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Carlow GAA thread

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Replying To CarlowJuniorB:  "Minors lost by just 2 in the end but they were 3-10 to 0-4 at half time. What even happened there? Our underage teams can be very underwhelming but this is chronic lately."
That might have been a pretty good show from your lads last night. Ok, they went behind in the first half, but " won" the second half and kicked I think 7 two pointers. Out team is possibly a little better than those of the last few years so, the knockouts should be interesting - for both sides.

Freethinker (Wicklow) - Posts: 2202 - 08/04/2026 08:53:46    2665190

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Replying To carlowman:  "A huge concern is the lack of wins at underage for the last number of years in both hurling and football but particularly in hurling. Where once we.l were competitive against second tier teams, our results in recent years are way behind where we once were.
My fear us that players at undeerage are now playing hoping tonlmwin and are not playing with any confidence. That lack of confidence was quite obviois in the u 20 hurling against Kerry. First touch is everything and despite a good sod and often with plenty of time to rise the ball we often left it behind.
Hard to know what the solution is as we.have the best available young men in playing and we have good coaches amd they are committed."
Sad to see the fall of our underage hurling squads in the past few years while we where never ones to beat the kk wexfords dublin etc of the world we always would compete and give a good game to most of these teams.

To see us taking a bit of bearing against meath and kerry this year is very worrying but do we take the approach of trying to breed 3 or 4 of these hurlers for our senior team going forward.

Seems to work for st.mullins who for there senior success rarely win much underage but always have 2 to 3 new faces coming on board most years and stay very competitive.

Think first game of joe mac will tell alot if we rock up and can beat laois then you can be content this was just a poor league but if we take a beating I would be seriously concerned going forward.

One point I would also note is the lack of hirling in our secondary schools at present borris probably been where it's taken most serious but still in b comps DLS in c comps remember a time when both where in the A and competitive enough with a majority blend of carlow hurlers involved.

This exposed more hurlers to a higher standard driving competition in county teams I dont think it's breaking new ground and when these schools where at there most competitive i think the county squads where also at there most competitive.

ITSCHOLAR (Carlow) - Posts: 330 - 08/04/2026 17:16:21    2665306

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Genuinely what new initiative has been put in place in Carlow to develop hurling in the last 5 years? 10years? We've left it all to MLR and St Mullins to do the work for us propped up by the better lads from other clubs. That's our strategy as a county. It's soul destroying

benchtoaster (Carlow) - Posts: 54 - 09/04/2026 08:35:58    2665360

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Replying To benchtoaster:  "Genuinely what new initiative has been put in place in Carlow to develop hurling in the last 5 years? 10years? We've left it all to MLR and St Mullins to do the work for us propped up by the better lads from other clubs. That's our strategy as a county. It's soul destroying"
The underage football is exactly the same except it's Eire Og, Rathvilly and now Palatine.

The Colts system should be completely disbanded. It's not working.

It would be more useful to send GDAs into underperforming areas like Tullow and Bagenalstown, and try to sort out the huge Naomh Brid/Michael Davitts area.

CARPS (Carlow) - Posts: 1076 - 09/04/2026 12:01:15    2665400

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Replying To benchtoaster:  "Genuinely what new initiative has been put in place in Carlow to develop hurling in the last 5 years? 10years? We've left it all to MLR and St Mullins to do the work for us propped up by the better lads from other clubs. That's our strategy as a county. It's soul destroying"
The underage football is exactly the same except it's based on Eire Og, Rathvilly and now Palatine.

The Colts system should be completely disbanded. It's clearly not working.

It would be more useful to send GDAs into underperforming areas like Tullow and Bagenalstown, and try to sort out the huge Naomh Brid/Michael Davitts area, which extends from almost Paulstown to Graiguecullen.

CARPS (Carlow) - Posts: 1076 - 09/04/2026 12:39:15    2665410

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Replying To CARPS:  "The underage football is exactly the same except it's Eire Og, Rathvilly and now Palatine.

The Colts system should be completely disbanded. It's not working.

It would be more useful to send GDAs into underperforming areas like Tullow and Bagenalstown, and try to sort out the huge Naomh Brid/Michael Davitts area."
Do we have GDA's?

Dualclub1 (Carlow) - Posts: 300 - 09/04/2026 14:03:18    2665425

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Replying To CARPS:  "The underage football is exactly the same except it's based on Eire Og, Rathvilly and now Palatine.

The Colts system should be completely disbanded. It's clearly not working.

It would be more useful to send GDAs into underperforming areas like Tullow and Bagenalstown, and try to sort out the huge Naomh Brid/Michael Davitts area, which extends from almost Paulstown to Graiguecullen."
It's not a case that the Colts should be disbanded because the majority of coaching of underage is via the clubs. The work that the GDAs are doing should be focused on the overall development and skills levels of underage players in each code. How many do we have in the county? Is it even 5 for both codes combined? The Colts is just the best of the clubs, if the overall base level of the underage is poor, you're going to struggle going forward.

CarlowJuniorB (Clare) - Posts: 139 - 09/04/2026 15:11:12    2665439

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Replying To CarlowJuniorB:  "It's not a case that the Colts should be disbanded because the majority of coaching of underage is via the clubs. The work that the GDAs are doing should be focused on the overall development and skills levels of underage players in each code. How many do we have in the county? Is it even 5 for both codes combined? The Colts is just the best of the clubs, if the overall base level of the underage is poor, you're going to struggle going forward."
I've said it on here a few times. We need to create 2 schools competing at A level. One for football based around the town, one for hurling based in the south of the county. Award scholarships to promising players to go to that school. Provide transport, supervised study, hot meals etc. to make it attractive for parents.
Have them training together at least 4 times a week, & provide appropriate elite level coaching.

The schools team will become our de facto county minor team, but thats no different to Kierans, Flannans, Mels etc. in other counties.

Smokeless Red (Carlow) - Posts: 41 - 09/04/2026 15:48:57    2665442

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