player at junior or intermediate would have a fierce influence on the team.

Also the fact that a club is playing Senior will have a greater attraction for younger players coming up through the ranks who will want to play at that standard and will stay at football or hurling.

And you mighn't agree but every small club has a core of players that keep the show on the road and thats what has kept the GAA going in small clubs around the county. Without this core the clubs wouldn't be competitive at any level.

[Lone Shark]

Sorry Fargo, I see where you're coming from in an individual club's context, but as a general argument, it doesn't stand up at all for me.

(1) For a start, it's a zero sum game. Yes it's sad for Club A if they lose players and get relegated, but when they go down a grade, some other club comes up to replace them. In fact, that would be happening anyway. Does it really make a difference if a club gets relegated on account of players missing through emigration, as opposed to injury, loss of form, bad luck in a crucial game, a goalkeeping error or any one of the myriad of things that can be the difference between going down and staying up?

(2) Regarding the bigger club losing players, yes they're better equipped to handle the loss, but the fact remains that every club could lose an important player, or a fringe player. If a small club is heavily dependent on two or three key guys, as they often are, then it's a double edged sword. Of course they might lose a key man and drop a grade, or they might only lose non-key guys and if as you say their fortunes are so tied up in the couple of big names, then they wouldn't feel the loss of the lesser guys.

At the end of the day there are 12 senior clubs in both football and hurling in Offaly in 2010, and if we lose loads of young players through emigration in 2015, there will still be 12 senior clubs then. This crack of how it's all unfair to smaller clubs because they'll be uncompetitive would only apply if the national recession was localised in that parish.

Every team will be missing players, and possibly clubs that are genuinely getting every able body out on the field will run into difficulty, but as I said above, if every able body means you have 20-25 players, then that's really not a sound basis for a club anyway.

[Bazil Brush]

Long John you were saying shamrocks is a big area but they dont have a big pick? I would have thought that between rahan and mucklagh that numbers wouldnt be a problem both areas appear to be well populated, There must be close to 2000 people in that catchment area?? Or am i way off?

[Long John]

Long John you were saying shamrocks is a big area but they dont have a big pick? I would have thought that between rahan and mucklagh that numbers wouldnt be a problem both areas appear to be well populated, There must be close to 2000 people in that catchment area?? Or am i way off?

Yes Brazil Brush as Ive said its a big enough area geographically but theres not many people in the area playing GAA. They are picking from small enough numbers. For example, they have awarded walk overs in u21 hurling the last two years and 3 years ago had to start with just 13 players against KK and went driving around trying to pick up players to make up the 15 so they could start the second half. They have awarded walkovers in Junior hurling in the past year and had to get spectators from the stand to make up the 15 in a championship game against Clonmore Harps last season which they funnily enough ended up winning the game.

Now I am only a blow in to the area so cant say why they struggle for numbers. Is it commitment issues? Yes in some cases. There seems to be alot of players that dont bother with GAA after minor level and also there is a small number of players who opt to concentrate on soccer and other sports rather than GAA. All this naturally enough has a negative effect on the more committed players who lose interest and might not put in as much effort to train and play games.
Thats why I say losing even a few players to emigration is a disaster for them. I am sure other clubs have same problems.

[Fargo Boyle]

No problem with whay your saying at all Lone Shark- there will always be a championship with senior, intermediate and junior and there will always be winners and losers. Where I am coming from is looking at the plight of some of the smaller clubs that I know well and to see how the loss of key players could affect them in terms of their competiveness. After all we all relate everything back to our own clubs and their particular situation. If the standard drops in one club and they fall to the wayside it only affects them but it is still sad to see. Look at Daingean where they lost many key players to other clubs and retirements and emigrations etc and how they fell away (obviously there were other issues at play but it was compounded by losing key men).