David McLoone and Donegal GAA accept 'no' vote on reserve restructuring

Donegal GAA Vice Chairman David McLoone has shared his reaction to Monday night’s vote that saw clubs opt to retain the current structure of reserve league football in the county.  

The decision, made at a County Committee meeting in Convoy, saw 36 votes in favour of maintaining the existing format, while 30 voted for change.   

The proposal on the table would have expanded the leagues, allowing reserve teams to operate independently, but the narrow vote ensured promotion and relegation will continue to be dictated by their respective club’s senior team’s position.

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McLoone said the vote was always for the clubs to decide, but the time was right to suggest changes.  

“For years, certain club delegates wanted something done about reserve football, so we set about trying to offer suggestions,” he told Donegal Live. “At the start of last year, we said we would do an end-of-season review, and that’s what we did.”  

A working group was formed with representatives from various clubs. They assessed multiple potential reforms before settling on the proposal put forward for a vote.  

“We had roughly five different options, and that was narrowed down to one clear favourite, which was to expand the leagues so the reserve teams would essentially go out on their own,” he said.  

“I can understand why some clubs didn’t want change because a lot of clubs find it difficult enough to support two panels without making one of those teams go out on their own.”  

However, McLoone, who is also the chairman of the CCC and was presiding over the matter on Monday night, pointed to growing disparities in competitiveness at reserve level.  

He also refuted claims that it was rural clubs with smaller populations opposing the proposal.  

“We watched a lot of reserve football last season and saw a lot of one-sided games, and that has been getting progressively worse,” he said.  

“Clubs from the lower divisions were very well represented by the working group who designed the idea that was brought to the vote, so it’s not accurate to say that the more rural clubs with less population were against this idea.    

“In fact, a lot of them were stating that some can’t compete in the league they are currently in and would’ve liked the option to go down a division, so it certainly wasn’t the rural clubs coming together and making a stand for this, but of course then you will have other clubs that found this probably degrading, so there was a fine balance on what was a close vote.  

“This was also only going to be a two-year trial period and no senior club had to drop out of Division 3 if they didn’t want to. They had the option to stay in the league and the teams coming up from Division 4 would just be added and that league would have more teams in it.”  

One key consideration around reserve teams going independently on their own had been travel logistics and the size of the county, but a survey before Christmas suggested this was not a major concern and regional leagues across Donegal were not needed.  

“We put out a survey before Christmas, and the overwhelming response was that because teams only have about seven away games a year, travel wasn’t an issue,” he said.  

“There was no need to bring in regional leagues which was a topic originally discussed.”