The kids are more than alright, but are we treating them right?

The tiniest glimmer of spring threatened to breakthrough at Turner’s Cross on Tuesday last. As the sun set, and close to 500 people filtered in to the red-seated Donie Forde stand, the unmistakeable feeling of cup final dreams hung in the cooling air as the future stars of Cork City and Shelbourne trotted on to the turf.

The curtains were falling on the second season of what the majority of clubs would agree is an U19 league heading in the right direction. Where its unloved predecessor, the A Championship, and even before that the unbalanced and equally hard-to-like U21 league, failed, this age group have excelled.

Cork City may have dominated, ruthlessly swatting aside all before them to secure the double-double on Leeside, but away from that excitement, there’s a general positivity emanating from clubs.

With much thanks owed to joint-manager Paul Bowdren and Stuart Ashton, this Cork side have played a type of football that should leave many senior teams across the land taking a good, long, hard look at themselves. There’s no hoofing here, just a group of youngsters playing the game how it should be.

And that brand is repeated at teams around the country. At long last, we seem to be making strides in bringing youth through and from that point of view, things are very bright.

Yet problems quickly need to be ironed out if this promise is to be sustained. The project’s infancy may be a decent excuse, but player fatigue is a threat which could derail the promising start made to the league.

At full-time on Tuesday night, a floodlit silhouette stretched across the pitch as the home side celebrated.  It was Shels midfielder Robert Cornwall crouching down, exhausted, coming in off the back of a cruel, punishing few days.

He was in from the start for Alan Mathews’ first team away to Derry on Good Friday, was one of the first names on the sheet at home to Bohemians on Easter Monday night before heading straight down the motorway to spend the night with the U19 side on the eve of the cup final.

Eoin Comerford was an unused substitute in all three games, while Alex Prizeman was in the senior squad and also started for the U19s. Cork, in comparison, who finished just two points clear of Shels in the league – after the Reds went unbeaten from early December onwards – had no such problems, even though many of their U19s are now training with Tommy Dunne’s side.

It was unavoidable for Mathews, seeing as his playing staff is so limited in numbers, and there was little U19 boss Martin Murray could do either. The problem lies with poor scheduling from the powers that be.

Shels, of course, weren’t alone in having such a burden placed upon them either.

Just take a look at the newly-returned Cobh Ramblers. The jubilation down in St Colman’s Park after learning of their right to resume playing in the First Division was quickly tamed by the realisation that, without funds to pay senior players, the starring lights of their U19 team would have to face an unfair schedule between the beginning of March and the remainder of an albeit advanced U19 season.

Immediately after their first game of the campaign, a surprising 5-0 trouncing of Wexford Youths rubber-stamping their second-coming in the most emphatic fashion, manager of both the senior and U19 side, Dave Hill noted his surprise that so many players were willing to join the club. For him, it meant there wouldn’t be an over-reliance on the bright young things he has worked with when the club were out of the limelight.

But even then, a half dozen players from the underage setup were involved in the squad that evening and were facing into the prospect of an U19 league game 18 hours later on the Sunday afternoon. And that wasn’t all: 24 hours later the same players were expected to head for Waterford to play in the opening round of the EA Sports Cup.

As things turned out, the horrific weather conditions put paid to those two games, but that they were expected to perform three times in 48 hours is wholly unacceptable.

It’s safe to suggest that, at other clubs, similar problems were presented to managers of first teams, their respective U19 coaches, but most of all the players who are at risk of burnout before they even realise their full potential. Fostering burgeoning talent is a great thing for our clubs, but they’re fighting a losing battle if a schedule over-wrought with too many games in such little time is to continue into 2014.