The All Irelands thos year are 3 weeks earlier than their equivalents in 2019. Not a massive difference. They will go forward another week next year. Hard to understand all the moaning.
Sure no one watches the football championship as you said yourself mate.
Last night a chap in the smoking area of Lonerganâs pub in Salthill who is a current club player voluntarily and unprompted shouted out ânot having All-Irelands in September is fuckinâ bullshitâ. He was then backed up in this opinion by another current club player in his 30s who had just bummed a cigarette off me.
The people are speaking.
Havent been in September for a number of years.
Pissed up punters in a pub are hqrdly the people speaking.
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The people are speaking in their non-attendances at everything outside of the Munster Premier League and the Ulster football final.
The patrician, company man attitude of lads like yourself is what is rotting the GAA away.
The views of anybody who is not a paid up member of the split season cult are to be dismissed, whatever the cogent arguments and evidence they put forward.
Itâs a real case of the sort of perceived âsneering attitude of elitesâ that led to Brexit. But the irony of ironies is, it is wholly in service to Brexiteer style thinking.
Iâd say Galway football people couldnât get over the lack of occasion at last years All Ireland.
No curtain raiser and the 25 year teams being introduced in front of a few hundred people were real low points
One of the major strategies of right wing zealots to get what they want is to take beloved public institutions of massive intrinsic societal value and steadily run them down over time, little bit by little bit, until theyâre no longer seen by the public as things worth saving. The NHS and the BBC are the two most obvious examples of beloved public institutions that have come in for this sort of treatment from the Tories.
If the Tories were consulted about what was the best way to run down the beloved cultural institutions that are the All-Ireland hurling and football championships so that they are no longer seen as things of value worth saving, theyâd scarcely have come up with anything different to what the GAA have done.
Anomie is a common theme in sociology - the unravelling of the structures that bind society and give a sense of security and comfort. People like certainty and they like cherished traditions and they donât like cherished traditions being thrown away for no good reasons other than jobsworths trying to justify their existence.
33/35 years ago or so, one of the batshit suggestions youâd hear frequently bandied around in the media was that the GAA should sell Croke Park and move to a new, car friendly stadium at the Curragh. The GAA had supposedly been shackled for too long by âarchaic traditionâ, the fake progress zealots told us at the time. These were the Brexiteers of their day, the burn it all down so we can pretend to build it back up mob. They havenât gone away, theyâve just mutated into something else.
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Football in Wexford is comparable now to the 60s, 70s, 80s, 2015 -2023.
How I used love the the bi annual trips to Clonmel for the Division 3 South mid table classics in late November with a similarly successful Tipperary team.
Or the visit of Wicklow to Wexford Park in early March when optimism had sprung again.
The split season will save the GAA.
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I always thought our target audience was players.
Proper coaching and enjoyment would appear to Trump the tour of the county with the Liam McCarthy that has happened approximately once in my lifetime.
This reply doesnât make sense on any level. The core target audience of the GAA in terms of creating competition formats, are potential spectators. Maximising spectators through building a buzz about your showpiece competitions, both inter-county and club. This is marketing 101. Because young potential spectators are your potential players. Fathers and mothers are your potential mentors. If you want to turn spectators away, youâre turning away youngsters from playing the games and turning parents away from being potential mentors that help to sustain clubs.
The GAA also has a duty to maintain a proper programme of regular games for players at all levels. But in far too many places, it has never taken this duty seriously, and as far as I can see, Wexford is one of those places.
Wexford now has a ridiculous clay court style club hurling season with the final last year run off by August 14th and presumably even earlier this year. Then itâs a three month wait for the champions before theyâre summarily dismissed in the Leinster first round.
Wexford football will remain dead, and theyâll never climb out of the Tanita Tikaram Cup hellhole, because the system kills interest, kills preparation, kills standards and kills hope.
Perhaps the lads who play football for Wexford will enjoy that, and think, âweâre getting proper coachingâ, but the Wexford public will have zero interest.
And the Wexford public have steadily lost interest in their hurling team too, because they consistently under achieve.
Some people seem to think thatâs good for Wexford GAA, and for the GAA as a whole. On what basis theyâd think that, I havenât a clue.
Just a small note on this, but your basing the marketing and targeting of kids to watch games and therefore play to your own city style upbringing where Dublin footballers going to your school attracted you to play. This is far from the reality in many, particularly rural areas. Every boy in my sons class and the one above him play for the u10s, 100% turnout from.the primary school. 2 chaps who arent really into hurling are now also playing that as they want to stay hanging out with their friends over summer. They couldnt give 2 fucks if Wexford are in or out, they are happy to play hurling because their friends do. And this is how a lot of rural clubs survive, there is fuck all to do other than gga.
No Dublin footballer ever came to my school. But big Dublin games in the summer were the marketing. Thatâs what made the GAA attractive.
Heroes are important. If they werenât, there would be no children on the pitch at Wexford Park. All sports need heroes to get youngsters to play.
You cannot underestimate the promotional value of a Lee Chin or a Tony Kelly or a Peter Canavan or a Damien Comer or a David Clifford in serving as an inspiration to everybody in a county - to supporters, to young players, to young potential players and supporters.
Thereâs a weird double think here among some of the split season zealots. They trumpet David Clifford as an immense promotional tool, and then it seems to me anyway, some of them turn around and poo poo the idea that inter county superstars are a promotional tool.
It has to be one or the other, it canât be both.
Also Ireland is a largely urban society. Wexford might be a largely rural county but it has a significant urban population, like almost all counties do at this stage.
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Iâm not doubting that they are great role models or that kids look up to them, my lads love bringing the hurl to the game and are more interested in the half time puck around and getting it signed at full time than they arw on the match. At that age, its more important for their development and promotion to have meaningful games for them rather than the county seniors being idols. That makes the gaa far more attractive than big superstars. They have their idols and its great to see club players up at the pitch and then to see them out playing for their county, but their own games are far bigger to them than intercounty senior games.
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Condescend away there.
You know everything.
Weâre missing 2 hurling games in August and 1 in September.
Weâll be grand.
If theyâre arsed bringing a hurley to a game, getting out on the pitch to play at half time and then and getting the hurley signed by Lee Chin or Rory OâConnor or whoever afterwards, yes, that is proof that inter-county stars are a serious promotional tool. And Wexford arenât even very good.
Itâs your side of the argument which has adopted a condescending tone from the get go.
The condescension, sneering and faux superiority has been breathtaking.
Do not believe your eyes, we are told.
Itâs Daniel Hannan-like.
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You just donât get it fella.
Youâre missing the point tho, we need kids playing the games and the most important thing is that they have well run structured training and matches. Wexford being good or bad will have little to do with how many play club hurling or football for kids who start playing gaa.
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Wexford being good or bad does have an effect on whether kids will want to play.
What has no effect on whether an adequate games programme can be put in place for children is whether the All-Ireland finals are in September or not.
We are being partially sold this cod of having senior All-Irelands in July on the premise that it will somehow improve the lot of children, when it does not. By downsizing the prominence of the senior inter-county championships - which moving All-Ireland finals to July does - that is a negative in terms of promotion for the games to children.