Yes because the new season seriously favours teams who are one code or a super club which can field two separate teams.
Whoâd have figured in such a condensed season but at least we had 74 rounds of the all Ireland senior football championship to watch this year.
Just the 10 pages of GAA in the Examiner today.
Scanned that this morning and was not clear at the end what the coming catastrophe was? Urbanisation or falling birth rates?
One for the Inaptonyms thread - Ardboe footballer Benny Hurl.
The GAA has LOST Dick Clerkin. I repeat: The GAA has LOST Dick Clerkin.
If the GAA has lost the Company Man, it has LOST.
Dick Clerkin: GAA needs to take back the summer, or risk losing hearts and minds forever
Dick was on with Pat Kenny yesterday and I was intrigued to hear that some commenter straight up stole this comment. Hi commenter, whoever you are.
Dick Clerkin
Today at 19:10
The first crucial step required when attempting to solve any problem is recognising that you have one. So, getting straight to the point, I ask you directly â do you think the current split season has been beneficial for the GAA as a whole?
Has your countyâs club championship significantly changed, or improved, from what it was pre-Covid? Have you found yourself more or less engaged in the inter-county championships over the past two seasons, considering the increase in the amount of matches? Do you think having no inter-county action in July and August â for all but four counties â has been a positive development for the GAA?
Has your countyâs club championship significantly changed, or improved, from what it was pre-Covid? Have you found yourself more or less engaged in the inter-county championships over the past two seasons, considering the increase in the amount of matches? Do you think having no inter-county action in July and August â for all but four counties â has been a positive development for the GAA?
And itâs probably worth posing this question a second time as even just writing it is still hard to believe.
Almost two years to the day, I wrote about the pending impact of the new championship structures. I could have saved myself a lot of time this week and just filed the same column again.
My thoughts back then have turned out to be prophetic and have been validated by our real-world experiences of the past two years. I canât say it any clearer now than I did then â we need to see a return of more inter-county GAA action in July and August.
Championship summer fever is now little more than a sniffle. Never have I felt such an overwhelming air of negativity and pessimism around the football championship. Even just talking to people in the street, club championships are being impacted by a general apathy and lack of excitement in our games, created by our lacklustre inter-county scene.
As a family and community-based organisation, parents and children once consumed by summer Sunday trips around the country are getting their heads turned elsewhere.
This air of indifference will continue to have a damaging effect on the GAA as a whole if not addressed. It wonât be instant, and it wonât necessarily be obvious, but the markers are already beginning to raise their heads.
If you havenât already noticed, the online media algorithms are further proof that Gaelic games are losing their place in the public consciousness during the summer months.
Two thumb scrolls are often required to find any GAA-related content online. Columns are being written, but they are buried under their own irrelevance âplaying second and third fiddle to the other sports that we have acceded the summer window shop to.
This year we had the Euros, and then the Olympics dominated the summer months. Prior to that, and as will always be the case, the final stages of the Premier League and European club rugby took top billing most weekends as the GAAâs provincial championships struggled for oxygen.
This trend will continue and from a marketing point of view, the GAA canât afford to compete with these big players.
The falling attendances, some of which were embarrassing to see, are proof that weâre starting to lose the battle for the hearts and minds of supporters.
Gaelic football has a particularly big problem as the game is in a state of crisis, but hereâs hoping that Jim Gavinâs review group can work a few miracles with their much-needed rule changes. In all honesty, some of the games weâve witnessed this year didnât deserve an August top billing.
The 2024 football championship will surely go down as one of the most forgettable, unless youâre from Armagh. Too many games, in too short a time, of too poor a standard.
The tabloid pages and blog sites couldnât have moved on from it any quicker after the final between Armagh and Galway on July 28. All for the benefit of the club player who, letâs be honest, hasnât experienced much change in most counties.
The clubs have largely been given July and August, but as expected, and as I pointed out two years ago, this time was never going to be used as the central administrators intended.
In all the talk around the plight of club players and the need for a split season, few acknowledged some basic realities about our player and member base.
Whether it be summer trips to the US, summer festivals or just family summer holidays, the last thing your ordinary five-eighths club player or management team need is the nightmare of a July championship. Wait until everyone is back by the middle of August instead, has been the sensible tactic deployed by most county boards. As was always the case.
Three years into the shortened intercounty season, and I have yet to hear a credible argument to retain the new status quo long term. In short, the drops of juice have not been worth the squeeze.
If some dual counties have local challenges to navigate, then come up with a local solution. Hard cases make bad law, and they shouldnât hold the whole association to ransom.
The cost has been, and will continue to be, too great. The GAA needs to take the summer back, and quickly â it was never meant to be this way.
Dick Clerkinâ:rofl:
Just the 10 pages of GAA coverage in the Examiner today.
Dick was really struggling for the word count this week
https://twitter.com/clubber/status/1828075178774978640?s=46
Itâs an awful long break for the club players in Tipperary.
Did they play championship games before August ?
How is that clubber thing making money? âWatch all 64 of the weekendâs fixtures back on clubber.ieâ - you wouldnât wish that on your worst enemy.
Surely nobody in their right mind gives a fuck about the parochial bog stick round robin championships in Tipperary or some random county bordering Tipperary or some random county bordering a county that borders Tipperary? They must have around 23 subscribers nationwide.
I was hoping the Olympics would put an end to GGA once & for all but these gombeens wonât go quietly into the night. Theyâll still be trying to hoover up grant money at the expense of more deserving & inclusive activities. I was complaining about this to a man when I was at the Raheny GGA Family Fun Day last Saturday week.
They got grants for all the camera equipment
Commentators are generally all local-ish and donât get paid for it. So the cost for them to run is minimal.
They donât have to pay for rights to broadcast as the deals with the counties are generally a percentage-based one of revenue etc
It canât be costing too much to run for all its hardly going to bring huge money in either.
Sorry guys, I was just lashing out. I thought I was okay with Matt OâRiley moving on but I obviously wasnât. I shouldnât take my frustrations out on innocent parties like clubber &/or the GAA.
Is it totally a viable business long term so? Can you pay per view by the match? Do they only show some counties as in others have their own streaming service?
Are you factoring dodgy boxes and IPTV into that? Seems like 80% of the forum have Clubber for free. I feel like Iâm missing out not being able to watch Cashel-United Nations versus Silvermines in the Tipperary Premier Intermediate hurling championship.
Ya lads just on Clubber they were trying to get into Performance Analysis but fairly quickly saw thatâs a saturated market (crowd in Clare has all the county teams in Camogie/Hurling/Football at this stage) and a heap of club on teams, so Clubber started the streaming instead - youâll see they still have the ads for an AI thing but nobody uses it.
In terms of it being a massive money maker; it doesnât have to be I suppose. All they are doing is the upkeep of the service and trying to secure new deals. Low cost and probably low margin but if theyâre making enough to live off, then why not I suppose?
And ya some counties have their own streaming service like Clare GAA etc - some counties canât be arsed and are happy to give rights to a 3rd party. Clubber have literally reached out to every county board and are offering them âjuicyâ percentages of the PPV buys etc
I think itâs a good service albeit painful commentators at times
The commentators are the best part because theyâre all local and know everything about the lads playing.It would be like @Aristotle commentating on the Limerick championship.
Womenâs handball the showpiece offering on tonightâs TG4 GAA highlights programme.
Timbo has his work cut out against Nasty Naz here in the menâs final.