Derry GAA population is small . Largely based on rural communities in south Derry …
The city is a 99% soccer town and the east of the county is PUL and quite hostile to GAA .
That Derry county teams and clubs are so competitive is remarkable
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Sure it’s the same for every county.
No player from Strabane on the Tyrone panel presently.
None from Cookstown.
1 from Dungannon and he transferred over from Edendork.
2 from Omagh.
Cahair O’Kane had a good piece on how little players urban areas produce in Ulster.
Enniskillen has 1/4 of the population in Fermanagh and there’s only 2 players from Enniskillen on the county panel.
Down have no players from Newry on the panel.
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A lot of that would be reflected across the country -
Ulster gaa is the most roasterish in the country id say. Even bates mayo and the likes who would have a proportion of townie shapers with tans.
The urban centres in Tyrone generally have good club teams . There are no big centres of population in nationalist Derry bar the city . The last good footballer from the city to play for Derry was Tom McGuinness in the 1970s .
Lads can we get back to Junior C hurling in Laois please?
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Show us a video of a good row & we will
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Coookstown are in Junior and Strabane could be heading that way too.
Dungannon have generally yoyoed between Senior and Intermediate.
Aren’t Dungannon senior champions . Omagh are always good .
Cookstown were x 2 all Ireland intermediate winners in last decade.
Strabane is one of those towns ( one in nearly every county ) that is wrote off by all sports
They are but they have came from nowhere to win it. They were playing intermediate in 2018, got promoted via a playoff to senior and then won it the preceding year.
An Edendork man was their top scorer too in Donaghy, their only county man.
Omagh are decent but were 26 years without a senior title until recently. Don’t think they were represented on the senior panel for a long time until the McMahons came about.
Tyrone is a meritocracy, very competitive across the whole, not just revolved around a few superclubs.
How lads played without helmets back then I’ll never know.
It used be gas, when a corner back would be getting roasted, the first thing he’d do would be to throw his helmet off over the sideline.
It was a sign a fella really meant business.
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I threw the helmet off against Burgess back in 2009/10 in a challenge game - out midfield. But I was still shit after it.
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2009 was the last year of non-mandatory helmets.
Padraic Maher and Pa Bourke threw their’s off in the dying minutes of the Thurles Sars v Newtownshandrum Munster Club game as a sort of parting gesture to the warriors of years gone by who went without helmets.
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Yeah i knew twas around then.
Bit like Ballinasloe in Galway. A wasteland in Galway as far as GAA goes. Big town but the football club are stuck in junior and there doesn’t seem much appetite to improve it. Soccer and rugby would be strong enough there though I suppose.
It never looked right seeing Mullane in a helmet. The GAA did it wrong, they should have simply phased it out, rather than having a hard deadline.
Colin Lynch would have probably tried to soldier on for another few years if that had happened
There was a simple solution. Just deem a years U12 age grade to be the first year helmets would be mandatory, and move forward saying everyone outside that age range, would be exempt til retirement/50 years of age, whichever came first in some cases.
Very mean spirited.