Meath name team for All-Ireland SFC semi-final against Donegal
"What we have is, I know I heard a few people saying, 'oh you could have this guy back,' but they definitely won't be," said Brennan. "They're all in rehab for next season."We have certainly said all year, next man up. It's just about the next man up and that's what we've installed and luckily we have some really good players there and still more that haven't even been used yet. So, we'd be quite happy with the squad we have."Meath: Billy Hogan; Seamus Lavin, Seán Rafferty, Ronan Ryan; Donal Keogan, Seán Coffey, Ciarán Caulfield; Bryan Menton, Adam O'Neill; Conor Duke, Ruairí Kinsella, Keith Curtis; Jordan Morris, Mathew Costello, Eoghan Frayne.Subs: Seán Brennan, Brian O'Halloran, Eoin Harkin, James McEntee, Cian McBride, Conor Gray, Aaron Lynch, Daithí McGowan, Shane Walsh, Diarmuid Moriarty, Cathal Hickey.
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The Irish Sun
42 minutes ago
- The Irish Sun
Lee Chin draws inspiration from Tipperary's rapid rise as he vows Wexford can bounce back in 2026
CHIN UP Lee Chin draws inspiration from Tipperary's rapid rise as he vows Wexford can bounce back in 2026 THE light went out on Wexford's season much sooner than they had planned – but Lee Chin believes Tipperary's resurgence is proof of how quickly the darkness can lift. Having failed to record a Championship victory in 2024, Tipp won six on the bounce to be crowned All-Ireland champions last month. 2 Lee Chin of Wexford reckons they can bounce back after a poor 2025 season 2 Chin is certain they can gain promotion back to the top tier Wexford skipper Chin said: 'I just think that's what hurling is now. You have a team that potentially might not be at the level they desire one year and they win the All-Ireland the year after. "Tipperary have high standards and their ambition is to win All-Irelands. "I don't think those sorts of goals would have changed for them coming into this year, regardless of how the previous couple of years went. "To come out and go all the way was incredible to see. And of course it gives you some sort of light at the end of the tunnel to think that regardless of how your year went, you can still turn things around the following year.' A win over Kilkenny in May was ultimately irrelevant for Wexford as the game was already a dead rubber. Their Leinster SHC campaign also yielded victories over Antrim and Offaly. Yet the Model men came up short of a top-three finish due to costly defeats to Dublin and Galway. Speaking exclusively to SunSport ahead of his involvement in the 2025 Hurler for Cancer Research match, Chin reflected: "We had to wait for other results to come our way by not getting the victory up in Salthill and obviously the Dublin game had left us under pressure as well. 'If you'd managed to get a win there, you would have put a bit of comfort in your way. Unfortunately we weren't able to go to either of those two venues and get a victory. "We kind of had to keep ourselves out of the relegation picture come the game against Offaly. The Kilkenny game was an odd one then because we knew that was the last day we'd hurl for 2025.' With 20 minutes remaining in their Parnell Park clash with the Dubs, Wexford were in the driving seat with a three-point lead. Scottie Scheffler suffers major blow ahead of PGA Tour playoff event after $43 million season earnings are revealed But a significant moment that turned the game in favour of the hosts was Seán Currie's penalty. While replays showed that the sliotar had not crossed the line, a goal was awarded by ref Michael Kennedy nonetheless. But Chin insisted: "Obviously when things like that do occur, you have to just suck it up and move on. After the game when you reflect, you can be very frustrated. "But as time moves on, you accept that these things happen and that's just sport. 'You get on with it. It's just foolish to be thinking about what could have been. At the end of the day, we didn't do enough in that game against Dublin. "We just need to improve. There are a lot of other areas that we needed to be better in on that day. "Just conceding too many goals, too many scores and ourselves probably as a forward line didn't really get into any sort of a rhythm through the Championship. "There are a lot of things we just need to address in terms of our performances. We can't really put it down to one incident or two incidents. We've got to be accountable for our own performance. We've just got to go searching for better." Next season will be Chin's 14th as a Wexford senior hurler. And with the county board this week proposing that Keith Rossiter be ratified to remain in charge for 2026, the veteran forward reckons they still have the right man at the wheel. He said: "I suppose we've gone through various different changes over the last number of years. As a county and especially as a player who's been around for a while, the one thing you want is continuity. 'You don't want change occurring all the time because any manager who comes into a project like ourselves, they want a year or two to bed in, to figure out players and who's in Wexford. "And obviously just to get everything in order for themselves. 'For someone like me, if that were to start all over again, that's probably not something I have time on my side for anymore. "If change was for the betterment of Wexford, I'd obviously support that. But for ourselves at the moment, we know what quality Keith brings. 