They are being given far more prominence than they previously were by having their own defined season
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Unquestionably there is a problem with competitiveness as regards certain counties but the reasons for this have been explained to death. To reiterate, a large part of the problem lies with the Division 1-4 league system where the weak teams continually play the other weak teams and the strong teams continually play the other strong teams.
There is a similar dynamic in hurling too despite the lip service that is paid to the Joe McDonagh Cup. The gap between the likes of Antrim and Kerry and the top counties was much smaller 30 years ago.
Stevie wonder can see the top brass in croke donât give a damn about the clubs which makes the idea of a split season for the clubs as some sort of victory even more hilarious. Iâd say the suits in croke park were laughing their holes off. Theyâve been given carte Blanche on the best part of the year and as you say they are going to take august back as well at a minimum.
If the lads donât see the impact of this crazy long inter county season and the best inter county players not turning up until august at their clubs they must genuinely be stupid.
The end goal is very simple.
Theyâll have an inter county season running from January to September where the clubs will have no impact. The tickets will be distributed through centra.
Clubs will have to decide between running of their championships in October and November or playing without the inter county players.
That was how it was before as well.
Clubs prefer this, dealing with tickets is terrible
The GAA think they are playing 4D chess here but they arenât because 4D chess doesnât exist.
The format for the football championship next year is a Kafkaesque creation which is designed to diminish the provincial championships in a similar way to how extremist Tories want to do down the NHS.
The round robin games will be pointless on the back of pointless provincial championships. This is how not to run a championship.
Both of these things, in addition to the terrible scheduling, will diminish the inter-county championships as spectacles even further.
Neither do I think this new idea to play the three club hurling finals and the three club football finals on the same bills will work.
Double headers donât work at the best of times in summer so congratulations to whoever came up with the idea of a triple header in January.
The GAA was served with good, strong leadership between the early 1990s and mid 2000s, with Liam Mulvihill and a succession of good presidents in Peter Quinn, Joe McDonagh, Sean McCague and Sean Kelly. The changes that happened in that period were positive.
In the last seven or eight years the whole show has come off the road and the patterns we see with politics where the lunatics have taken over the asylum in so many places seems to be happening in the GAA too. The scheduling, the rules of the games themselves and the general emphasis of the GAA as a whole now seems to be decided by who shouts loudest and angriest on Twitter.
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All-Ireland final tickets and tickets for big championship games which are likely to go close to selling out should be distributed through clubs, not through Centra or Ticketmaster and clubs should be getting the best tickets for all ticketed games.
I find it mental that those who most claim to look out for the interests of club members are those who most want to sell them out.
Thatâs a surefire way to reduce club membership all across the island.
I agree with that for games which sell out which is a tiny proportion of games during the year.
For the vast majority of games its more hassle than its worth for clubs and thereâs loads of tickets available regardless.
Thereâs elements of truth in what all sides are saying. I think bruden curtain started off wumming but the longer he goes on the more his argument makes a lot of sense. Havenât heard anyone else really argue against the split season from a pro club perspective.
I think the new football format will be a big improvement. The main problem now is no one gives a bollox about 90pc of the games and itâs too confusing. The former problem will remain but the latter will be solved and it will be far more streamlined and fair. Three group games then knockouts. All counties playing on the same weekend. Only provincial worth a piss is ulster and I think theyâll still take that seriously but that remains to be seen of course.
You just donât get it do you.
They are selling the tickets through centra for the early rounds to prepare people for a full move to ticket master for all games.
Theyâve been selling tickets in Centra for years now.
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Yes preparing people for the big move I.e cut out the clubs.
You wantâŚClub players are delighted with the new setup as far as I can see.TJ is only interested in his gym
Its often said that the lads around years ago making decisions (in all walks of life) were a lot smarter than they are given credit for and there was sound reasoning why certain things were fixed for certain times of the year.
And as weâve seen in other niche sports like rugby and national hunt racing professionalism is an absolute disaster.
Invariably very few can compete at one time.
Rugby in particular suffered hugely as teams became so good it became more about who made mistakes and many of the games were absolutely horrendous to watch.
We are seeing something similar in hurling. Many of the games are snore fests. Score after score after score.
Itâs no surprise the best game of hurling to watch this year was Clare v Limerick in the Munster final where it pissed rain and many of the players were slipping and making basic mistakes they usually wouldnât. It made for great excitement.
Itâs always been a free weekend in Laois
The new football championship format will contain meaningless provincial championships played in April and early May and will have pitiful attendances.
The round robin games will be mostly meaningless and will mostly have pitiful attendances and not engage the viewing public.
As regards the issue of scheduling, there are four main elements which are all in opposition to each other - inter-county football, inter-county hurling, club football, club hurling. In a perfect world, all four elements would start in May in and have their major finals in September, but that is impossible.
There are players out there who would like to partake in all four main elements, but that is basically impossible now.
The system which has worked reasonably well for most of our lifetimes is All-Ireland finals in September, county finals in October.
What is there this year does not work. There are now two choices.
i) Either push the inter-county season back six or eight weeks and then have your club season, or
ii) try to combine the seasons through having designated time windows for county and club throughout the year which work in the same way that association football and rugby operate, so that club only players are kept interested throughout the year and county players are kept in touch with their clubs throughout the year, while keeping the optimum time windows for the showpiece competitions, the inter-county championships, with finals in September.
Either choice would be superior to what is there currently, but ii) to me looks the superior choice. But to choose ii) would mean confronting the power of the inter-county manager and it require a fully centralised fixtures programme to ensure individual inter-county managers do not take the piss.
If you chose i), it would probably mean the majority of county finals in November. I wouldnât have a problem with that. It might also enable a return to the traditional club finals date of St. Patrickâs Day. Only 17k attended the club finals in 2022 and I doubt the attendances will go much above that as long as they are played in January, or December or February for that matter.
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Iâve disagreed with @BruidheanChaorthainn on more threads than i can remember but itâs hard to disagree with him here. This could be one of the greatest internet victories of all time when heâs eventually proven right.
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Carlow hurling signed off for the year last Sunday on 7 August. A turkey shoot of a final with St Mullins winning by 17 points. At least they got a crowd in that was usual county final size after some truly dismal attendances up to then. Thatâs about the only positive you could take out of the day. On the whole, a truly forgettable championship, probably the worst I can remember. Now that itâs wrapped up for 2022, judgement can be passed, split season in its current guise can be categorised as an utter failure.
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