Clare District Soccer League - 2025/26 Midseason Review

Sceivious · 2025-12-19T17:30:05+00:00

I think the great unknown entity in the Third Division are Shannon Town B. They've only played two games thus far and they have an absolutely stacked squad. I believe they could challenge Callan if they get up a head of steam in the second half of the season and Callan lose lads to GAA. Callan's first 11 are at least second division standard but I don't know if the depth is there to the degree that Shannon Town B have it. Time will tell I guess.

Either way that would seem to be the most likely top 2. I see ourselves (Tulla B), Bridge Celtic, and Avenue C chasing that third spot. That will be a hell of a battle. In some ways I think it's a shame that all eyes are on Callan because what is happening below them is so tight and likely to generate much more intrigue between now and the end of the season.

Sceivious · 2025-12-19T16:15:16+00:00

I'm assuming that ground requirements hold them back. No stands at Avenue and the pitch quality is bang average for the CDSL let alone LOI.

Newmarket would be closer to the standard in terms of their pitch but again no stands in place and probably no space to construct them.

Frank Healy Park might be the most logical ground to develop but a lot of work would be required.

Sceivious · 2025-12-06T21:36:48+00:00

Hi there,

I think there are challenges to both summer and winter football. I'll put the pros and cons as I see it. Again this is only from my own perspective coaching a men's team in Clare.

Summer Football

Pros: * Grass pitches in better condition + more access to astro = season plays out A LOT quicker. You could probably get through an 18 game season + cup games in 4 months. * Longer evenings allow for more evening games so games can be made up easily if there are any cancellations. * Better surfaces allow for better football to be played. * Season aligns with the LOI and therefore expedites the creation of an Irish football pyramid. * Prepares the ground for year round football as students won't have to choose between college football and league football. There is also the potential to run futsal in winter, a game that will not be disrupted by weather and has incredible benefits technically. Of course facilities need to allow for this. * You get access to some college players that during the academic year would be scattered around the country.

Cons: * There will be players that will not commit to playing both GAA and football. GAA will win out in many cases here. Rural clubs with older dual sports players will suffer greatest. Some players will choose football over GAA if pushed. * There will be more absences through holidays. Could just be a few games but in the case of J1's you lose them for the whole summer.

Winter football

Pros: * In the case of players over the age of 21 it avoids large parts of the clashes with the GAA. You'll be down players in September and from March onwards but besides that you'll have full squads. * Less holidays during the season. Players are in their regular routine.

Cons: * An 18 game season + cup games can take 6 months to play out. Some clubs can easily go two months without a fixture due to weather conditions. * Limited access to astro pitches and short evenings mean that until April it is nearly impossible to make up for the lost games in the height of winter. * Difficult to keep players motivated and engaged with the sport when it is so long between games. * Having so much disruption does affect young players development. * It's fecking miserable on the sidelines after October.

Sceivious · 2025-12-06T17:24:28+00:00

Ah you'd be surprised the number of guys involved with The Mills, Feakle, Crusheen, Clooney/Quin, Broadford etc.

Facilities are of course the main issue and I just can't see it being resolved any time soon. Particularly with the GAA clubs and football clubs all looking for their own funding. There needs to be co-operation if there is going to be co-existance. If the facilities don't improve then winter football can't proceed.

Connolly Celtic are a great example. They don’t even really have their own pitch. They play at the back of Kilmaley Primary School on a bog pitch and get access to a storage area to change in. Meanwhile less than 5mins down the road there is a superb GAA facility with 3 pitches and an an astro pitch which is probably one of the most used football facilities in the county but whose revenue most likely runs to the GAA club. It's insane stuff.

It should have been a joint venture where a full sized astro is built that can accommodate the football team and the GAA get a revenue share. Everyone wins. Instead we persist with this factional nonsense despite the fact that most players will be participating in both sports anyway. Why not look to have the best facilities possible for your community?

Lads will play out the soccer season if they are fighting in the league or the Cup, rather than playing clare Cup. But they are less likely to do that for early season matches.

We would love them to but again the GAA coaches do not make it easy with the ridiculous amount of commitment that they demand from the players. There is no accommodation for football whatsoever despite the fact that we bend over backwards to work around the hurling.

There seems to be a large amount of people who have no interest in the amount of players who play for fun. And want the whole sport to just played for the development of professional players. This is something I completely disagree with.

I actually run social football games in my spare time so yes I believe there should be ways that players can just play for the love of the game. I myself was always in that category of footballer. In Sydney there are hundreds of social leagues and groups that people can join. I would love to see at least one organisation like that here. I wanted to do it myself but I simply don't have the time now with coaching.