'The county board are probably confident in that too and that's the reason he's going into his third year. I'm delighted that's happening." PROMOTION PUSH As well as reaching a first Leinster SHC final since the triumph of 2019, promotion back to the top tier of the National League will be among Wexford's top priorities in a year that will mark the 30th anniversary of their last All-Ireland win. And with Tipperary showing what is possible for teams who have lost their way, Chin is adamant that Rossiter's side can also turn a corner. The Faythe Harries man, who turns 33 in October, said: "I think a lot of teams are capable of bouncing back positively with how much they have at their disposal in terms of preparation and organisation and how detailed managements can be. "It's just fine lines and narrow margins with results or decisions that cause you not to get out of Leinster or Munster. "Small things can cause you to end up on one side or the other and it can make it a completely different year for you. "This was just a year that we were disappointed in. Our ambition would be to get back to Leinster finals and compete and go into an All-Ireland series. 'It wasn't to be and it's something that we'll look to rectify. Obviously getting relegated in the league didn't help with confidence either. "But we'll put our heads down over the winter and we'll work hard on sorting out a few things that we need to address. Hopefully we'll have found the improvements coming into 2026." *LEE CHIN will be one of the stars on show in the annual Hurling for Cancer Research match. Supported by Centra, it takes place at Netwatch Cullen Park in Carlow on Monday at 7.30pm. Tickets – priced €10 for adults and €5 for children – are available from selected Centra and SuperValu stores, as well as online at
The Irish Sun
42 minutes ago
- The Irish Sun
Wexford star Lee Chin calls for major All-Ireland SHC shake-up with four teams qualifying from Leinster and Munster
Chin says the Joe McDonagh Cup finalists deserve a break and insists extra provincial spots would boost competitiveness in the Championship ALL CHANGE Wexford star Lee Chin calls for major All-Ireland SHC shake-up with four teams qualifying from Leinster and Munster WEXFORD captain Lee Chin has added his voice to calls for four teams to qualify for the All-Ireland SHC from both Leinster and Munster. GAA president Jarlath Burns has vowed to review the current structure of the hurling Championship, admitting that the pathway into the All-Ireland series for the Joe McDonagh Cup finalists could be abolished. 2 County icon Chin says the Joe McDonagh Cup finalists deserve a break and insists more provincial spots would boost competitiveness 2 Wexford skipper Lee Chin has called for a major adjustment to the senior hurling championship campaign Along with the likes of Clare's Tony Kelly and Waterford's Stephen Bennett. Chin was one of many leading players whose season ended in May after Wexford failed to secure the top-three finish required to advance from the provincial stages. He said: "Every inter-county hurler wants to be hurling as late into the year as they can. It'll be interesting to see what will come if they do potentially change what way the format goes. "My own feelings on it would be that if they're going to keep the same one, maybe change it so that four teams come out of each province. "I mean this with the greatest respect, but the teams that are coming up from the Joe McDonagh over the last number of years, their games in the preliminary quarter-final just haven't really been competitive.' In light of the introduction of participation in the top-tier of Championship hurling as a bonus for Joe McDonagh teams, the 2019 win for Laois over Dublin remains an outlier. Since then, the eight preliminary quarter-finals have ended in victories for the Liam MacCarthy Cup sides by an average margin of more than 17 points. Chin added: "It's quite unfair on them too that they have to go out and play again only a week after playing their All-Ireland. "They're not able to put in the best week of preparation as a result and it's probably something that just needs to change. "If those places were taken by the teams who finished fourth in the provinces, I think it would just add more competitiveness to the rest of the Championship. Scottie Scheffler suffers major blow ahead of PGA Tour playoff event after $43 million season earnings are revealed "From a player welfare point of view, let the Joe McDonagh finalists have their few days to celebrate afterwards or whatever it might be because the bodies wouldn't necessarily be right to go into a high-intensity Championship game. "If there's not going to be any change to that – and I don't know where it's going to be found – then they're going to have to give those teams an extra week or two to be ready for it. "But if the same timeframe is there, the more appropriate alternative would be to have four teams coming out of both Munster and Leinster." Chin's next outing will be the annual Hurling for Cancer Research game at Netwatch Cullen Park, where he will be among an array of big names lining out on Monday evening. He said: "It's an absolutely fantastic occasion each year. I'm privileged to be involved in it and I love heading up to see the players, the coaches and the crowds that have gathered over the years. "Since my first year involved, which was 2015 or 2016, there's been a huge difference in the size of the crowds attending the game and the number of people who have bought into it. "Fair play to everybody who continues to make it happen because it's a brilliant thing they're doing for such a great cause."
