Conor McHugh could be a star in any other county. Although I suppose Kerry could pass of a decent forward like Conor Cox too.
Exactly. All about the numbers
Is he the ginger?
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‘Sliotar Mom’ in her Nissan Quashqai has been the driving force behind the GAA’s rise in South Dublin.
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GAA could never go full time and keep the current intercounty structures as it is. To embrace professionalism then you would be looking at 8 to 10 regional teams football and half a dozen in hurling. I don’t think there would be a huge appetite for it but who knows. Will there eventually be a three tier GAA - Professional sides, intercounty sides and then club. Would resolve some headaches as pros would not play club or intercounty and allow for clearer structures/fixtures and would probably lead to a levelling off at intercounty which would become a feeder to the professional tier.
A draft like system where young players come through club, underage intercounty and then senior intercounty before becoming eligible to become a professional at 21 would add a great intrigue and be a half decent model rather than professional clubs running development squads and hoarding young talent.
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http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/how-sliotar-replaced-the-rugby-ball-for-middle-class/
Yeah. East Galway.
*The more small farmers in a county, the better educated the children were and the better they did in their Leaving Cert. They even found that the single most successful subsection of the Irish population was the children of small farmers in East Galway, the home of hurling in Connacht.
Compared to their urban, working-class counterparts, 30pc more children of small farmers did the Leaving Cert and 50pc more went on to third-level education.
They turned into the teacher aristocracy, bringing with them to Dublin a love of the GAA, squeezeboxes and Farah slacks. Their success in education also catapulted them into the public service in great numbers. Now they are retiring as the best-paid public servants in Europe. Their kids have gone up a notch on the social hierarchy to become doctors and lawyers. Some of them have adopted rugby, the sport of the old hierarchy, but they have also kept their allegiance to the GAA.
So as they bought houses in the coastal parts of south Dublin, they joined GAA clubs, not rugby or soccer clubs, leading to an explosion of GAA in this part of the world. As is so often the case in economics, the law of unintended consequences plays out. The unintended consequence of free education and related upward mobility is that Dalkey are All-Ireland champions. There won’t be a cow milked in Dalkey tonight…*
Great idea. A draft system would solve a lot of problems overnight
It would still allow clubs and counties to develop players and would mean that a young lad in his late teens gets to come up through club and county ranks. Unlike Rugby or soccer where you are developing players to play at a European and International level there is no need to isolate them in professionalism or academies with no access for the club too early.
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He is a serious player. His father is from swinford. I met him coming out of the 2017 replay. The poor man’s head was wrecked.
Would there much passion shown towards a regional GAA team though? Can’t imagine a Tipp/Clare combination of professionals being well received in either county for example.
Who is going to pay the players in a professional set-up?
Centrally funded by the GAA. For argument sake if you had ten football sides then they would play off in a league playing each other twice. Add in a two quarter finals, two semi finals and a final and that is 95 games and 95 gate receipts add to that increased tv revenue and sponsorship. As the players are professional the scheduling can be flexible games could take place on Friday nights and Saturday and leave Sunday for intercounty fixtures
Intercounty league is played Jan to March as now - pro league starts on Paddys day and they play 9 rounds, then takes a six week break while Inter county season is at its height in June and July. Pro league resumes in mid July and is finished by October. This would allow cross over but not huge direct competition between the two and they could co exist. intercounty standard would level off but still be a good standard
i don’t think if you go professional that labour laws would allow you tell players than they can only gain professional contracts from the area they are from. Like i say, you would have a draft system and players would be centrally contracted and distributed between the regional sides and the break from the county system would be in place.
I’m not saying that it will take off but if the GAA is to go professional it is the only way it can really go about it. It would take a huge shift to do it and the hope would be that people want to see the two codes played at the highest level by the best players as opposed to county loyalties. You would have a team based in the Mid west for arguments sake would would play their 9 home games split between Limerick, Galway and Ennis. Would you get enough interested folks to get the bones of 20k through the turnstiles 3 times a year in each venue to watch the best footballers or hurlers in the country?
It could be possible to retain club and intercounty albeit intercounty would be diluted due to this and have a professional league as the top tier.
Just look at divisional teams to see what interest and level of support would be. Very little is the answer.
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There would be no very little interest and therefore little revenue generated.
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Rugby interprovincials used to be played before two men and a dog before the Heineken cup/professionalism came along.
Little or no chance of any huge allegiance to a multicounty team. The whole draw is traditional rivalries and teams comprised of locals I think.
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International sport played by many countries
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I think you are assuming that the level of demand for matches will stay the same. I simply think that there isn’t enough people in the country sufficiently interested to be able to fund a professional set up.
But the provinces were traditional geographic areas, people were Munster by the grace of God etc so could identify when they replaced the rugby clubs