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The Future Of Inter-County Football

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Replying To Young_gael: "I dont think Im a journalist. One of the first points I made was that Im not an expert and wouldnt claim to be. I love the game. I have no grudge against Dublin or their players, theyre awesome. The organisation however is rotten to the core. Theyve created this situation because its very profitable and caters to 2 million people and keeps them happy. Everyone else just isnt as important and in the future, that will be realised. If things persist like this, Dublin will be winning and Dubs might love it, but at what cost?" l will ask again. How is the Dublin team professional? Define professional. Or was my question one of the ones you can't answer with facts? Jackeen (Dublin) - Posts: 4097 - 28/05/2018 16:08:53 2104866 Link
Replying To Young_gael: "I dont think Im a journalist. One of the first points I made was that Im not an expert and wouldnt claim to be. I love the game. I have no grudge against Dublin or their players, theyre awesome. The organisation however is rotten to the core. Theyve created this situation because its very profitable and caters to 2 million people and keeps them happy. Everyone else just isnt as important and in the future, that will be realised. If things persist like this, Dublin will be winning and Dubs might love it, but at what cost?" Just to add, the 2 million figure is over the top and I was wrong there, but the real figure is 1 million plus. To answer the poster from Donegal, yes the lack of prospect for success or even fair competition has Meath destroyed. Plus the pressure from Meath people that the curren team must be successful just because of who they play for doesent help, I dont know how they psyche themselves up, they deserve great credit, as do inter county players all over the country. It takes great commitment. Young_gael (Meath) - Posts: 589 - 28/05/2018 16:09:04 2104867 Link
Replying To Young_gael: "I dont think Im a journalist. One of the first points I made was that Im not an expert and wouldnt claim to be. I love the game. I have no grudge against Dublin or their players, theyre awesome. The organisation however is rotten to the core. Theyve created this situation because its very profitable and caters to 2 million people and keeps them happy. Everyone else just isnt as important and in the future, that will be realised. If things persist like this, Dublin will be winning and Dubs might love it, but at what cost?" Don't get me wrong, I sympathise and I'd prefer things to be more competitive. realdub (Dublin) - Posts: 8596 - 28/05/2018 16:15:07 2104875 Link
Replying To Jackeen: "l will ask again. How is the Dublin team professional? Define professional. Or was my question one of the ones you can't answer with facts?" How are Dublin professional? All you have to do is look at the Leinster championship, or even the country as a whole. Their sponsorship deals, their access to funding, programmes, specific coaching, perks ie; cars, education, their ties with very lucrative corporate sponsors. Advertising; the players faces are everywhere. Now look at Wicklow, 20 miles down the road. Its like a different planet. Officially theyre not "professional", but they are. Its the GAAs prerogative to pretend that amatuerism is still their mainstay. Young_gael (Meath) - Posts: 589 - 28/05/2018 16:23:10 2104886 Link
Kildare used to be a football mad county but people are fed up taking beatings off dublin. Their dominance is suffocating the game in kildare and its getting worse. All of this has coincided with the rise of rugby. To be fair if your a parent in kildare and you can bring your son to football on a saturday morning or rugby where has ge better chance of reaching the top of the game? Obviously rugby as much as it pains me to say it. Like i said, its not dublins fault its the gaas fault for creating a beast in dublin. Other counties probably dont care but dublin are killing kildare 11jm11 (Kildare) - Posts: 366 - 28/05/2018 16:25:41 2104889 Link
Replying To Young_gael: "How are Dublin professional? All you have to do is look at the Leinster championship, or even the country as a whole. Their sponsorship deals, their access to funding, programmes, specific coaching, perks ie; cars, education, their ties with very lucrative corporate sponsors. Advertising; the players faces are everywhere. Now look at Wicklow, 20 miles down the road. Its like a different planet. Officially theyre not "professional", but they are. Its the GAAs prerogative to pretend that amatuerism is still their mainstay." Sponsorship deals Yes Dublin GAA have sponsorship deals as all counties do. Some more than others. How does this make a team professional? Access to funding Can you elaborate? Specific coaching? Any examples? Perks Cars...Yes they get the use of a car for a year. Much like the Kerry lads did or the Kilkenny lads did. I wouldn't. begrudge an amateur player this. Education? Huh? Any examples? Ties with lucrative sponsors? What does this actually mean? Advertising...the players faces are everywhere? And? How does this make them professional? Eir used Cillian O'connor in their ad. What difference does it make? Using Wicklow as an example is designed to show how huge the gulf is and it is of course. But the gulf is still huge if you compare Wicklow with Mayo or Cork or Tyrone or Kerry. Are Kerry or Mayo not equally as "professional"? Kerry with partnerships coming out their eyeballs too. I think some people like to listen to what certain sections of the media say without knowing what it is they agree with. Very little facts attached to a lot of the mud being a slung at Dublin since they started winning this decade. Of course if the figures that are being bandied about are correct then yes the funding is an issue and must be redirected elsewhere but everything else above is just nonsense. Just my onion of course. Jackeen (Dublin) - Posts: 4097 - 28/05/2018 16:47:33 2104911 Link