Irish Examiner
42 minutes ago
- Irish Examiner
Share the load, improve balance and use young and old: How clubs can tackle coaching challenges
They're the unheralded stars of sport. You won't see their face on TV, rarely their name in the paper, and yet they continue to beaver away on the quiet fields and waters and in halls across the land, catering for everyone from the God-gifted talented to the God-help-us craturs. There's even a decent chance you're one of them – or at least have been. According to some recently-published research commissioned by Sport Ireland, close to three out of 10 adults (29%) in this country have coached sport at some point. Half a million people – basically one in eight adults – are still currently volunteering in sport in some capacity each week. The majority of them are coaches. Up to 268,000 people – more than seven per cent of anyone aged 15 or older – coach on a weekly basis, dedicating an average 5.5 hours per week to it. Add that all up, as Benny Cullen, Sport Ireland's Director of Research and Innovation has, and you're talking about over a million hours of coaching happens in Ireland every week, almost all of it voluntarily. 'It's mind-boggling, really, that so many people have that almost vocational zeal to coach sport.' But here's the rub. According to that same Spotlight on Coaching survey published last month, over a fifth – 22% to be exact – of those current coaches can see themselves stepping away within the next two years. They just can no longer give it the time. Or partly they feel it's no longer worth all of that time. And if you're a woman, well, remaining in coaching or even getting into it at all is all the more challenging again. There are so many findings, so many obstacles, highlighted in this report. But if you're a suitably imaginative and ambitious club or governing body, there are multiple solutions too. 1. CHALLENGE YOUR BIASES – 'It's like women are glass.' Just as she won 50 caps playing rugby for Ireland, Nora Stapleton had multiple hats on her when digesting the Spotlight on Coaching report. The primary one would have been as Sport Ireland's women in sport lead as well as its director of strategic national governing body programmes. But she is also someone who has played rugby (in three World Cups), soccer (in FAI Cup finals) and Gaelic football (with Donegal) at an elite level. She has coached on and off as both a full-time development officer and as a volunteer, ranging from the recreational and grassroots right up to high performance. And she is a mother, which partly explains why her coaching career has been quite intermittent. With almost every finding in the report she could provide a personally-lived anecdote to firm it up. Want to know why women still only make up 36% of all coaches and 17% of high-performance coaches employed in this country? We tend not to see women as prospective coaches. We tend to see through them. Especially if it's a boys' or men's team that could do with some people to help out. 'A lot of it comes down to systemic biases that we now need to try to navigate. I've seen it first-hand where it's almost like women are made of glass while men are this shining light on sidelines. Men will look right past or through you to go and approach a man on the side of a pitch to help coach their kids; existing coaches tend to gravitate to the dads and ask them first towards doing some coaching rather than think to have a conversation with the mothers. 'It's no one's particular fault. It's just been bred into people. We have this perception that men are better coaches because traditionally we've always seen men coaching.' There has been progress. Back in 2007 there was a glaring 16% gap between how many men played sport compared to women. Now it's down to three per cent. Nora Stapleton playing for Ireland against Scotland during the 2014 Women's Six Nations. Picture: Ramsey Cardy / SPORTSFILE But in the coaching sphere, there's still that gulf. In part because a lot of coaches tend to be ex-players and most ex-players tend to be male. But only in part. Stapleton notes that there have always been more females that play hockey in Ireland than men yet how many female hockey coaches are in there in Hockey Ireland's senior high-performance teams? 'We did a survey back in 2020 of over 2000 women coaches and they talked about how they did not feel valued in their club, how they felt judged. They may have been confident in their coaching but if they were put in a situation with male coaches whereby say they had to report to a committee, they felt very judged by the committee as a female coach. High-performance recently-retired players have spoken about how they'll go on a coaching course and they'll be considered less competent and credible than a male coach who hasn't played in 20 years. 'It's about challenging behaviours and norms, including within your own club. Have we a coaching committee? Is there equal representation on that? When you're promoting coaching and recruitment of coaches, does your photographic imagery include female coaches? 