I think David Hosie from the Navan O’Mahonys club was the first player who can be recalled playing adult football at 15 years of age. Ballivor’s Mairtin Doran wasn’t far behind him. From a hurling perspective, there’s no doubt that one of our own – the one and only Paul Fagan – was the youngest I can remember fielding at adult level.
Now, luckily, for our club, fast-tracking particularly gifted young players into adult action was a luxury rather than necessity. In the case of David Hosie it is assumed commensurate circumstances applied. Conversly, Ballivor would absolutely have had to get Mairtin into their adult team(s) as quickly as was humanely possible.
It wouldn’t just be Ballivor of course. Smaller clubs up and down the country have, since God was a gosun, merely survived by pitching their rising stars into their adult teams and feeding off the infusion of talent and enthusiasm that brings.
Just ask the great Wolfe Tones club from Kilberry outside Navan. The purple and gold wrote a chapter in Meath GAA history which somebody will do well to ever repeat. Through their annexation of the county Junior, Intermediate and Senior titles in consecutive years in 2004, ’05 and ’06.
Laudable and all as the achievement was in its own right, that wasn’t the reason for its appearance here today. No, the thinking behind its inclusion was that the catalyst for all three victories was the contributions of one Cian Ward – aged 16 when the unique trilogy of victories began. Before the first thereof he had actually been the principle reason the club’s Minors had qualified for the county final where they went under to a St Peter’s, Dunboyne team winning the Delaney Cup for the first time in 2002.
Yet one wonders now would he even be allowed partake in the U-18 final at the same age now given that there are now more twists and turns in the GAA rulebook than there were in the Bobsleigh course in Cool Runnings. Thus the good auld GAA are never much more than one false move away from shooting themselves in the foot.
The gun was cocked again in the Dr McKenna Cup during the week. Now, Finbarr Roarty isn’t the first youngster copped by a county manager before attaining similar recognition among their own. At what I think was the back end of 1998, Damien Byrne got the call up from Sean before ‘Birdie’ had donned the blue and gold at senior of Summerhill. Similarly, Gerry Gallagher hadn’t fielded with the Dunboyne senior team at the time he was drafted into the county U-21 panel by Dudley Farrell, Sean Kelly and Sean Barry. The trio that were blackguarded out of a stint at the Meath senior job, but that’s a story for another day.
So anyway, young Roarty is by no means in a position where his involvement with Jim McGuinness’s side in the opening game of their season should have led to the circus which has followed in the aftermath thereof.
Caused by meddling egotists with nothing better to do than create kerfuffle where there’s absolutely no need for one at all. Not only is there absolutely no need for the age related stipulations at adult level, the Donegal youngster was that close to being the right side of the hideous rule that anybody with a bit of cop on could’ve left well enough alone.
Yes, I know there will be the usual suspects piping up with the ‘Rules are rules’ diatribe but GAA officialdom can be liberal enough with practising what they preach. If you think about it, the fact that Charlie Redmond stayed on the field after being directed to leave the field by the weasal with the whistle was quickly and conveniently brushed under the carpet.
More recently, regarding the controversial conclusions to matches involving Meath and Louth (2010) and Kilmacud Crokes against Glen (2023), the Brains Trust totally copped out of their responsibilities by putting it back on the teams involved to find an acceptable resolution between themselves! You wouldn’t see it in a Scout pack.
But then, their capacity to baffle doesn’t end there. Any of the four clubs involved in last weekend’s All Ireland Club SFC semi finals would have every right to feel cheesed off. For the simple reason that in either case a merited argument could be made that neither of them should have went ahead. Moreover, that the Munster Club SFC Final between Castlehaven and Dingle never should have gone ahead either prior to Christmas. With conditions more equitable with slalom skiing than kicking football.
However, the farcical nature of the past week is only the tip of an expanding iceberg which brazenly continues to fly in the face all logic and lip service to the issue of player welfare. The Sigerson and Fitzgibbon Cup competitions. Nothing will ever change the fact that Colm O’Rourke was the best footballer I’ve ever seen play. Nor indeed that one has been privileged and grateful to develop friendships with he of the blessed left boot and several branches of his family,
However, no secret has ever made of the fact that myself and himself would have vehemently polarised views on the merits or otherwise of the third level competitions within GAA. I would be of the view that Sigerson and Fitzgibbon serve absolutely no purpose and their culling would solve an awful lot of problems for the Association.
But of course it would be much easier to bring in stupid, unnecessary dictums and then hit somebody high profile like Jim McGuinness with a ludicrous two month suspension for breaking a needless, counterproductive ‘rule’ which shouldn’t exist in the first place.
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