Cuala vs Nap were v good finals.
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I think an issue used to be that there was a 5 or 6 week gap between the semi final and final.
Teams used be absolutely primed for a Semi final in early Feb but would then lose All momentum for a final.
Shouldn’t be the case this year and I’m confident we’ll get two classics.
Roasting hot day mate.
The replay was a cracker. Maybe the close confines as opposed to a 30% full Croke park helped.
Replays are/were nearly always crackers.
The 2016 finals day was glorious 2018 was Baltic
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No it wasn’t. It was a lovely sunny St Patricks Day. I was at the Parade more or less in shirtsleeves before I headed up to Croker.
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Mount Sion versus James Stephen’s in 1982 was a thriller.
I remember being freezing cold at it, you can remember what you want.
The new Croke Park has not helped the atmosphere for club finals. Back in the 1990s there was a media hype narrative similar to that enjoyed by women’s football in recent years where the media constantly rammed home the narrative that the crowds were growing year on year. But it wasn’t true in any meaningful sense bar a pretty big crowd of around 35-40k in 1997 which might still be the record. The club finals have never been massive crowd pullers.
1993 when O’Donovan Rossa Skibbereen drew with Eire Og of Carlow and something like 28k turned up to the replay in Limerick which was decided in Skibbereen’s favour by a very controversial disallowed goal at the end was about as big as the hype around any final got.
That Salthill day was a cold day.
The day Galls beat KIB was also freezing.
Lucky enough to end up in premium a few times on club finals day so the cold was negated.
40,000 in 2004.
A mostly empty stadium with a double header in different sports is never going to have a great atmosphere. There’s an awful trade off between atmosphere and the prestige of Croke Park, and you even see it within counties where so many county championship games are played in poor atmospheres in massive empty stadiums.
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The replay between Cuala and Na Piarsaigh taking place in Portlaoise added to the atmosphere enormously.
Croke Park is fairly miserable and ghastly when it’s anything less than maybe 50% full. Some of the soccer friendlies there around the time Lansdowne Road was being redeveloped were especially soul destroying.
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I agree. I would play Ballygunner and Ballyhale in Portlaoise and a possible Kilcoo and Kilmacud final in Navan. Proper atmospheres in grounds which suit the crowd at the games.
A quick Google says 38,500. I don’t remember that because I was at the Fallas in Valencia at the time, which was tremenjus.
34,852 were at the 1997 finals which was hailed as a massive attendance.
The problem with very attractive double headers™, as we all know, is that most of the crowd are only there to see one match.
That ground in Ballina had a grand oul’ atmosphere for the matches involving Knockmore recently.
As has been said by at least one other poster on this forum, Newbridge is the spiritual home of Leinster club football.
They got caught out by the crowd and opened up the gates and let people in for free. Closer to 45,000 which was mad with 4 tiny clubs playing.
I would safely say that if you gave the Ballyhale €100 to watch the football 90% of them would you fuck off 