Debate over allowing B teams to compete in Exclusive Junior Championship at convention

A motion raised at the Mayo GAA County Convention that if passed would allow the winner of the New Junior A Championship to compete in the Exclusive Junior Championship will be referred to the Competition Controls Committee (CCC).

The New Junior A Championship is contested by clubs ‘B’ teams. If this motion were to pass, it would allow a B team to compete in the Junior Championship, currently exclusively played between senior teams of that grade in the county. The motion states that this would be on a one-year basis and if the B team failed to gain promotion, they would automatically be relegated back to the New Junior A Championship. This arrangement would be trialled for a five-year period.

Willie McDonagh, whose club Westport proposed this motion, told delegates this would give some players from larger clubs the chance to play Championship football in Mayo.

“This is a fair motion that provides a meaningful pathway for the development of our second teams. Clubs are seeing increasing numbers and those with large numbers have players who may never play in the Mayo County Championship.” “Junior clubs would have nothing to fear from this,” he said.

Bernard Treacy from Castlebar Mitchels, whose B team currently plays Intermediate football, said their experience of Intermediate has been a positive one.

“We support this motion. We have lads in their 20’s who get to experience adult football at a very high level. If you have 90 adult players, not all of them will get to play and those who can’t will move to alternative sports.”

“This would reduce the number of adult players playing in Mayo in the long run. If you look at the history of these competitions, it is only about once every 20 years that a B team wins the competition.”

Michael Murphy from Eastern Gaels spoke in opposition to this motion.

“This would be totally unfair, the Junior Championship is an ‘Exclusive’ competition only for Junior clubs.”

A representative from the Tourmakeady club also spoke out against the motion.

“What we find is that senior players end up dropping down to their B team and this is totally unfair on rural clubs who don’t have the same player base,” he said.

Chairman of the county board Seamus Tuohy said that this matter would be referred back to the CCC.

Other motions that are to be referred back to the CCC include a motion that would see two teams relegated from Senior to Intermediate every year, two promoted from Intermediate to Senior, two relegated to Junior from Intermediate and two promoted to Intermediate from Junior.

A motion has also been referred to the CCC regarding the naming of the New Junior A, New Junior B and New Junio C championships, raised by Westport, with the goal of avoiding confusion with the names of the Exclusive Junior A and Exclusive Junior B Championships.