Replying To Jackeen: "Sponsorship deals Yes Dublin GAA have sponsorship deals as all counties do. Some more than others. How does this make a team professional? Access to funding Can you elaborate? Specific coaching? Any examples? Perks Cars...Yes they get the use of a car for a year. Much like the Kerry lads did or the Kilkenny lads did. I wouldn't. begrudge an amateur player this. Education? Huh? Any examples? Ties with lucrative sponsors? What does this actually mean? Advertising...the players faces are everywhere? And? How does this make them professional? Eir used Cillian O'connor in their ad. What difference does it make? Using Wicklow as an example is designed to show how huge the gulf is and it is of course. But the gulf is still huge if you compare Wicklow with Mayo or Cork or Tyrone or Kerry. Are Kerry or Mayo not equally as "professional"? Kerry with partnerships coming out their eyeballs too. I think some people like to listen to what certain sections of the media say without knowing what it is they agree with. Very little facts attached to a lot of the mud being a slung at Dublin since they started winning this decade. Of course if the figures that are being bandied about are correct then yes the funding is an issue and must be redirected elsewhere but everything else above is just nonsense. Just my onion of course." Jackeen you are completely and sadly missing my point. Im not knocking Dublin and Im not going to point out why Dublin are professional and be patronised because it doesent need to be answered. This Dublin team is the best in my lifetime and theyre awesome, but there are huge issues within the entire game that are bigger than one team, and Dublin's success is a product of the environment of those issues. If you cant see past that, youre part of the problem. There's 34 competitive teams and we all should do best by all of them. Young_gael (Meath) - Posts: 589 - 28/05/2018 16:58:26 2104915 Link
Replying To Young_gael: "Jackeen you are completely and sadly missing my point. Im not knocking Dublin and Im not going to point out why Dublin are professional and be patronised because it doesent need to be answered. This Dublin team is the best in my lifetime and theyre awesome, but there are huge issues within the entire game that are bigger than one team, and Dublin's success is a product of the environment of those issues. If you cant see past that, youre part of the problem. There's 34 competitive teams and we all should do best by all of them." I never said you were knocking Dublin I asked you to explain why you think Dublin were professional. You gave me a list of reasons. I challenged you on those reasons and now you're saying I am patronising you which is not the case. I'm simply looking for somebody to explain what the term professional means when talking about Dublin. It's a word a lot on hoganstand like to use but with not very much substance behind it imo. Jackeen (Dublin) - Posts: 4097 - 28/05/2018 17:06:01 2104918 Link
The former meath goalkeeper made a similar point in the papers a few months back. I fully believe the author of the first post in this thread is he. foxes_denn (Cavan) - Posts: 129 - 28/05/2018 17:09:22 2104920 Link
Replying To foxes_denn: "The former meath goalkeeper made a similar point in the papers a few months back. I fully believe the author of the first post in this thread is he." haha because POR is the only one making this point? Everyone who can see the wood from the trees is saying the same thing. Crinigan (Meath) - Posts: 1319 - 28/05/2018 17:13:45 2104922 Link
Replying To foxes_denn: "The former meath goalkeeper made a similar point in the papers a few months back. I fully believe the author of the first post in this thread is he." I am not Paddy O'Rourke. It is possible for more than one person to share a similar opinion. Your shortsightedness is baffling. Young_gael (Meath) - Posts: 589 - 28/05/2018 17:14:11 2104923 Link