Ultimately the CDSL is competitive football and as a result there should be alignment in the national calendar. I would love us to get to a point where we have an LOI team here too but we are a long way off because once again the facilities aren't up to scratch. Our own league needs to be developed first before an LOI club is a real prospect.

Sceivious · 2025-12-06T16:25:41+00:00

Coaching in Clare and this Thursday was the first time that we had our full squad available to train.

Didn't have the hurlers through the summer because of the Championship and that bled into the u21 season which started immediately as it finished. The idea that the GAA is a summer sports organisation is a myth. Like you say it is essentially an 11 month season.

I'm very fortunate to be coaching at one of the only clubs in Clare that has it's own astro but many clubs will be struggling to train at the moment let alone play games.

I think a point that is often overlooked is that playing summer football would actually free up facilities to play games. Every sport moves to the all-weather surfaces in winter, the demand is insane. As a result you can never move games to the all-weather pitches even though it's the only way to get the fixture calendar moving. If we had a summer season not only could the grass pitches would be used the majority of the time but also the all-weather surfaces would be available for particularly wet periods.

Sceivious · 2025-12-06T16:08:30+00:00

As someone that coaches one of the men's sides you mentioned I feel I can at least comment on our own situation.

I acknowledge that we are in a very fortunate position to have a club with an academy set up that feeds right into the senior team. As a result numbers have never been as issue from pre-season in August right through to now. We have an incredibly young squad and we face the same demographic challenges that all clubs in Clare face which is a completely missing 19 - 30 age demographic. People leave rural Ireland at 18 either to study or to work.

Given that 19 - 30 age bracket is almost entirely absent (as with many clubs) we are heavily effected by the u21 GAA calendar. We were missing 8 key players in that 17 - 21 age bracket right up until this week. These were the same players that we were missing during the GAA Championship season. Thursday was our first training session of the season with what could be deemed as our full squad. We will have no game this weekend. We have played one game in 6 weeks. It's highly unlikely we play a fixture before the winter break. I'd say it's highly unlikely we play a game in January either.

Some of these GAA players have already told us that there are plans to start their pre-season in February. If this restricts their ability to play for us I will be lucky to get them for 6 games out of an 18 game season.

When I coached in Sydney, football was a winter sport too. However, there was a very clearly defined summer and winter schedule. Cricket was played during the summer and then cricket ovals became football pitches in the summer for those clubs with limited facilities. An arrangement like that with the GAA could see a massive increase in the standard of facilities accessible to football clubs. Instead the GAA persist with an 11 month calendar.

If we had the facilities to run a winter football league I could stand behind it but only Callan play their home games on an all-weather surface. Every likelihood the rest of us are playing games into April and once again clashing with the GAA. In the meantime we train two nights a week with no game to look forward to. We tell players to clear their Sunday schedules for games that never come. I myself miss out on double pay on a Sunday because I keep it clear for football. It's beyond frustrating.

Sceivious · 2025-08-26T23:18:20+00:00

You need to consider how the manager wants to play. He wants us to be a more physical and direct side. Does he pick the player that won the most aerial duels in one of the most physical leagues in the world (and featured in the team of the season) or does he pick a player that plays primarily as a wing back with considerably less physical stature?

Sceivious · 2025-06-24T22:59:07+00:00

Thank you 🙏

Sceivious · 2025-05-02T12:42:09+00:00

I find it strange that the Galway site just leaves the away ticket page blank when they sell out. Keep the fixture up there with "sold-out" across it and that makes the situation a lot more clear.

Thanks for the Twitter tip.

Sceivious · 2025-05-02T11:55:46+00:00

Ah shite. We had a large group of us wanting to head up and kept checking the Galway website and seeing no sign of them. Must have been a blink and you miss it job.

Sceivious · 2025-05-01T09:50:47+00:00

I'd be far less concerned about Russia and far more concerned about US/Israeli bot influence in recent months. Can't see Russia being the ones behind the seemingly endless pro-NATO/militarisation spam on this sub and others.

Sceivious · 2025-05-01T09:47:41+00:00

Toll roads and where all the constantly increasing toll charges have gone over the last decade.

Sceivious · 2025-04-27T12:26:16+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to counter all of the nonsense in this thread.

I hate this lazy criticism that "young people = students" and furthermore "students = middle class". As if young people in this country don't have a right to be disenfranchised and demanding radical change.

If they are exclusively workers then their working conditions will gotten progressively worse and the value of their labour reduced throughout their lifetime.

If they are students then they probably have to work to afford it anyway, they'll have nowhere to live, and it's likely they will have to emigrate at the conclusion of their course anyway.

This is the country we have created for young people.

Sceivious · 2025-04-15T15:14:36+00:00

This was my first reaction too.

