Let young guys play with their club mates

LAST week on these pages we wrote about inter-county players expecting too much of themselves. This week we’re on more familiar ground – that where inter-county managers expect too much of their players.

As reported by the Western People newspaper, up-and-coming Belmullet young player Ryan O’Donoghue had been selected to play for his club at centre-forward in the North Mayo Under 21 A Football Championship final.

With throw-in fast approaching it emerged that O’Donoghue was not in fact present for the game as he “had been requested by Mayo senior manager James Horan to attend a pre-season assessment”.

We’re sorry, but we can’t see this as anything other than madness. Now we don’t want to come down too hard on Horan, we assume this pre-season assessment was for a whole host of players, but even so he should have made it clear to O’Donoghue that he wasn’t expected to attend, that he should go and play his match and be with the guys he grew up playing football with.

Ambitious young footballers are always going to bend over backwards to do whatever they can to impress and stake their claim to a place on a senior panel or starting fifteen, meaning inter-county managers have to be cognisant of what they owe these young players in return.

No young footballer should be expected – explicitly or implicitly – to give up on the chance to play in a final with his friends and neighbours. The final was O’Donoghue’s last underage game with his club and he should have been free to play in it.

A similar situation played itself out in Kerry a few years ago when Seán O’Shea wasn’t released to play in a County Under 21 title for Kenmare District because he might – might – have been used as a substitute in an All Ireland quarter-final with Galway. O’Shea wasn’t used, he could easily have played in that final in hindsight.

Simply put that wasn’t fair on O’Shea and what happened on the weekend to O’Donoghue wasn’t fair on him. Whatever the ins and outs of the situation, the Belmullet youngster should never have been put in that position.