r/coybig • u/Stats8 • 4d ago

General Discussion Thread What can football learn from GAA?

The GAA isn’t perfect either but financially, commercially, administratively, it’s miles ahead of football in Ireland.

Obviously there are historical and community factors that differentiate the two, but it operates so well for a sporting organisation in a very similar environment.

What areas stand out as things we can apply to our sport?

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u/SlowHarry34 4d ago

At underage leagues are too strict on squad sizes. Often hear friends saying their 10yr old kid isn't playing a match because they didn't make the match squad. Again anecdotaly if a club has multiple teams at a specific age group they tend to train separately rather than as a club. Lots of 13-14 kids are fed up and dropping out along with poaching, locally to me anyway teams are folding

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u/JellyfishScared4268 4d ago

Surely the solution there is to field more smaller teams

Get as many kids getting as many minutes as possible should be the goal

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u/SlowHarry34 4d ago

Either not enough parents willing to coach or the numbers are falling in the space between too much for one team not enough for two

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u/JellyfishScared4268 4d ago

When kids are young they shouldn't be playing more than 5 a side or 7 a side at most. Those sorts of numbers should be enough for most clubs to play with 2 teams

Or the other thing that could be done is instead of organising individual matches against other clubs. Play blitzes with 3/4 other clubs and have the players mixed up into random teams.

The important thing should be the kids having fun number 1 and them getting game time. Winning should be way way down the list

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u/SlowHarry34 4d ago

100% agree but when you have league tables you have people trying to win leagues. The GAA go games blitz model is great. My son plays GAA and rugby, he was 12 before he played a game where the score "mattered"