Why do 90% of minor footballers not make the senior grade?

Analysis: The odds of progressing from county minor to county senior are overwhelmingly stacked against young players for a variety of reasons

As Kerry gear up to face Donegal in next weekend's All-Ireland senior final, the spotlight will inevitably fall on the stars set to grace the field. But beyond the headlines and heroics lies a more uncomfortable truth: the odds of progressing from county minor to county senior are overwhelmingly stacked against young players. It’s a sobering reality that should also serve as a note of caution for Tyrone's hope of a golden generation, despite their impressive success at underage level in recent times.

How many make the jump from minors to seniors?

In 1994, Kerry won their last All-Ireland minor title before a long drought that ended two decades later, in 2014. That 2014 win, under Jack O'Connor and against Donegal, was the first of five consecutive All-Ireland minor titles. By the end of 2018, a new Kerry senior dynasty felt inevitable. In fact, Éamonn Fitzmaurice was strongly criticised during his final year as senior manager for not promoting more of those minor players.

If making the grade means starting a championship game for Kerry (not just a National League match or coming on as a substitute), the numbers are sobering. Minor panels typically carry more than 30 players, but we will keep it at 30 for this piece. In these calculations, a playeralso could not be counted twice so a player who was a Kerry minor for two or three years was only counted in his last year of being minor.

Number of players from Kerry minor teams 1994 to 2018 who went on to start a senior championship match. The red dashed line represents the average. Numbers in brown indicate years when Kerry won the All-Ireland Minor Championship.

From 1994 to 2013, 60 players (10%) from those minor squads went on to start a senior championship match. From the brilliant run of 2014–2018, the figure is 18 players (12%). The average number of players produced per All-Ireland minor winning sides (1994, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018) is 3.1 while the equivalent number for all other sides in that time who didn't win a minor title is 3. Of the 78 players who did make the transition to senior championship starts with Kerry, exactly 50% of these were county minors for more than one year. A notable correlation but, as yet, not proof of causation.

Does physical size matter?

Research measuring 162 elite inter‑county footballers across six squads between 2014 and 2019 reported a mean stature of 6ft, with midfielders and goalkeepers tending towards the taller end of the range. That has real-world implications: players who thrive at minor might not have the physical tools to progress further.

Unfortunately, genetics will play a large role here. A 5′9″ wing-forward can shine at 16, but that same player will most likely get swallowed up at senior level. "Supporters need to realise that minor football has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to senior football", commented one former Kerry player me bluntly. "The physical difference is massive and takes most of us years to get used to."

'We often see 'outstanding' minor players whose dominance is largely down to early physical development compared to their peers'

The opposite is also true. We often see 'outstanding' minor players whose dominance is largely down to early physical development compared to their peers. By the time they reach senior level, that edge is gone because their peers have caught up with them. Former Tyrone star Kyle Coney has acknowledged that his early physical maturity gave him such an advantage. "At minor level I had a couple of years of size on most fellas and was a bit bigger and stronger," he says.

This is where bio-banding comes in, a method of grouping young athletes by biological rather than chronological age to level the playing field in development. In the GAA, bio-banding practices have improved significantly in recent years, thanks to the work of researchers like Fionn Fitzgerald and Rob Mulcahy. Whether bio-banding will impact on the numbers playing senior for their county remains to be seen, but it is certainly a big step forward.

'Sick of football' by the age of 18

In recent years, several former county minors have told me directly they were "sick of football" by the time their minor careers ended. After five years of development and minor squads, strength and conditioning, diet monitoring, video analysis and countless hours at the county Centre of Excellence, all before even reaching their 18th birthday, mental fatigue had set in.

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From RTÉ Radio 1's News At One in 2018, new research highlights negative impact of GAA, including poor mental health, on senior inter-county players

One player recalled a dark moment on the night he won a minor All-Ireland: "was this really worth all those years at the Centre of Excellence since we were 13?" Are we giving players a taste of county football in their teens, hungry for more or leaving them dreading entering another county set up? More than anything, are we even giving them a voice?

From a purely performance-driven point of view, especially in terms of producing seniors, we have to ask if winning too young is actually counterproductive. Would a player be better off experiencing short-term pain through defeat, building resilience and long-term hunger, rather than winning early, feeling satisfied and believing there’s no need to continue their hard work?

It must be stressed that development squad issues are a systemic problem, and not specific to any one county. Former Cork manager Brian Cuthbert alluded to it in his PhD thesis: development squads suffer with poor alignment between academy, club, school, parent, and player goals; there is poor long-term planning and the emphasis on early success leads to burnout, not development.

From Munster GAA, Dr Brian Cuthbert at the Munster GAA Club Forum 2025 on getting the balance right between competition and development

Is there a solution to this?

More emphasis on school-based training

This is where players are with friends in less pressurised settings and have increased contact time with coaches (as recommended by Cuthbert). To underline this point, people seem to forget that the five Kerry minor teams of 2014-2018 had key players from four Hogan Cup wins, namely Pobalscoil Chorca Dhuibhne (Éamonn Fitzmaurice’s school, in 2014 and 2015) and St. Brendan's College Killarney (2016 and 2017).

Manage expectations for players, parents, clubs and supporters

Playing minor is an honour, but not a guarantee of senior success. The same applies to development squads. When clubs highlight under-14 or under-15 development squad appearances on social media, it raises the question: is the focus on development or validation?

Sustainability

Coaching for retention isn’t just about downplaying the importance of winning. It’s about keeping the game, and the process of preparing for it, sustainable. Younger players are pushed into completing weekly questionnaires monitoring their gym routines, nutrition, sleep and hydration, when the focus should still primarily be on skills, games, and, dare I say it, the ball. If a 16 or 17 year-old is already rebelling against daily/weekly questionnaires, how can we expect them to sustain that for another ten years at senior level?

If 90% of county minors never play senior championship, that's where the real analysis needs to focus

What about the ones who don't make it?

I’ve learned a huge amount from my two PhD supervisors Dr. Phil Kearney and Dr. Ian Sherwin, but the airplane analogy Phil showed me one day really struck a chord. During World War II, Allied analysts studied the bullet holes in aircraft that returned from missions. Most of the damage was concentrated on the wings and fuselage. Logically, the military considered reinforcing those areas.

But mathematician Abraham Wald, working with the U.S. Statistical Research Group, realised they were looking at the wrong planes. The ones with damage had survived. The planes hit in places like the engines or cockpit never came back. This led to a foundational concept in survivorship bias: the mistake of focusing only on visible successes and ignoring the unseen failures.

It's the same in Gaelic football. We often look at the tiny percentage of minor stars who become senior county players and assume the system is working, but they are the survivors. If 90% of county minors never play senior championship, that’s where the real analysis needs to focus. Those are the planes who never made it back.

Officially, county minor football is about development. Managers talk about building young men for the future, but they know they’re judged on results. They also know those results shape under-20 succession plans for managers looking to move up the chain. Development is the official line, but winning is the currency. In the end, it’s a grade that often seems caught between two stools and it’s the players who hit the ground the hardest.

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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ

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