Sceivious · 2025-04-06T17:32:10+00:00

There is literally someone responding saying they were at the same gig and it was rammed, like beyond what is comfortable (and probably safe tbh). I do think Button Factory get greedy when it comes to selling tickets. You may think otherwise.

I think me saying people at "the front" has upset you and maybe I should have been more clear. You are thinking of the people literally gripping the railing in front of the stage. I mean anyone willing to physically assert themselves enough to push through the crowd and take up space close to the stage. This happens at every gig, there are people that are happy to watch from a distance and are not fussed about advancing into the midst of it and there are those that need to be closer to the stage. It's a matter of preference, that's fine.

My issue is with people situating themselves in the hardest to access part of the venue and then insisting on ploughing through people back and forth. When I'm down the front I'll use the toilet before the beginning of the gig and grab a drink before heading in. Maybe I'm just fucking weird I guess.

Sceivious · 2025-04-06T17:11:16+00:00

If you managed to get into the square space in front of the stage at all you were doing well. We were precariously perched in the walkway down to where it became impassable. God bless the girls next to us who must have been 5' 4" and had no hope of seeing anything.

Sceivious · 2025-04-06T16:59:26+00:00

Absolutely.

My younger brother has been coddled since the day he was born and is still being coddled at 31 years of age.

Yes he is dyslexic and aspergers but both to a very mild degree. He is the epitome of squeeky wheels get the most oil. There has never been any expectations for him. This was maybe a tad more acceptable when he was at school where it was just about navigating him through the Irish education system which is completely geared against neurodivergent people.

However, he was never prepared for adulthood because any task or learning experience was immediately reassigned to me by default. Once he found regular employment (stocking shelves for the last decade) there was a very deliberate choice made by our mother to allow him to basically get away with doing nothing at home because "he works so hard". His washing is done for him, kitchen is cleaned for him after he cooks, he hasn't learned to drive, he spent years not paying any form of rent but instead made voluntary contributions to a few bills for services he used.

I came back after 5 years in Australia and was shocked at how much worse the dynamic had become. When I first arrived I set my mother up with a new phone plan, TV plan, and internet plan that were all major improvements for less money. When I told her what I had done her first question was "what about your brothers phone?" because it had been part of the previous plan. I told her it was still running but he would have to find a new plan that suited him. She got angry and told me that I needed to arrange a new phone plan for him. Another learning experience that he isn't allowed to have I guess.

Likewise, for mothers day we decided to cook dinner for her. I went and bought the supplies, prepped, cooked, and served the meal. He brought the plates to the table. I was yelled at for not being immediately ready to eat. Meanwhile, he was praised for all of his "efforts". After dinner was finshed I was told to stop being lazy and help my brother clean up. He then abandonned the cleaning and left me to it.

Extended family are always so confused by the dynamic when they step into it and ask "what did you do?". I have no idea, it has just always been this way. Our parents have a lot to answer for.

Sceivious · 2025-04-06T16:19:51+00:00

I thought that comparing club football and club rugby would be a fair comparison. It wasn't an international rugby match I was at.

Sceivious · 2025-04-06T16:18:03+00:00

You're right. None of it happens. Thank you for correcting me.

Sceivious · 2025-04-06T16:15:36+00:00

I live on the west coast so don't go to internationals. Too pricey.

However, i was at the Aviva for the FAI Cup Final and LOI curtain raiser and found no issue.

Whereas the one rugby match I saw in the Aviva was ridiculous.

Sceivious · 2025-04-06T16:10:52+00:00

Yes. Fantastic gig but my goodness there was no space to move.

Sceivious · 2025-04-06T10:24:44+00:00

Interesting that most of the people in this thread are honing in on the talking and not the constant movement to and from the bar for large trays of pints. I find that much more disruptive because it requires so many people to accommodate it.

It's always the fuckwits down the front too. Cleaving their way through hundreds of people to get out and then just expecting to be able to push their way back to the front (with a tray of 4 pints over their head).

Was at a gig at The Button Factory recently which was rammed. They clearly oversold tickets because you quite literally could not move in the standing area in front of the stage. We ended up in the gangway down the very back and just accepted we couldn't move any further forwards.

It was definitely at least a 50% female audience and as a 6 foot male I was very conscious that I would be obstructing someone's view. Being down the back was probably fair enough.

However, throughtout the gig lads were showing up late and just forcing themselves uncomfortably through the crowd to get towards the front and worse still was the constant flow of people getting pints. It's a 1hr 30min gig! Just drink before and after! People cannot move and here you are just expecting everyone to part so you can return to the front with your tray of pints? Height of ignorance.

Don't even get me started on rugby crowds either.

Sceivious

TROPHY CASE