Sligo v Galway and Kerry v Clare last weekend but thankfully this Sunday weâve Dublin v Louth and Armagh v Derry to look forward to on Sunday.
Wasnât this competition formerly sponsored by Erin Soups?
McDonnellâs curry sauce would be a great sponsor for it.
They could call it the Curry Cup, with the final broadcast live on TG4 simultaneously to live coverage of the Bulls v Stormers Currie Cup game on RTE 2.
You are doing an awful amount of moaning but whats your alternative?
The Munster Football Final should be held on the same day as the Leinster Hurling Final.
The Leinster Football Final should be on the same day as the Munster Hurling Final.
The Connacht and Ulster Football Finalâs should be on the same day.
1 Like
The GAA
-
Right lads letâs make the championship as short as possible- weâre listening
-
Make it so you have a have a smart phone or a computer so old lads canât go anymore - now weâre talking
-
Finally letâs make it pay per view so half the county wonât be watching - absolutely yes
7 Likes
There was over 60k in attendance between Clare and Limerick In Dublin when the country was still recovering from the recession in 2013.
Weâve halved in ten years and lads think itâs a success.
1 Like
That is not possible with new football format.
In some ways, yes. The 1-31 to 2-26 tippy tappy shot fest can be boring. This is in my view has been driven to a large extent by the ever expanding size of the boss of a hurley.
But I canât imagine many people found Limerick v Clare or Cork v Tipperary boring.
I could imagine them finding Dublin v Wexford boring alright.
But what are the reasons people found Dublin v Wexford boring and not Limerick v Clare?
People want slogans to describe complex phenomena.
To me the majority of inter-county football and hurling has become boring. Thatâs partially to do with the evolving styles and tactics. Itâs partially to do with a lack of jeopardy in a lot of games. Itâs partly to do with massive imbalances between the abilities of teams in many games. Itâs partially to do with poor scheduling, venue selection and media coverage and the fading out of characters from the games.
The GAA has a problem with imbalance. Not just the imbalances between the abilities of teams, but the imbalances between the attractiveness of various provincial competitions.
Occasion is everything. The Munster championship is a premium product. Even if itâs messed around, pushed into Spring, it can still attract the crowds, because even in a round robin system, there is jeopardy, there is occasion. The downside of big crowds between Limerick and Clare and Cork and Tipp is that Waterford donât seem able to compete in this format and the interest in that county has fallen away hugely.
The Ulster football championship, especially the Ulster final, still carries weight. The reason it carries weight is occasion, tradition. Clones.
Dublin v Wexford was wrong for all sorts of reasons. The Dublin public has no passion for hurling. The Wexford public does, but is beaten down by reality. The reality that they now operate at a different level to Kilkenny and Galway and are trapped in a never ending pointless struggle with Dublin for third place, the reward for which is to get beaten by a Munster team in the quarter-final. Thatâs sooo meh. People stop caring. People especially stop caring when the bizarre decision is made to hold a game which was never going to make 10k attendance wise in Croke Park rather than Parnell Park. And especially when itâs on the 6th of May. And especially when itâs behind a paywall. How could anybody care.
The Leinster hurling final will proceed for the foreseeable future on the same basis. It will always be Kilkenny and Galway, every year. Kilkenny v Galway has never been a pairing that has particularly excited the public. Kilkenny v Galway in Croke Park in a Leinster final does not attract big crowds. It never will. This fixture will become a stigmatism on hurling.
The imbalance between the Munster and Leinster championships is like the imbalance between the interest in rugby union football in New Zealand and Australia.
The imbalance between the interest in the Ulster championship and maybe some Connacht games is a problem for the GAA.
The GAA are trapped in a bind. They want more big occasions. But in trying to create more big occasions, they are creating less, because they are neutering what they had, and creating a bloated spectacle which has no jeopardy.
The GAA will point to Munster hurling. But Munster hurling is not the GAA. What works in Munster hurling doesnât work anywhere else.
And the Munster hurling round robin has made the League meaningless.
In football, the ultra competitive NFL Division 1 has made provincial championships meaningless and has primed teams in it too well, it has created massive imbalance within the game.
So do we abolish Munster hurling? Or Ulster football? Or the NFL? I donât know, I donât think so.
These problems are so complex, but people want slogans.
4 Likes
You are comparing an all ireland semi with a round robin game.
Nobody could find the two games cheasty talks about boring because nobody was watching.
The two all Ireland semi finals last year barely broke 80k. In 2013 it was nearly 120k.
You can pick and choose matches to compare all day that will suit your argument.
The new football format needs to be ripped up and binned. Itâs an abomination.
3 Likes
The whole thing needs to be ripped up.
1 Like
Format. Scheduling. The natural ebb and flow of the sporting eco-system. Certain events have their time and place.
Sunday August 18th at 3:30pm, a stand alone fixture which has the whole weekend devoted it to it, feels like an All-Ireland semi-final.
Saturday July 2nd at 5pm, the curtain raiser All-Ireland semi-final, does not. Square pegs do not go in round holes.
1 Like
Saturday 10th this year mate.
Saturday 8th
Ye Olde championship was always like Ye Olde FA Cup. Total jeopardy.
But the GAA wanted it to be like the Premier League. Ulster finals are filled for Clones. Dublin v Mayo attracts 82k! Why canât we have more of this, asked Ger Gilroy. Why canât we have Premier League GAA?
Neither Ger Gilroy nor the GAA understood that you canât combine the Premier League and the FA Cup.
You have to choose one or the other.
You can choose a select group of counties to be franchises and run the GAA on that Premier League model - which is an absolute two fingers to what the GAA is supposed to be - or you can tear up the franchise model and blow the thing wide open by ending the elitist NFL Division 1 and going back to knockout or at most one second chance and stop pandering to inter-county managers. Disrupt their preparations. Bring the top counties down, bring the weaker counties up, force club championship games to be played during the championship. And market the fuck out of what you have.
5 Likes