What’s stopping the likes of Clare and Roscommon declaring they have a home and away agreement? Is it a legal thing that has to be registered at the start of the year?
It actually is, strangely enough.
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The GAA are still fuming about the Newbridge or nowhere game.
They’ve decided to demonstrate once and for all that a Croke Park with tumbleweed flying around, seagulls squawking everywhere and the echoes of the shouts of the players audible to the television viewer is a superior product to a packed out small ground.
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Cork are tied to PUC because of the 5/10 year tickets they sold to finance the redevelopment.
PUR would make far more sense, but they won’t play senior hurling or football games there while those tickets are valid.
They are generally awful with too many disinterested spectators up and down from their seats during the games coming and going.
The first game never feels quite right without the anthem playing. It often starts without people even realising.
The provision for extra time then means an hour gap between game 1 and game 2.
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Why oh fucking why do the GAA keep persisting on sucking the life out of big qualifier games by putting them in croke park? It won’t be more than a half full. Absolutely lifeless.
Imagine the atmosphere if you had Clare and Roscommon in Salthill, or Tullamore. It makes so much more sense and I’m sure that’s what players want. There’s nothing worse than watching a qualifier football match in croke park where you can hear the players shouting at each other
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Tullamore is a great ground.
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Somebody here once compared the atmosphere at double headers as being somewhat akin to the atmosphere at an airport.
I’d agree with that comparison.
It’s interesting to see the GAA use the Kildare football team as a box office battering ram against competing sporting attractions. The Leinster final clashed directly with the Heino final and demolished it and took a huge amount of attention off the Champions League final, not just in this country. Now Kildare are again being used to take away interest from Ireland v Scotland in the UEFA Nations League (kick off 5pm Saturday). I’m sure it’ll work. The lure of the Kildare football team is such that pretty much nothing else can compete as a counter attraction whenever they play.
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The contracts need to be fulfilled
Sponsors and premium/ corporate aren’t paying thousands for whingers like Kildare to be kept happy.
The only thing i disagree with is the massive gap inbetween the double headers. If the first game is a draw just push the second game out and we’ll all get an extra few pints in if not in at the first game. We’ll all survive a late change in this day and age
Kildare would have an argument no matter what was decided, the games is gone if we are waiting to appease them mouths who can’t get their own house in order
Clare turned Roscommon over in the qualifiers in 2016 to reach a quarter-final. They’ll certainly give them a rattle but Roscommon in a better place under Tessio than they were back then you’d imagine.
Vendors have their contracts
Kildare were dead right over the Newbridge game in 2018. That game was what the qualifiers and the championship are supposed to be about.
Six day syndrome did for Roscommon in that. They played Galway twice on July 10th and 17th and were beaten out the gate in the replay by Galway. They played Clare on the 23rd and were punch drunk.
I think Kildare even had a Leinster semi-final against Westmeath in 2016 that clashed with our round of 16 tie against France. Or started just as the soccer was finishing maybe. A sparsely populated Croke Park that day.
Well remembered, I have no recollection of it.
Wikipedia says it started at 4:15pm. France v Ireland was a 2pm start.
42,259 attended that exceedingly attractive double header (Dublin v Meath followed it). That felt like a very sparse crowd at the time. By today’s standards it’s an excellent attendance.
You’d expect attendances to be well down this year with the cost of living being so expensive these days.Cost me and the young lad about 150 to go to the match yesterday with the Mrs and my other child spending about the same going to Thurles.Thats a lot of money.
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It’s a huge amount of money too given theirs a lot more championship games but after lock down I think people are buzzing to attend events.
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40 quid for a stand ticket for the Munster football final, you’d want to be wrong in the head.
A tenner into Galway v Dublin in the hurling is the way to go for more matches - although even at that price Dublin’s performance was so limp it probably wasn’t worth even that.
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I gave 55 yo-yos for 2 stand tickets in Salthill to see us getting whacked by 20 PTS.Kids should be free into these matches just like the league.