I wonder will the falling standards at Inter County be considered at all when they review it all. Does anyone care?
The actual quality of the latter stages has really fallen since 2017 as teams dont really get much preparation time with games squashed on top of each other. Obviously the fact the young lads coming through to replace the Hall of Famers are useless for the most part hasnt helped either.
Iād be amazed if we ever again saw a Hurling Final like 2014 or Football like 2017.
Obviously the angle of the sun in July/August being tinpot doesnāt help the spectacle either.
Iād say that extends beyond the casual fan. Iāve seen very little of the hurling championship and none of the football championship. I find with kids, theyāve still got plenty of school term activities and sports going on over weekends in April and May and just donāt have the time to watch it. It doesnāt particularly bother me. When the Championship is on in July and August, Iād have more time on my hands to sit down and watch a match on a Saturday night or Sunday afternoon.
Anything before seven or eight is glorified creche stuff. Kids start following teams at seven or eight. And having heroes to look up to helps to either i) keep them involved in a sport if they are already involved or ii) get them involved if they are not already involved.
Every single one of my childhood friends had particular football heroes they looked up to and tried to emulate the skills of.
GAA had little cachet in most suburban Dublin schools in the late 80s and early 90s. But everybody had heard of Barney Rock. Then our school got taken to a Dublin-Kerry league match in Croke Park and Gaelic football became more popular in the school and all the lads started taking the school team seriously because it offered the carrot of playing there.
When Dublin won the All-Ireland in '95, the charity match on the Wednesday night afterwards had to be abandoned because many hundreds of children invaded the pitch and mobbed Jason Sherlock.
If inter-county GAA did not serve as the major promotional tool for the sports, none of that would be true.
I donāt really get what your saying, on one hand you seem bothered, on the other you donāt?
The long and short of these underage competitions is minor only gets serious at knockout stages and u20 is shit compared to the old u21 championship which was on Wednesday nights.
Youāre talking of Dublin, which is a totally separate entity to pretty much the whole country. Its incomparable to how everywhere else has GAA either in schools or clubs.
If you want Dublin to be the sole market, then thats one thing. But i wouldnt be modelling everywhere else based on how it needs to be done in Dublin.
Saying how gaelic football only became popular in your school because of going to a game is not at all how it operates outside the pale. Dublin has its own issues in terms or retention and competition for sports etc, and ive already said here how i think the āsuperā clubs is actually detrimental to the overall development there.
But youd be surprised to hear that the glorified creche is how the vast majority of kids start playing GAA and thats what gets them in.
I think the split season is a great idea. Whatās your definition of thriving though? Are player numbers gone up do you think? Thatās the real barometer if it keeps more lads playing
The GAA is well aware of the changing demographics and have been actually hiring analysts to look at club, school and census data to understand how they need to adjust for the same.
If children have so little interest in going to inter-county senior matches, why are there so many of them making a beeline for inter-county pitches at half-time?
interesting since the 2nd best team of all time started winningā¦you know in your soul ye stole an AI in 2019ā¦yell be lucky to win one this decade