'Rowing Ireland did an audit of their clubs and it was noted that the pictures on the wall of previous winners could be almost exclusively male because men had been taking part for longer. Females pick up on things like that. Where are we?' Sponsors, she highlights, pick up on it too. The fans and members of a sponsored female team are more likely to recall and support that brand than the supporters of a male-sponsored team. Financially as well as culturally, it makes sense to champion, recruit and retain more women's coaches. 2. SHARE THE LOAD When asked why they had ceased coaching, the most common reason by a distance cited by former coaches was they simply no longer had the time due to work or study. 'That one jumped out,' says Michael McGeehin, the director of Sport Ireland coaching. 'The time element is the most obvious barrier – we're all time poor. Another was cost. And another was travel. But even that links back to time: How long do you need me for? If as a club you can identify that, and reduce that, it can entice coaches in and retain the ones you have. Maybe have a pool of coaches involved with a particular team. The entire responsibility isn't going to fall on your shoulders.' Stapleton concurs on the idea of shared responsibility. It would definitely help attract and retain more female coaches. 'I was talking to one male coach whose wife coaches as well and he pointed out how while he could disappear and go into camp with a team for a weekend at the drop of a hat, she couldn't. There's just that imbalance in duties. That's one of the reasons why only 17% of coaches in high-performance sport are female. 'It's something Paralympics Ireland have tried recently. Instead of the one support provider or coach being expected to be away for four or five weeks, the duty is shared with someone else and you're only away for half that time. Sport Ireland came up with a maternity policy for carded athletes in 2021 which is being further revamped and we're now looking at NGBs (national governing bodies) having something similar for paid coaches.' 3. ASK, ESPECIALLY THE YOUNG – AND THEN ASK BACK THE OLD According to the report, 12% of those aged between 16 and 24 are currently coaching. But then work and study really comes into play; amongst 25-34 year-olds, only three per cent are coaching. It increases back up to 11% then though amongst 35-44 year-olds; you resume or take up coaching when your own children start playing. But then it starts to decline among older age-groups. Only two per cent of those aged 65 or over are involved in any kind of coaching. 'There's certainly a fluctuation in coaching involvement,' says Benny Cullen, Sport Ireland's research director. 'People tend to have a fluid involvement. Coaching is not a behaviour that they pick up and maintain for life. 'What the study highlights is that it's important to get people involved in coaching at a young age. Encourage them. Provide and subsidise their coach education. If they can build familiarity of coaching in their late teens, early adulthood, it puts a good grounding and is likely to increase their participation as they get older because they're back into familiar territory.' Donegal manager John Joe Doherty, left, with selector Michael McGeehin during a 2009 All-Ireland SFC qualifier against Derry. Picture: Oliver McVeigh / SPORTSFILE Then, in their 30s, ask them – and others – if they'd like to coach. The survey found a lot of people would be interested to help out – only they're never asked. Forty-five per cent of former coaches said they'd be willing to return. But will they be asked or encouraged? 'We could all be better at that,' says McGeehin, 'but some organisations and clubs are better and more proactive than others. Even just asking at registration day. Would you be interested in joining our coaching team?' A demographic ripe to be tapped into is the retired, notes Cullen. 'All of a sudden instead of being time poor, they have a whole pile of time back. They've possibly coached before and might be looking for something meaningful to do. 'There are barriers to overcome. Older former coaches surveyed felt they were possibly too old to coach. It's maybe reframing their involvement and that they're more mentors, whereby you're availing of their wisdom and experience to support that broader club environment and coach development piece.' 4. APPRECIATE WHO YOU ALREADY HAVE One of the last and standout findings of the research is that recognising the voluntary contribution of coaches is 'paramount'. Award schemes like the Federation of Irish Sport's volunteer of the year are great but clubs and regional boards, Cullen and McGeehin note, could be far more proactive at recognising the prophets in their own land. Retrospective gratitude is lovely. McGeehin recalls being at a funeral in Fermoy when he was tapped on the shoulder by a vaguely familiar face which he couldn't place a name on. 'Your sessions were great. And you were very fair.' Fifteen years earlier when they were both back in Donegal, McGeehin had coached that man when he was just a kid. 'It was a lovely moment, being in north Cork, far from Donegal and hearing that all those years later.' But the survey and study tells every club and sporting organisation. Don't wait for funerals to appreciate who and what you have. Especially when it could be theirs.
