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With UCD beating Birr last weekend, I dont agree with college's playing in the club championships, even with a amount of hatred i have on birr!!

Many clubs try to reach goals years ahead of winning county championships and going onto leinster and maybe all-irelands. The idea of a group of players from around the country, that a mostly only playing with each other maybe a bit more than a year, get to join in. These college teams are mostly made up of county players, wheras club teams would only have a handful (with the exception of birr!).

Many clubs around the country have a big emphasis on youth development to promote hurling, which is mastered at an early age. It appears to me that colleges are taking advantage of this.

I come from a college with a very successful hurling senior team and ive seen them play, and in fairness, they're in a league of their own that very few senior clubs can match them.

I agree with Tom Humphries on this one - it's up to each county to decide what suits them best. That UCD keep winning Dublin senior hurling is not UCD's problem, it's Dublin's. And yet not one motion is going towards the UCD convention suggestion they be excluded next year. Lunacy.

On the other hand, it suits some counties - for a long time Waterford needed any kind of break from the Mount Sion/Ballygunner hegemony, so letting in WIT suited them - Ditto the colleges in Cork. Kerry thought bringing in Tralee would suit them, then it didn't, so they horsed them out - all perfectly reasonable.

Now as for colleges entering the AI club series, that's another matter - but it's not as if it's a new problem. UCD were winning club All Irelands back in the 1970's - why are we all so up in a heap about it now?

Im in WIT myself and it actually did some sort of good for the championship here, although the county final was between ballygunner and de la salle. is there any reason why the county boards are lettin these colleges play? what good for the county is it?

I've attached a link to an article from the DCU newspaper written by a friend for which she later had to publish an apology.
Ye might find it interesting.
Basically after a recent game Queen's accused DCU of trying to buy the sigerson cup by offering scholarships to big name county players. Could the same not be said about UCD and the club championship.
Its partly about the comment of players to college teams but I think its still relevant to the debate.

http://www.thecollegeview.com/sports/0006.html

What was the nature of the apology that your friend had to offer?

I can see some places where I would strongly disagree with that article. I was no star player in my day, but I did play for Athlone RTC (when it was still an RTC) and was involved in the Football club in UCD too. I would strongly dispute that there was less effort being expended by those players than for their other teams.

My team-mates were not strangers to me. I may not have grown up with them, but I was training twice a week with them, probably more (and harder) training than I ever did at home. Some of those lads may have been classmates with each other, so now they were spending 6 hours a day together and then add training on top of that.

The last word that you could consider to use to describe College team-mates should be strangers. Whether their fees are being paid by a rich (or poor) Dad, the local County Council Grant, scrounged hard-earned summer work or some benevolent scholarship fund, that is not likely to affect your relationship with a bunch of lads who wear the same colour jersey as you, want to kick ball as well as they can and maybe even win more games than they might lose.

I'd imagine an apology was forthcoming to Conor Mortimer (assuming he is in DCU).

The Biff wrote:that is not likely to affect your relationship with a bunch of lads who wear the same colour jersey as you, want to kick ball as well as they can and maybe even win more games than they might lose.

I understand that you are not strangers but where is there pride in that college jersey? Just because they want to kick a football and win games, doesnt mean that the colleges have full right in togging out for the club championship, where there are club teams who live only for the club championship. And also, it isnt called the CLUB championship for nothing!

Im also interested in hearing about the apology for that article?

In basic terms the apology was for having questioned "the commitment of Sigerson footballers as a means of explaining why the Sigerson competition is not a crowd puller."
Rightly there was direct reference to line stating: "Conor Mortimer will not give every ounce of his energy to DCU as he does Mayo" and she then went on to point out that perhaps the real reason that the Sigerson is so poorly supported is the lack of media coverage and advertising.
Still I think the idea that a college can offer scholarships to big names in an effort to win titles such as the Sigerson is an interesting one. Players will always win no matter who they are playing for so a high level of committment is to be expected but is it right for colleges to compete in a signing war for sportsmen be it in gaelic, basketball or any sport. And does this in turn lessen the significance of a competition such as the Sigerson?

Can anyone tell me which parish UCD represent ?

For what it's worth, I agree that College teams should NOT be representing their counties in the Provincial stages of the Club Championships. If it suits any one county to allow the colleges to play in the County Championships for "local" reasons, so be it. But it is not fair to foist those same reasons over other counties who play by different (more traditional) rules.

The Kerry Football model seems to be much admired from afar by many other counties. I remain quite puzzled why more counties do not adopt a similar approach to raising playing standards. For ourselves where our respective playing bases are quite polarised, what would we have to lose by trying out a South Offaly Football team and an East Offaly Hurling team in the County Championships. At least give the idea a run.

a sigerson medal is very highly regarded and those that have them would be greatly appreciated, nobody that has commented here seems to have played it and so i would suggest ye ask lads who have played it to find out what they think of it. it is the highest standard of football after senior inter-county, and i certainly would love a sigerson medal and infact i would consider it more of an achievement to be selected on the sigerson panel for the county than on the u21 county panel.

I would say that like all things, it depends on the relative standards. Put the UCD Sigerson team up against the Carlow U-21 footballers and tere is only ever going to be one winner - on the other hand, if you were to put the Kerry U-21 team up against AIT Sigerson, I'd expect Kerry to win with something to spare.

If you are on a Sigerson team that's good enough to win the thing, well then that's certainly an achievement.

As for the regional teams within Offaly, I've been singing from that hymnsheet for a long time - two or three regional teams for each of hurling and football I would suggest. If you have some time, my musing on it is here .

it is the highest standard of football after senior inter-county

The Railway Cup!

"For ourselves where our respective playing bases are quite polarised, what would we have to lose by trying out a South Offaly Football team and an East Offaly Hurling team in the County Championships. At least give the idea a run."

I like that idea, Biff!! The two examples you give above could be a good way to introduce the concept of regional teams.

yeah forgot bout that, the railway cup would be better standard