Third U-21 grade agreed
A THIRD grade will be played for in both Under-21 codes in 2017 after a motion from the C.C.C.C. was carried at Tuesday’s County Board meeting in the Talbot Hotel, Wexford.
Next year all clubs will submit their entries to the committee for grading, and 16 teams will be selected as Premier with the remainder participating at Roinn 1 level in the four Districts.
After the first round of Premier games, the eight winners will advance to the Premier ‘A’ quarter-finals, with the eight losers involved in Premier ‘B’ quarter-finals, thereby giving all teams the opportunity of playing two games.
However, from the reading of the motion one assumes that the Roinn 1 games will still be on a straight knockout system, unless the Districts decide to run their championships differently.
All grading of Under-21 teams must be carried out now before April 1 as the only other successful motion to that effect was tabled by Réalt na Mara-Ballygarrett at the meeting.
Horeswood’s suggestion that the Junior ‘A’ and ‘B’ football championships be amalgamated and run as a Junior ‘A’ championship at District level was referred to Convention for a final decision to be made.
In the event of a club having two sides, the ‘A’ team would play first to determine status.
Motions from Clongeen, HWH-Bunclody and Sarsfields were lost, while there was no proposer present from Naomh Eanna to allow theirs to be discussed.
Meanwhile, a near unanimous level of satisfaction with the games structure of the Coiste na nOg championships is reflected in the extremely small number of motions received for the forthcoming annual Convention.
Only three have been tabled in total, with just one of those relating directly to the running of competitions.
That comes from Horeswood who are bidding to remove four shields from all levels, replacing the current set-up with ten finals in total per grade (five championship and five shield) with six in all.
Under their proposal, there would still be championship finals in Divisions 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, but just one shield decider with participation restricted to the last four finishers in Division 5.
Elsewhere, Gusserane are asking that in the event of an amalgamated team playing a single club and there is a clash of jerseys, the amalgamation have to change even if they have an independent set of jerseys.
Finally, the Coiste na nOg management committee members are looking for a designated person from one of the clubs in the case of an amalgamated team to be responsible for fixtures, the payment of fines, the return of cups and shields and other business.