Smith hoping for big things

These are heady times for supporters of soccer in Cavan, with Celtic"s Cillian Sheridan making waves in the Champion"s League and the game thriving at grassroots level. The Anglo Celt"s Glenn Heaslip caught up with Brian Smith, Development Officer of the Cavan Underage League, to find out about the growth of the game, the problem of attracting players from other sports and the plan for the future. What"s going on on the local scene? At the minute the leagues are going well. At underage we have a Winter League and a Summer League, the Summer League is seven a side and the Winter League is 11 a side. At the moment we are into Round Six of the Winter League. The lack of pitches and bad weather has lead to the cancellation of games. There are 12 or 13 teams in a league and only six pitches so they"re doubling up The Emerging Talent Program is FAI-organised for every league in the country and we pick the elite players from Under 11, Under 12 and Under 13s. The Centre of Excellence is in Cootehill. Every Thursday evening there are coaching Sessions and with that there are county games. Also, there is a website being launched this week, a soccer website for Cavan and that"s for all age groups. Hopefully we"ll get sponsors as well. And we"d have the league fixtures on it and games that are called off will be there, on the net, the morning of the games. It goes from Under 8s and above. So are their signs of improvement? Indeed there is. I"m with the league seven years and the Emerging Talent Program is definitely the way to go because it does bring in the elite players. Also the fringe players learn from these players when they go back to their clubs. The main thing that"s wrong with this league is that we need an astro-turf pitch, an all-weather full size astro-turf pitch and we could run all our league games in one day. They could start at 9am and run through to about 6 or 7 in the evening. At the minute we are looking at developments outside Butlersbridge and things like that. Cootehill Harps have put in for a full size astro-turf pitch and we can hopefully work in conjunction with them and use the pitch. If we had that there would be no games called off. There were seven games planned for this weekend and only three games were played because of the weather. And in the FAI Cup which is an All Ireland Cup at Under 11s, we have one team through to the last 32 and one through to the last 48 and at Under 14 we have a team through to the last 48 as well. There are also two teams from Ballyjamesduff and two from Cootehill at Under 13s and a team from at Under 14s. FAI Development Officer Tom Mohan is playing a big role in the improvements..... Tom Mohan is the bee"s knees. We have him now, he"s the FAI Development Officer over Cavan, Monaghan and Meath but at the minute the Council in Meath and Monaghan have got their own individual development officers and we"re trying to get onto the FAI to get one for Cavan on its own and Tom is seemingly going to be the regional officer over those three development officers. Ten years ago it looked promising but now with all these cutbacks I don"t know if the Council is going to go for it. There are a couple of members on the council that are diehard GAA fans and when the development officer comes in he says 'you should get one for soccer and you should get one for athletics and you should get one for that'... The GAA development is completely funded and the soccer is half-funded and that"s the big problem at the minute. We met the FAI there recently and there are 32 leagues in Ireland and we did a presentation for Cavan and there was one from Kerry so it was good to be acknowledged. There are Cavan teams going into the Meath league at Under 16s level. Why is there no Cavan league to cater for players at that age group? Well, we go up as far now with the schoolboy league as Under 16s and as such we have no Under 16 league this year, we"ve just gone up as far as Under 15. Two clubs have left now one at Under 14s because there is no league. We go Under 11s, Under 12s,Under 13s, Under 15s. There would have been an Under 14s league this year but Ballyjamesduff wouldn"t go in they wanted to go to the NSCSL, I don"t know what their reason was but as a result we had to join our Under 14s and Under 15s together to make a strong league so we made it up to Under 15s. But concerning Under 17s I"m not sure how many teams there are but there is one from Ballyjamesduff, one from Crosskeys and two from Cootehill and we"d have to set up nearly another constitution to bring them back into our league. So next year we"ll hopefully have a strong Under 15s league because most of the Under 14s are playing Under 15s this year and we"ll have an Under 16s league too because the Under 15s will be moving up. So we should have football at every age level next year. We are only missing one age level this year and that"s because of other teams pulling out. A lot of children are involved in football at a young age but there is no league in Cavan as you get older and soccer almost ceases to exist at Under 14s and above levels, meaning that those once-eager footballers have been turned away from the game to GAA and rugby, sports that are overflowing with local clubs. From the parents point of view then, its less hassle for them. So what"s your opinion on that? Yes, that"s the problem that we have here now. I"m from Cootehill but I know Ballyjamesduff have the same problem that when they get to about the age of 15 or 16 if they don"t join the youth league they get washed up in the system. Last year I was playing for Ballyjamesduff Celtic Under16s and they had to take us to Meath for us to be in a competitive league at all... Yes, there"s an awful big gap between Under 17s and playing, say, junior football. There is a gap and I understand that but as a schoolboy league we go up as far as Under 16s. It"s nearly up to the start of youth league. Cavan United have started something in Cavan, they"re playing Under 19s and Under 20s but we think the Under 17s would be too young for that and I know the Under 17s in Cootehill are playing in the NSCSL. It"s ideal for them but there is an odd boy straying from that as well so its a very hard thing to organise.m Actually there is the same problem in GAA, they have a big gap as well between the Under 16s and the minors and that"s why everyone gets washed up so there has to be something done there. I agree with you there, there has to be something set up for underage football at Under 17. And how do we fill that gap? It"s very edgy, you"d get a committee set together and you organise a league. The way to go would probably be to join Meath, Monaghan and Cavan. What should be done is to make a North Eastern League. Let"s say you play the games every other weekend, it would also mean teams wouldn"t have too far to travel and then every weekend in between if players are playing Gaelic or whatever. It would only work if we worked with the Gaelic and that. I"d say is the way to go, and some of the local leagues like the NSCSL and Cavan and Monaghan could become a regional league and bring the likes of Dundalk into it as well. It could become a North East Region Youth League. I know there are clubs coming down from Shelbourne and they"ve taken four or five players from Dundalk and three players from Drogheda they"ve even taken players north from Navan. And that doesn"t help the other clubs; if there are 11 players in a club and they take three good players then that club will disintegrate So what"s the five year plan for developing football? That is the Emerging Talent Program which we are three years into at the moment and it started at Under 11"s. So those Under 11"s this year will be going to the Kennedy Cup, which is the big football event for that age group. In five years time we need a full size astro-turf pitch in Cavan and we need another astro-turf pitch probably at Ballyjamesduff or Cootehill. That has to be the aim and if that is the aim then there is no way football will fade away. Then football will always be there, if you have an astro-turf pitch and you can play football every week and be able to play your fixtures regardless of the weather. But an astro-turf pitch is most definitely the way to go and a five year plan would be to organise dressing rooms and meeting rooms for a Cavan League pitch, and it wouldn"t have to be a club pitch it could just be a Cavan league pitch, and then the Cavan League could go up to that.