the culture in the GAA is changing too. Back when it was straight knockout there was a bit of a tribal feel to it. you really had to put in a massive massive performance if you wanted to continue playing in the championship. That tribalism and desire floated around for a while after the qualifiers came in but it has all but evaporated now. That was the finger print of the GAA!!! The one thing i will say and this is causing problems everywhere including Kildare and Meath is tactics. Now i'm a big fan of tactics and i love studying games and match ups etc but low risk football is not enjoyable overall. The cavan/ Donegal game a few weeks ago was like watching a game of snooker. it was just silent the whole game. I'm presuming half the people were literally studying the game in silence and the other half that would love to cheer and shout really had nothing to cheer about. Although football in the 90'S and so on was a poor standard when compared to now the games were epic cliff hangers. there was beauty in its blemishes The negativity around GAA these days too is a major issue. the amount of complaining about standard of play etc etc is outrageous. nobody is ever happy. dare i say it there has been a very very high proportion of outstanding games this year so far, but people don't care because ''awh sure leitrim wouldn't have a hope against dublin''. just take each game as it is, a contest between two teams......... I know some parts of this are contradictory, I'm just thinking out loud at what i think the SOME of the issues are. theweanling (Cavan) - Posts: 414 - 28/05/2018 17:15:48 2104925 Link
Ultimately this is an issue that transcends tribalism, tradition, or squabble. Sadly this thread has relapsed into all three. Its a big, big issue and it will be realised by the masses in time. Young_gael (Meath) - Posts: 589 - 28/05/2018 17:23:30 2104933 Link
Loads of athletes, few real footballers. sponger (Wicklow) - Posts: 2897 - 28/05/2018 17:52:07 2104949 Link
I think there are huge problems with the intercounty game. Dublin are very dominant. The reason why this is more concerning than Kerry dominating is that Dublin can potentially operate on a completely different plane than the rest of the country. 1/4 of the population of Ireland lives in Dublin. Historically that was significantly overestimating their resources to the rest of the country as Gaelic games had more competition from soccer and rugby in the capital. That is increasingly less the case as football is taking over as the dominant game in Dublin. There's no easy solution. Pulling funding from Dublin isn't a great solution. We want kids playing Gaelic games over other sports after all. More funding is starting to funnel through to other counties but at the same time you can't just give Leitrim or Monaghan or Wexford a tonne of money for no reason. Money helps create success but that's not the only thing helping Dublin. They have so many youngsters training in clubs with incredible facilities, developing in underage football club competitions that it's not possible for other counties to replicate. They also have an incredible manager who is getting the absolute most out of an already formidable set of players. The increased professionalism of the training methods and commitment required of inter county players also means it's so difficult for the also rans to get all their best players out. The gap only widens. The intercounty game is so imbalanced that it is not really fit for purpose as the pinnacle of the game. Whammo86 (Antrim) - Posts: 4240 - 28/05/2018 18:13:20 2104960 Link
Replying To sponger: "Loads of athletes, few real footballers." Who? realdub (Dublin) - Posts: 8596 - 28/05/2018 18:36:55 2104966 Link
Replying To kildare73: "Do you know exactly what Kildare' s financial power is? We were 17th on the list of spending on our county teams last year. I imagine Carlow were lower but it's a red herring to say population and financial power is big in Kildare. The population boost provided by proximity to Dublin is just that, a Dublin overflow who have no interest in Kildare or for that matter, Meath football. They see themselves as Dublin through and through and that's fine but people are fooling themselves if they think Kildare or Meath reap much or any benefit by the census counting them in those counties population. I was first on here yesterday congratulating Carlow on a great win and likewise Longford soon after. They are on absolute highs today and it's great for them. But now trips to play Dublin in Croke Park are on the horizon and the heavy beatings are coming. When that happens a few times it dulls the interest within a county, the buzz isn't there as much anymore and things like yesterday end up happening. I do have serious doubts about where are management is taking us but there is apathy among supporters about what lay ahead beyond yesterday even had we won. Ultimately the goal was make the super 8s which is now a harder job but still doable. I hope yesterday provides a long term boost to Carlow and Longford and other so called weaker counties and they enjoy the success. Everyone deserves their day in the sun and a reward for their hard work." I don't but you don't need a calculator to work out Kildare springing is low because Ye get knocked out early in the season. The longer you are in it the more €€€ you clock up. Kildare has a big support base and some wealthy natives. Time to start planning. I've seen the facilities in Kildare clubs and they are far superior to anything we have in Mayo. Kildare always to me seems like a passionate GAA county but I've seen little on the field of play on a occasions I've seen he play. As for Paddy O Rourke comments from Meath...it's very defeatist attitude to have. I hope his views are not representative of the majority of Meath GAA folk because of it is then Meath really are finished. yew_tree (Mayo) - Posts: 11236 - 28/05/2018 18:47:53 2104972 Link
