All-Ireland minor finals deserve major focus

Last Tuesday night, Cork County Board’s monthly meeting debated how the county will vote on various issues that are on the clár for the GAA’s annual Congress at the end of the month.

Naturally, much of the focus was on the proposal to extend the inter-county season into August and it was a case of democracy in action as delegates voted against such a move, which would have a knock-on effect in how the county championships are run.

Also up for discussion was a motion from Fermanagh club Tempo Maguires, which seeks to restore the All-Ireland minor hurling and football finals to their historic slot as curtain-raisers for their equivalent senior deciders.

Before we outline how we feel that such a move would be retrograde, it’s worth also touching on how it’s possible that Congress delegates will be voting on the ‘wrong’ minor motion.

Prior to Christmas, at the launch of the Co-op SuperStores Munster Hurling League, provincial council chairperson Tim Murphy told the media about his hopes that a proposal could be put forward for the minor grade to be restored to U18, reversing a switch that came into being in 2018.

“This all came about from an academy review that we commissioned last year,” he said, “and it was a review of all the academies in the province and out of that review came a recommendation for minor to go to U18 at inter-county level.

“We discussed it in a number of meetings and at our meeting in November we had unanimous support from the six counties who asked us to on behalf of the six Munster counties to bring it forward to Congress 2026.

“The essence of the motion is inter-county minor will go to U18 but decoupling will also be part of that, so that for example an U18 player who is playing inter-county hurling or football can’t play with their club, their adult team, for the duration of the county's involvement, but after that then they can.”

Unfortunately, that motion did not make the Congress cut, but hopefully it can be reviewed down the line. While that one would be a case of going back to ‘the way things used to be’, it would be based on consultation and figures, whereas, to our mind, the idea of making the minor the finals the senior under-card would be rooted entirely in nostalgia and sentimentality.

Of course, it used to be nice to listen to Mícheál Ó Sé’s commentary as Gaeilge as part of the build-up to the main event, but do teenagers deserve for the biggest game of their lives up to that point to be a mere sideshow, window-dressing for something else?

Last year, 16,411 people were at FBD Semple Stadium to see Waterford beat Clare in the All-Ireland minor final – the 2022 decider between Tipperary and Offaly at UPMC Nowlan Park broke the 20k barrier.

The games have now become occasions in themselves and returning them as curtain-raisers would severely restrict the ability of friends and family to support the young players on show, not to mind the opportunity to celebrate or commiserate on the pitch afterwards.

Aside from that, the ticket scrambles for senior finals are always tricky to negotiate – with a few thousand allocated to each of the competing minor teams, it would become even tougher for supporters of the counties involved in the senior.

All of these considerations come even before we discuss the effect on the fixture programme. This year, the Munster minor hurling commences on April 3, a week after the first phase of the football and the All-Ireland finals are three weeks or before the senior.

Pushing everything back so as to align with the senior championships would affect U16 and U18 fixtures at county level.

And, to tie things together with the beginning of the article, there is a chance that those minor finals would be opening acts for All-Ireland senior finals in August.

There is plenty wrong with the GAA that is in need of remedy; let’s not go altering something that has turned out to be a good change.