LGFA Congress Confirms Details for TG4 Junior Championship

The Ladies Gaelic Football Association Annual Congress are meeting this weekend at The Inn in Dromoland in Clare. The annual congress plots the course of the sport for the coming year and years.

The highlight from Day 1 of the annual congress was the confirmation of the structure and participants in the TG4 Junior championship and the Aisling McGing Under 21 Championship.

This year the TG4 Junior Championship will feature 6 teams, 3 from Ireland and a further 3 from overseas. Derry, Carlow and Louth will meet New York, Lancashire and Scotland over 4 rounds. The draw for the championship also took place with the result that Lancashire host Derry in Round 1 and Scotland will welcome Louth in the same round. The runner up of Lancashire v Derry will then go on to the quarter final to meet Carlow with the runner up of the other Round 1 fixture meeting New York with the winner of those two quarter finals going on to meet the winners from Round 1 in the TG4 Junior All Ireland Semi Finals with the final taking place in Croke Park on September 27th.

The Aisling McGing Under 21 Championship was also confirmed and this year there will be a ‘B’ Championship competition. The A Championship will be a round robin competition with 4 teams competing; Dublin, Cork, Galway and Meath. The top two teams will go forward to contest the championship final.

The Aisling McGing Under 21 B Championship will consist of 3 groups; A,B and C with the top team from each group qualifying for the final stages, one team will receive a bye to the final with the other two teams competing against each other in a semi final.

Group A will consist of Clare, Roscommon and Mayo. Group B will be made up of Donegal, Tyrone and Louth and the counties in Group C are Monaghan, Cavan and Longford.

Elsewhere, an important change of rule was adopted as now only fully registered member of the LGFA can now seek election to an committee, board or council.

Amongst the other highlights were the reports from the fixtures committee that confirmed that there were no red card in any level of adult intercounty championship and only 35 yellow cards. The development section of the LGFA reported that over 1,000 new players were attracted to the game via the Gaelic4Girls programme and that 32 new Gaelic4Mothers&Others clubs were formed in 2014. The report from the Injury Fund confirmed that over €500,000 was paid out in injury claims and that 93% of all claims were paid out.

Congress will continue on Saturday with further motions on the agenda plus the inauguration of the new LGFA president, Marie Hickey.