Thatâs an argument for keeping the GAAâs showpiece competitions in the months where they attract the most attention.
Nothing to say GAA wonât suffer in the same way ânicheâ sports have done.
It was mentioned that the Ireland association football team now struggles to attract attention. Ireland playing international association football was not niche. It was the countryâs primary sporting focus for many years, and certainly will be again if we reach another major finals.
Ireland are crap though. Start producing good players and interest will return.
Is that Ireland or Eire in the soccer youâre referring to? Or both, maybe.
Intercounty championship will still be on TV every Saturday and Sunday for 4 months. Its not going to become tennis or athletics or cycling in terms of popularity
Iâm not saying no marketing should taking place. I just donât think moving the AI from September to July will have a catastrophic effect on kids playing the game & people attending games. And I certainly donât think it should be the primary focus of the organisation.
The split season is definitely worth a go, weâll see how it goes. Iâm all for it.
You might not know any modern kids but the sporting landscape you and I grew up with is dead and buried. Kids play and are involved in more sport than ever but they simply donât watch it like we used to. They go to their counties games if they come from a strong county and increasingly go to their club senior teams big games. Discussing this on the basis of kids and watching on TV is a total waste of time. Gaa is becoming more about the club and involvement than watching county games on telly.
But it has chosen four of the most packed months in terms of counter attractions, when there are three other ones with little in the way of counter attractions.
Liverpool and Manchester City are going to dominate most weekends from now to the end of May.
The Heineken Cup still exists. There is a considerable crossover between those who who like to attend Thomond Park and those who like to attend the Gaelic Grounds, Pairc Ui Chaoimh or Thurles.
And the Heineken Cup itself is a warning of how a highly successful competition can be downgraded by poor decisions.
True, I wouldnât have club championships starting at the start of March. Your point re pitches is valid. But in reality It really shouldnât take four months to complete a club championship. That wouldnât be a competition fit for purpose. If it really was an issue, then put county finals in to July and AI club in to August. Intercounty could be ran off in two months, similar to this years league structure and you could still have November/December free from everything.
Alliteratively to my proposal to have intercounty AI finals at Halloween, would be to have them before Christmas, ala 2020. Iâm not gone on it personally, but it could work. It would free up time and give county boards all the time in the world to finish their club competitions.
My point being that club should be before intercounty and is the natural precursor to the intercounty competition.
Iâm not sure how itâll go. People involved in clubs tend to vastly overstate the amount of interest those outside of the players involved have in it. But the split season had to be brought in, whatever the knock on effects it has.
Association football thrives because it dominates the media landscape. Of course the media landscape is not the same as it was, but it is still a massive battleground, I would argue more of a battleground than it was when we were growing up.
But for all that, club attendances have not increased despite the increase in media attention.
Iâm highly sceptical of your hypothesis that more kids than ever play now. Kids play where there are kids. The areas where the kids were when we were growing up are not the same areas as then. The area where I grew up doesnât have that many kids now.
Every child pretends to be one of their heroes when they play on the street or in the field. Thatâs as true as it ever was.
The hurling championship ideally should start in the middle of May and finish on the 19th of August or thereabouts. I think thats a fair enough comprimise.
The forecast for the weekend isnt obviously sweltering heat which is a negative for the Limerick senior hurlers too. The junior A championship in its box office nature is key though.
Getting kids interested and involved in the GAA is a lot more about local engagement than the popularity of the intercounty game
GAA are absolutely shite at marketing though and always will be. Gaa players in general have never been stars outside their county and never will be.
Iâd say participation is up massively among kids especially at young ages. Clubs are so well organised in urban areas and so many girls play now. The future of gaa is as a participation community based organisation.
Personally I think the best balance is that you have three club windows in May, June and July, taking place around the earlier stages of the inter-county championships, meaning that each club championship is whittled down to 8 teams by mid-July. Then you have the second half of July, August up to mid September all inter-county.
Proceed with the knockout stages of the club championships from late September on and finish the All-Ireland club off on the weekend before Christmas.
How is that the best balance? What do the clubs do for the 2 and a half month break between July and September? It also leads to essentially training year round for any clubs that make the last 8 of their championship
But it seems to me that lots of urban clubs are fucked because they are situated in areas with aging demographic profiles.
The GAA has never not been a participation based community organisation.
Thatâs the conundrum. It has to be that, and compete with professional sport for media attention.
It has to cover all the bases. Other sports donât have to do that because there is a separation between the professional and grass roots. Matt Doherty doesnât have to play local championship for St. Mochtaâs.
Thereâs a lot of lads on TFK who have exceptional sporting knowledge including elite level GAA who donât have a scooby doo how the actual organisation works.
Two and a half months? What do they do for the seven months before August under the split season?
Europe at war and lads posting over 100 posts on the GAA split season
Gas cunts
Enough about the Germans.