High praise for Tallon

were going to go. We weren’t in relegation battles this year.

“The under-21s got to the final and were unlucky enough but from that point of view there are plenty of young players coming through, there are certainly eight or nine players coming through to feed the Senior team, they are a young enough team so they will be ok.

“The juvenile end of it, the younger development squads, the numbers, to be honest with you, are a bit of a concern.

“On all the hurling teams going to the tournaments, on any of them I don’t think we had enough to fill out a team sheet. So, the concern has to be with the number of kids who are playing, or who have started playing and have stopped playing so, with that I welcome the Leinster GAA proposals.

“I really look forward to the proposal of the small-sided game because I really feel that this year we have to focus on juvenile hurling and we have to focus on the clubs and how we can support the clubs develop players and to get the teams through.

“With that in mind, I would urge all of you to support the Leinster review and give the fixtures a go this year. We have to hold on to the few players that we have.

“We can’t say that there’s two or three lads who have stopped hurling and just move on.

“We have to be able to account for all those lads. We have to be able to, if you have an under-12 team, to keep them all together and march them right into under-13s.

I think with the small-sided games, the regional leagues, the district leagues that are being proposed, I think that will be a very good thing, particularly for the smaller clubs.

“It will give the under-11s the chance to play two or three games a week, whereas previously they might have only got one.

“It will give under-13s the chance to be introduced to regional tournaments and then get invited on to development panels which will strengthen it up.

“But the main focus for me this year has to be on the underage hurling and trying to build that stronger,” said Sean Hayes.

Writing in his report, Hayes also welcomed the addition of an additional hurling GDA for Wicklow GAA and that this person will hopefully be a huge assistance to Jonathan Tallon.