It isnât. County players play a lot more club football than they do in the likes of Mayo, Kerry or Dublin.
Conor Clarke did his ACL playing a club league game a couple of weeks before a big championship game a few years back. You clearly donât have a clue about club football in Tyrone.
Weâve at 7 different senior club champions in the past 8 years. Tyrone clubs have won All Ireland honours at junior and intermediate level in recent years.
Meanwhile 2 clubs have dominated the Derry senior championship over the past number of years. Ballinderry and Slaughtneil have shared the past 8 titles. Slaughtneil are going for 5 in a row.
Club football is stronger in Antrim than it is in tyrone. Tyrone handpicked players from a young agents. You know yourself- tyrone clubs are in disarray, always have been
Conway is a hypocrite. He talks about 50 strong clubs making a tyrone county team when the reality is that itâs taken 50 weak clubs and a decision to pool resources, to make a county team. Ironically itâs weakened an already weak club scene.
club football is a fair indicator of the strength of the gaa in a county, certainly a better one than county success where population and finances play a far bigger role.
Iâll end the discussion with a couple of questions:
1.How many senior all Ireland club championships have tyrone clubs won?
2. How many final appearances have they made in the same competition?
Weâll not mention hurling
The real strength in depth of club football in a county is shown by the intermediate and junior championships.
Tyrone teams have an outstanding record in this regard, winning three of the last nine All-Ireland intermediate championships, including the current champions Moy.
Tyrone teams have made the All-Ireland junior club final five times since the inaugural competition in 2002. The only other Ulster county to have a team make the final is Cavan, twice.
Tyrone have by far the best record of any Ulster county in each of these championships and taken together they have a massively superior record to any other Ulster county and are one of the top two or three counties in Ireland at those grades.
Theyâre not weak clubs. We have a senior championship where there are 7 or 8 sides capable of winning it every year. We have junior and intermediate clubs who are the strongest in Ulster. The last two Ulster intermediate champions have been Tyrone clubs, teams move up the grades and are competitive. Trillick lost an intermediate final in 2015 and won a senior championship the year after. They narrowly lost out to Scotstown after beating the Donegal Champions in the preceding round.
Meanwhile Slaughtneil chase 5 in a row this year after Ballinderry did three in a row before that. Now thatâs a farce of a senior championship.
I note Monaghan clubs never get anywhere in the Senior Club Championship but have won the All Ireland twice at intermediate level since it was started in 2004.
Kerry clubs have only won the Senior AI once in the past 20 years but dominate the AI Junior competition.
Interesting comparison/contrast here with Crossmaglenâs dominance in Armagh.
During the period of Crossâs dominance the Armagh county team gradually grew very strong and eventually won an AI. Crossâs decline more or less coincided with Armaghâs decline.
Slaughtneilâs dominance wonât last forever. Iâd like to think their decline will help make Derry stronger again but realistically it will just make them more shit.
Thereâs no hard and fast rule as regards whether having one dominant club or strength spread more evenly throughout club football benefits a county team more, but in general the latter tends to be more important.
That isnât to say having one dominant club canât raise the standard of the county team. Corofin have been completely dominant in Galway in this decade and the Galway team has gradually worked its way back to strength. Castlebar have become dominant in Mayo. Underneath those though you have a decent spread of strength at junior and intermediate levels in both counties.
Crossmaglen were an outlier in that they were exceptionally dominant not just at Armagh level but at Ulster and All-Ireland level, so dominant that they could backbone an inter-county All-Ireland-winning team. There have been very few teams like that in history in either football or hurling, maybe Birr were another but I donât think even they backboned the Offaly hurling team to quite the same extent.