Replying To realdub: "Who?" I'll make a guess. Kildare. PoolSturgeon (Galway) - Posts: 1904 - 28/05/2018 18:53:46 2104975 Link
Replying To Young_gael: "Ultimately this is an issue that transcends tribalism, tradition, or squabble. Sadly this thread has relapsed into all three. Its a big, big issue and it will be realised by the masses in time." I agree with the poster above. Watching football on the Sunday Game last night was a 'canary in the coal-mine' moment imo & it's been following this trend for sometime. That is no way meant to be disparaging to Longford & Carlow people and they deserved their wins, but the football in general from all provinces is becoming increasingly un-competitive, played in front of ever decreasing crowds. Leinster is turning into a waste-land & the apathy is spreading. Even Dub supporters must be missing a decent challenge in Leinster. It's no fun for anyone. The GAA has contributed to all this with over concentration of funding (already much debated elsewhere) but the inequalities are too glaring to be dismissed. There are a number of traditionally strong counties really struggling to get decent teams out. The so called 'bear-pit' of Ulster football is also on the wane. How many truly competitive matches there this year (only one so far - Monaghan v Tyrone ), maybe another 1 or 2 at the most depending on how the semi's / final goes. Watching my own county v Antrim on Saturday night was like a poor league or challenge game in front of a paltry crowd. Something is seriously not right. How many people around the country have heard once real GAA followers saying they now rarely watch games anymore as the quality is so poor etc. The game simply wasn't designed for mass defences & it increasingly looks like some bastardized version of a sport we once knew & loved. I see some posters from time to time wheel out the 'rose tinted glasses' argument about how the game used to be but looking at the present state of play objectively it really is in decline as a spectacle. Some solutions perhaps: - GAA needs to act asap to help counties that are struggling to get their act/ structures together. If this means re-allocating the Dublin coaching / funding model then so be it. The GAA can't expect all county boards to get their house in order by themselves & this may also require some counties swallowing their pride & admitting they are in need of some serious help. - There needs to an urgent change in the rules to improve the game as a spectacle & return it to it's roots & core principles. I actually think this could be as simple as making sure all teams re-set into the traditional 15 positions for each kick-out. There is on average at least one kick-out every couple minutes in gaelic football. Allow 10-15 seconds for all players to go back to their full back/forward & half back/ forward positions before the goal keeper takes his kick-out. This will leave teams contesting the ball around the middle third & it won't give time for teams to set-up defensively as quick possession/ turnovers will dictate who is attacking / defending before they know it leading to a more fluent & open game which is something I swear we used to see on a more regular basis! - The demands are far too high even at club level which is also taking a lot of the fun out of an AMATEUR game for players & spectators alike. This one's harder to tackle but a 'less is more' attitude is healthy. I blame much of the over training etc. on over-payed coaches justifying their brown envelopes which is frankly a cancer in the game. How many 'true' GAA people & former players are stuffing their pockets whilst running lads into the ground (not to mention diverting much needed funds from underage coaching etc)? The payment of coaches needs to be regulated (set-rates etc.) & tax-man informed so everything's above board. Let's see how many coaches opt for those 6am gym sessions if the rates are more modest? - If the above measures were implemented we might have provincial championships worth looking at. Failing this the Ladies Football & Camogie seem to run-off Junior, Intermediate & Senior All-Ireland competitions each carrying their own prestige. This happens already in every county at club-level. Can't see why we can't have this in men's inter-county? - I think the GAA should also be looking at pooling sponsorship. We're supposed to an egalitarian association. Not the rich get richer & the poor get poorer model. - To be continued.... An Gael Abú PS: GET RID OF SKY - DRIVING ELITISM & NO PLACE IN THE GAA. Mourne.Identidy (Down) - Posts: 20 - 28/05/2018 19:00:19 2104982 Link
Replying To KingdomBoy1: "Your right royaldunne, but even if the GAA were to even the financial playing field today it would take years for the rest of us to catch up. The gap between the dubs and the rest is massive." That is very true. But the longer the imbalance continues the longer/harder it will be to close the gap. Look I have nothing against dubs (football rivalry aside) but if this had happened to any other county dubs would be up in arms and rightfully so . I won't be a hypocrite and say if Meath got all that funding and turned into a professional team etc that I would have a problem with it, but I'd at least admit it's to the detriment of other counties royaldunne (Meath) - Posts: 19449 - 28/05/2018 19:14:26 2104989 Link