U 20 football championship 2025

[del]

This years championship got underway tonight
Wasn’t at the Tullamore game but I believe it was very tight with Tullamore only taking the lead near the end. Tullamore missing 8 definite starters who were away for the weekend on a trip booked months ago They looked for the game to be brought forward but it couldn’t . Tullamore were basically there minor team with Niall Furlong and Jack Maher so that’s a huge win considering they were playing Broughans plus Gracefield.
St Rynaghs just about got over the line against St Vincent’s
It’s another mess of a draw
In some cases teams lose a first rd but go directly to a quarterfinal and other teams cases if they win they play another winning team before they get to a quarterfinal final .
There is no logic to it whatsoever

[del]

Edenderry 9.20
Durrow 1.3
That’s some scoring from Edenderry. The madness of the draw is shown in that Edenderry’s and Tullamore reward for winning their first rd is to play each other next to see who goes into a quarter final probably 2 of the strongest teams in it. That should be a good game all depends if Tullamore allow their senior players play with the Leinster first rd taking priority.

[frankthetank]

And is the loser of Edenderry vs Tullamore out then? Even though Durrow could feasibly win their loser group game and be progress and Edenderry would be out if they lose to Tullamore?

[del]

The loser of Edenderry vs Tullamore is out.
Durrow play St Broughans so one of the losers of the first rd will go further than one of the winners in the first rd. madness

[Lone Shark]

To be fair, this is always a famously difficult competition to fix. The amount of crossover with other competitions is bananas, and you have a mix of clubs/combinations that will struggle to cobble together a team on the day, with other panels that are strong, deep and itching for action. If you tried to do something with a round robin stage, then you'd have a plethora of teams that would play one game and then concede a walkover (I think we can all agree that Durrow are far from certain to fulfil their next fixture after that today) and if you do straight knockout, it's a lot of effort for what could be one game.

I think the way Tullamore and Edenderry need to look at it is that they are undoubtedly two of the main front runners for this championship - quite possibly the two best teams in it - and if either of them is to win it, they'll have to beat the other team on the way somewhere. This way they will either win the match and know that they are in great shape, or lose the match, and be free to go back to their school and college commitments quicker.

[del]

Yeh fair point along with Ferbane they are probably the strongest teams in it. But how does losing a first rd match in some of the other ties get rewarded with a straight passage to a quarter final makes no sense whatsoever and I understand clubs signed off on this at the start of the year.
A straight knockout would be better but clubs did look for more than one game a few yrs ago
With the split season it’s made it even harder to run this competition off and there is no perfect time for it as it will always overlap with something
It is what is now and teams will just have to get on with it.

[Lone Shark]

I think the best way to look at it is that this championship format gives everyone one free game at the start, a game that doesn't really have a lot of bearing on your chances to win it, but it gives you a chance to find your way because getting challenge games at this stage of the season is not easy. The odd number of teams is not helpful in that regard either.

[Cheddar]

Can I ask what is the format? Is there a document explaining it because it’s very hard to follow.

[del]

U20 Football Championship

13 Teams

Format:​Knock-out with Losers Group
Round 1
Bye​​Kilcormac/Killoughey
1​​ Shamrocks​​v​St Michaels
2​​Wheery​​v​ Clara
3​​St Vincents​​v​St Rynaghs
4​​Na Fianna​​v​St Manchans
5​​St Broughans​​v​Tullamore
6​​Durrow​​​v​St Patricks
Winners of game 1 goes direct to quarter-final (with home advantage)
Remaining 5 winners play in round 2 with team from 1st round bye
Losers of game 1 & 2 go direct to losers section quarter-final
Remaining 4 losers play in losers group round 2
Round 2
Winners Section
3 Games with winners progressing to Quarter-Final (with home advantage)
a) ​Winner 2​​v​Bye

b) Winner 3​​v​Winner 4

c) Winner 5​​v​Winner 6
Losers Group
2 Games with winners progressing to Quarter-Final
d) Losers 3​​v​Losers 4

e) Losers 5​​v​Losers 6
Quarter-Finals
f) A ​​​​v ​Losers 1
g) C​​​​v​D
h) B ​​​​v ​Losers 2
i) Winner 1​​​v​E
Semi-Final
j) F v G
k) H v I
Final​J V K
First Named Team

[FullForward waster]

To be fair, this is always a famously difficult competition to fix. The amount of crossover with other competitions is bananas, and you have a mix of clubs/combinations that will struggle to cobble together a team on the day, with other panels that are strong, deep and itching for action. If you tried to do something with a round robin stage, then you'd have a plethora of teams that would play one game and then concede a walkover (I think we can all agree that Durrow are far from certain to fulfil their next fixture after that today) and if you do straight knockout, it's a lot of effort for what could be one game.

I think the way Tullamore and Edenderry need to look at it is that they are undoubtedly two of the main front runners for this championship - quite possibly the two best teams in it - and if either of them is to win it, they'll have to beat the other team on the way somewhere. This way they will either win the match and know that they are in great shape, or lose the match, and be free to go back to their school and college commitments quicker.

The time of year is hard to gather teams together 100% agree lads in collage working part time ect. But what in the name of god is going on out in Durrow/Ballinamere. Senior walkover and now a possible U20, Must be much more to this than meets the eye???

[llkj]

I put the championship structure into an AI engine and asked it to explain the structure. The first sentence back from the AI was: "That's an interesting and slightly complex structure!"

If AI is saying that it is complicated, then it is definitely complicated!

