Replying To Pikeman96:  "@Viking66 - 2014 is actually a perfect example of how the current split season prevents that sort of thing from happening now.

Main reason our club championships ran a little late that year was due to our U21 hurlers reaching the All-Ireland Final in the middle of September. With so many of them playing in the adult club championships and so many of them being dual players, both our club hurling and football championships had to work around them.

The football wasn't helped either by how the Senior Hurling Final (Shelmaliers v St. Anne's) ended in a draw and how the same two teams were due to meet in a Senior Football semi-final the following week. If the football had proceeded as planned, it would have meant football semi-final then, football final the following Saturday, winners playing in Leinster the next day, and hurling replay not taking place in time for Leinster at all.

Fixtures committee of the time decided that the lesser of two evils was to have the hurling replay when the football semi-finals should have been played. Basically, we were going to be without a representative in Leinster in either hurling or football, and they decided it was in our better interests to have somebody in hurling.

But again, main reason for it was we lost a number of weekends in August & September for club championship action due to a county team still going strong. The split season means that couldn't happen now."

Replying To WanPintWin:  "The split season has made a massive difference to clubs in Galway and I can confirm that first hand. We've had 3 rounds of the football championship and all senior and intermediate groups finished by the end of August. Games played on brilliant pitches in very good weather for the most part. Never mind when a county final is played, they're often extended so there isn't too much of a gap to the provincial campaign.
What matters is that the majority of club championship matches and the majority of players of our Gaelic games have certainty on when they're playing and are playing most of their matches in good weather and good surfaces at the end of the summer.
If the All-Ireland football final was still the 3rd Sunday in September, we'd be into October before we could even start. The players don't want that, yet some people still can't understand it.
Galway were in the All-Ireland hurling final this year, yet we have 2 rounds played already and the final round of group matches is next weekend."

Replying To Pikeman96:  "In fairness, I think Barney may have been referring to the start of the Premier League in general, rather than specifically the Man United v Leeds match.

But I'll ask him:

If Limerick had been playing Galway in the Hurling Final on the first Sunday of September this year, how many kids outside of those counties would have been jabbering about that rather than Arsenal v Chelsea or Everton v Man United on the same day?

Or if the Football Final had been the following Sunday, how many outside of Kerry and Mayo would have been talking about it more than the Manchester derby that day, or the Liverpool or Arsenal matches that weekend?"

Replying To richiepmurphy:  "Are you serious? You don't think mayo winning the all Ireland would have captured the imagination of kids any less if it was in September?
They would have been discussing it in school with their friends and teachers and pretending to be kobe or Clifford at lunchtime.
Id say yes an all Ireland final would be bigger than a random Premier league game, assuming they were fans of all sports as most kids are nowadays anyway. They have all the jerseys, whether its man utd ,arsenal, kerry or mayo etc"