So we have it now. Media coverage is apparently worthless to a sport.
Some people are very strange.
The club system is a mess for two main reasons.
i) The clubs themselves, who are only too happy to cancel games at the drop at a hat because thereās a wedding or a lad has gone on holiday.
So clearly the solution to that is to move more important games into the time window when you have more weddings and holidays and more lads gone off to America for the summer.
ii) The refusal to implement a national fixtures programme with defined time windows for club activity and the refusal to stand up to inter-county managers.
September and October have always been the prime months for club championships.
It is accepted that the provincial and All-Ireland club championships are winter competitions.
Are you missing the point on purpose? Thereās about a thousand people in Loughmore for example. How do you expect one of their games to attract 15,000 people?
High club attendances are based on neutrals, high intercounty attendances are based on people from those counties, just for the simple fact that counties are bigger than parishes
Go back to my earlier post. People care about the club game a lot, thereās just a lot more teams and a lot more matches on. Its pointless thinking of it as one county vs one club. Its 70 clubs in Tipperary all getting a few hundred people at their games vs 1 county team made up of people from those clubs
Rugby players used to play for clubs. Now they donāt.
Top inter-county players donāt play much for clubs outside club championships.
This goes back to the dishonesty about what it is club players want. They say they want a regular programme of games. But you donāt need county players to have that.
You then moved the goalposts to āclub players want a regular programme of important gamesā.
The important club games for club players are championship. Which by definition cannot be a regular programme of games.
So you play your championships in September and October, when you have your county players back.
And these are the most important people in terms of the success of the showpiece competition.
A large proportion of yesterdayās crowd was made up of them. But Iām sure Galway v Armagh would have had a much better atmosphere had they not been there.
Well you continue to make the point that the GAA would be nothing without the county game. One thing which is for sure is that the games would cease to exist without the club game so maybe you should care a bit more about the park players
It is mainly the clubs themselves which have failed to give their players a regular programme of games.
You do not need county players involved to have a regular programme of games.
If games are going to be postponed because āwe donāt have Johnny because heās off at a weddingā or āPaddyās away in Newcastle at a stagā, well boo hoo, whose fault is it there isnāt a regular programme of games?
When the old Five Nations was drawing from the clubs in the amateur days, there were two weeks between each round of the Five Nations. International players lined out for their clubs on the Saturday between Five Nations games.
In the professional era, the provinces still play throughout the Six Nations Championship and make do without their international players.
The club and provincial games in rugby have always catered for players even when the elite end with the international team is playing.
The GAA could do a lot worse than follow the rugby model. Club leagues could be tipping away grand from March/April to July/August with or without county players and lads heading for the summer to the US/stags/weddings/holidays/Galway Races. Thatās a system than sensible and well run counties like Dublin operate already. Run off the Provincial and All Ireland Championships from early June to early September and get going with your club championships from late August through September and October.