It definitely seems that the request to have more than 1 game per team is the complicating factor in all of this. If it were straight knockout, then you have a first round with 5 games and 3 byes. Leaving 8 teams in the 1/4 final and everything is completed in 4 rounds. The downside of this is that at least 5 and possibly 8 teams will only get one game in this format.

In the current format, only 1 team is not guaranteed a second game (the team that gets the round 1 bye) which is good on paper, but the format is so random that it is almost nonsensical.
If you break down the format: 2 teams can lose round 1 and proceed to the QF directly (and those teams know that before they play round 1), 4 teams lose round 1 and go to a round 2 tie against the other losers, and if they win, they are in a QF. One winner of round 1 goes to the QF directly, while the remaining winners go to round 2 against the other winners. They need to win that game to make the QF.

I definitely have sympathy with the fixture makers here. Evidently, you can't do a straight knockout, you can't do groups, you can't split it into A and B (to have a "B" competition if you are knocked out early). I think they tried to placate everyone and just ended up confusing everyone!

[llkj]

The other point on the format is that I am sure there was a goal to 'run the championship off' as efficiently as possible. By my calculation, the current format achieves this in 5 rounds. Round 1, round 2 (the mix of winners v winners and losers v losers), QF, SF, F. If that was a stipulation, then the current format makes more sense as to how they landed on it.

If you want to allow for a more standard format that is not straight-knockout, you would have the 6 round 1 winners progress to the QF. The remaining 7 teams play 2 rounds in the loser section to whittle them down to 2 teams (1 team gets a bye to round 2 of the losers section). These 2 teams join the QF. This would take 6 weeks in total.

[Lone Shark]

Fundamentally, the problem that the CCC has here is that the clubs all want at least two games, until rubber meets road in some cases and the first game is a shambles, at which point they will fold up the tent. There is no structure in the world that will work with that reality.

Honestly, an U-20 championship is an anachronism, with no obvious place in the calendar for it. It has a tradition behind it from U-21 days but you have weird amalgamations (Birr and Ferbane, Gracefield in with Broughan's) all in the name of giving every player access, but getting players together for it is incredibly difficult. We already have a natural stepping stone for players coming up from minor but not yet ready for elite adult, and that stepping stone is Junior A/B/C. That is the place for players to learn their way at adult level while playing with their own adult club. And if you're still minor, the place for you is minor, and to make that championship even more robust.

Alternatively, you could push it out to U-23 but make a rule that any player that has played more then two games in the adult senior or intermediate championships is ineligible. Then run it midweek, during the Summer. No postponements, no crossover with minor, field with what you have. If you don't have enough players who fall into that bracket, you don't need it. Therefore you still have a development competition for players who aren't yet ready for adult games at a decent level, but you don't have to worry about the Cillian Bourkes, Brian Carrolls and David O'Rourkes of this world getting burned out from one more competition. They don't need this extra step.

[Hyper]

LS, how would you make the minor champ more robust?

[Lone Shark]

I'll qualify this by saying I'm not "on the ground" in the sense that I'm now a member of a club here in Roscommon so while I'm following things that go on at home and going to as many games as I can, I'm not dealing with the mill of fixtures and the different things that need to be accounted for.

That being said, if it was the case that your minor championship is primarily for 17 and 18 year old players, and that while you might have a few U-16s playing up but you don't have any issues with U-18s also playing either adult or U-20, I think you could have a bigger championship than you have at other age grades, where you have to be conscious of players playing both up and down. So off the top of my head, here's one suggestion.

Rather than what we had in 2025, which was 15 teams entered and 14 teams competed across three groups, I think you could split that into two so they have six round robin games instead of four, while also having a Group Three, exclusively for reserve teams, playing 13-a-side if you want.

With those reserve teams, I would put in the stipulation that it's only for players who are not hurling, and those group games take place on a hurling week. I'd be okay with a little bit of jiggery pokery so that if Tullamore has player A who is maybe a bit better than Player B, but player B also hurls, then Player B can go on the first 15 names that are not eligible for the reserve team, as long as we put in some sort of caveat that you can't go on a reserve team if you've been part of an Offaly minor or development squad in the current or previous calendar year. But it also means that lads who are not playing hurling get more football, lads who are hurling aren't burnt out.

While the likes of Ferbane, Clara and Shamrocks probably wouldn't have enough non-hurlers to make up second teams, I think it would be a good way to encourage the likes of Tullamore and Edenderry to make a bigger effort to keep more lads involved, and I could see teams entered from Vincent's, Na Fianna, maybe even a Broughan's/Gracefield combination coming together. Who knows, if they had enough lads between them who were twiddling their thumbs on hurling weeks, you could even see Ferbane and Rynaghs coming together, or Shamrocks and Ballinamere/Durrow etc.

In the reserve group, there would be a Reserve Championship final, and those reserve teams that are drawn from a single club or combination (i.e. Manchan's is fine, Ferbane/Rynaghs is not) could join the other teams in the knockout stages.

So again, this is all top of the head, no thought, but you're group one and two winners go straight into Minor A semi-finals, second plays third criss-cross in quarter-finals. Fourth goes straight into a Minor B semi-final, fifth place sides plays the two highest ranking reserve teams in Minor B quarter-finals. And the remaining first teams and reserve teams go into Minor C knockouts, with the structure depending on how many you have.

I'm a huge fan of the concept of players play minor or adult, but not both - however in order to make that worth, a minor club has to have a substantial programme of games. I don't think we do too bad, but an extra couple of rounds would go a long way, and I certainly think we could beef up participation levels to ensure that clubs that are teeming with kids at U-8 and U-10 are still putting 30 or 40 lads out on the field at U-18.