Cork to bring new motion seeking clarity on U20 and senior eligibility

Delegates at next month’s annual Cork GAA convention will vote on a motion that could bring about a change in terms of U20 players lining out at senior level.

At this year’s annual Congress, a rule was introduced where a player could only line out for one of his county senior or U20 sides in a period from a Friday morning until the following Thursday night.

That created an anomaly of sorts where it would be possible to play for the U20 team on, say, a Wednesday and then the senior team at the weekend but doing the opposite would not have been allowed. The GAA’s Central Council subsequently amended the rule so that a player was eligible to play for one team in a rolling seven-day period.

It meant that, while Eoin Downey played in Cork’s opening three Munster U20HC round-robin games, he was not available for the game against Limerick or the provincial final against Clare due to his senior commitments. Equally, the Banner were without Adam Hogan for the decider.

With Cork eliminated from the senior championship after failing to qualify for the All-Ireland series, Downey was able to return for the All-Ireland final over Offaly. Ironically, the final had been put back as Offaly’s Charlie Mitchell was involved with the senior squad – the restriction on lining out at U20 and senior only applied to sides contesting the Liam MacCarthy Cup.

Now, the Cork County Board executive have brought forward a motion for convention which would put in place a provision that a player could not play senior and U20 championship matches in the same 60-hour period.

The motion reads: “A player is restricted from playing in both the inter-county senior hurling/football championship and the inter-county U20 hurling/football championship within a 60-hour period and committees in charge of the latter grade competition shall make such allowance where necessary in its scheduling.”
The other motion for convention also comes from the executive and chimes with recent comments from county secretary/CEO Kevin O’Donovan, who had said that Cork would support a Kerry motion on the number of teams in county championships.

Currently, there is a cap of 16 teams in any championship and, while Cork has 12 clubs in each of its premier senior hurling and football competitions, one division or college team joins the championship at the quarter-final stage after playing a qualifying tournament.

Cork have had to receive an annual derogation from Croke Park but O’Donovan told delegates at the November meeting of the county board that he did not envisage the situation to continue indefinitely.

“I would think there is an expectation in Croke Park that we would reform eventually and have no more than 16 teams in Cork in the county championships,” said O’Donovan.

“That very much undermines the format that we have and that we all love, with one of the divisions/colleges coming in and retaining their status in the county championship, albeit on a circuitous route.”

Cork have sought to create distance between the divisions/colleges sections and the championship proper by awarding the Tadhg Crowley Cup (football) and Denis O’Riordan Cup (hurling) to the winning sides that progress.

Now, the executive is proposing that the facility for a preliminary competition involving divisional and higher education teams be brought into law, thereby avoiding any further complications.

The motion being put to delegates will read:

“The maximum number of teams that may participate in an adult County Championship shall be 16. Exceptions – (i) in counties where divisional and/or higher-education college teams are permitted to participate in a county senior championship, a separate preliminary competition may be organised as a qualifier for a determined number of such teams to participate in the 16 teams county championship; (ii) junior or lower grade county championships.”