Been thinking of this idea recently. Where I come from in Tipperary, hurling is by far the number one sport and soccer comes a close second. I know some of these players would also make top class soccer players with a bit of coaching. They are natural athletes.
Do you think if there was a Your a Star competition with a seasons contract at a Eircom League club that you could get some of these guys to give it a try. Especially any guys in the 18-23 group that would still be in college taking a year off to play soccer would be very easy.
You could run it off by a county/city, then province basis. The money for the contract could be put up by the FAI/RTE (or whichever broadcaster) and there could be a public vote or else it could be purely based on coaches view of ability, or a combination. The club that take the player on wouldn't have to pay anything and would get a free player to boot. Im assuming in and around €50,000 would be enough. That could be put up by the FAI and the broadcaster absorb the rest with advertising, phone lines etc.
If it worked well it could be run again possibly with four contracts based on the provinces and the teams they could go to would be Derry (Ulster) Galway (Connacht) Any Dublin Club/ Drogheda (Leinster) Cork City (Munster).
Its all a bit of a rough idea but basically is that I think there could be some amazing natural talent available for example Shane Long was a minor hurler for Tipp and now he is playing for Reading, possibly even some rugby guys could switch or even just some young guys that have missed the boat.
The club I play for we have a guy who is on the Tipp Minor Hurling & Football teams and the underage Aussie Rules team. He basically plays maybe 10 games a year for us because he is so busy with all the other activities.
We have had 3-4 guys that I think wouldn't have been good enough to take a shot at career in soccer but never had the interest because of hurling.
If anyone runs with the idea please give me credit/ loads of money!
