Seán Moran: Rule barring MacCarthy Cup hurlers playing under-20 not unreasonable

For an organisation that sets such store by its rules and goes to such lengths to make the process exhaustively transparent and democratic, the GAA suffers from the frequently short concentration span of many congress delegates.

There is a tendency to accept changes or innovations without due diligence and as soon as the new rules start to inconvenience people, kick up a fuss, which can last until the following congress – the earliest point at which something can be done to address their discontent.

Latest exhibit: the precluding of otherwise qualified hurlers from the under-20 championship if they have already played that year in the MacCarthy Cup.

It’s been a running sub-plot in this year’s championship. Scan the match programme and pick out the “20s”. If they’re among the replacements, as soon as they come on, scratch – gone from the under-20 championship.

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On the first weekend of the provincial round-robins Wexford’s Oisín Pepper and Limerick’s Cathal O’Neill were high-profile, early movers, both introduced as replacements, against Galway and Cork, respectively.

Both had coincidentally already scored goals in the early rounds of their under-20 championships and so their absence was a definite weakening of their counties at that age grade.

Asked about the decision to "burn" O'Neill's under-20 eligibility, manager John Kiely expressed his unhappiness.

“It’s disappointing that we’re penalising our best players. We could make this work. Managements could make this work in the modern era. We monitor their loads for everything they do: if they go the gym or they’re with the 20s. We can make these things work,” he said about the prohibition.

“It’s a pity they’ve gone down this route because I don’t believe it’s the issue of burn-out. These players, we look after. If Cathal was playing Wednesday night he wouldn’t be training with us on Tuesday night, clearly.”

It's hard to argue with that. Kiely runs the most formidable management backroom in hurling. With the expertise available, it's unlikely that the welfare of any underage player would be knowingly compromised by Limerick.

That isn’t the whole point, though. Other counties, lacking Limerick’s reserves, mightn’t be as careful and anyway, the move to introduce under-20 in football and later, hurling was based on a desire to make it a “development” grade.

Counties or players could decide what they wanted but no one would be able to play both senior and under-20 at the same time.

The only situation in which a player could revert is when the senior team had exited the championship – a release less available in the new, split season, as the final is due in less than a fortnight and neither Limerick nor Kilkenny will be out of the provincial championship by then.

Why has the rule caused such uproar? It was designed to give clarity to players so that they might play for one team or the other. In football it militated against Kerry's ability to replicate a litany of minor All-Irelands at the older grade, as senior management unsurprisingly opted to take up early options on David Clifford and Seán O'Shea.

Essentially they became over-qualified for a development competition.

Former national hurling development manager and Kilkenny All-Ireland winning selector Martin Fogarty, recently wrote an excoriating piece in the Irish Independent on the restriction.

“One of the hurling jewels was the All-Ireland under-21 championship, regarded as the final acid test for many players before making the step up to senior. For some unknown reason, under-21 was discarded and replaced by an inferior under-20 competition, but now it has been made essentially meaningless under some ridiculous guise of player welfare.”

The point is that under-20s on senior panels and teams have made the step up to senior and as many commissioned reports have demonstrated, the more teams in which young players are involved, the more compromised their welfare can become – to the extremes harrowingly evident in the findings of Dr Pat O'Neill's burn-out task force.

The problem in hurling is probably that it was – as is often the case – late to the policy change. Originally, then director general Páraic Duffy’s discussion document proposed the change in 2016 for football only.

Hurling followed but with a critical exemption clause, allowing seniors to play for the under-20s, making a bit of a nonsense of the rationale behind the original move, which was to address the blight of multi-eligibility among young players by reducing the number of teams – and by extension the number of different managers – they could represent.

That exemption was removed at last year’s congress. Maybe its impact was diluted by the fact that due to Covid, proceedings had to be held remotely and only the two most contentious motions – on cynical fouling and sin-binning in hurling (another late adoption) and limiting the number of clubs that could contest senior and intermediate championships – went to an electronic vote.

This was just as well as the effort involved caused laptops to billow smoke.

Among the other proposals accepted either by “acclamation” or with minimal opposition, was Motion 15, rendering ineligible any hurler who had played senior championship from participating at under-20. The rationale was that it would reduce demands on players and allow senior and under-20 to be played concurrently.

Opposition speakers came from just two counties, Limerick and Laois.

In 59 years of under-21 and under-20 All-Irelands, there have been eight winners. It’s understandable that established counties like this year’s finalists, Kilkenny and Limerick – with 17, soon to be 18 (or 30 per cent) between them – mightn’t like the restrictions but in the concern to protect all players and thin out involvement across teams and age grades, these are not unreasonable rules.