This isnāt coming from āthe top brassā though. This is coming from the county boards Iād wager.
Iām not at all saying itās right, but you can sort of see where it comes from, a county with 10 or 15 (or more) football clubs, and two or three hurling clubs will obviously not want to divide money equally between hurling and football. The counties involved will not be wealthy, theyāll be trying to eke out their resources, and the county boards will obviously be dominated by football people.
Most are extremely well intentioned, itās just that they fight their own corner.
It is the spiralling expense of running county sides is at the root of it.
Thereās a lot of football lads would consider hurling an alien sport which has nothing to do with them, and vice-versa.
Itās a shame thereās only one elite GAA county which is competitive in both, but even Galway have elite level rubby, soccer, rowing etc to keep their wagons and assorted wooden caravans circling.
Sugar daddies are great arenāt they
Would Leitrim beat a good junior club team?
While all that makes sense from Financial perspectives for individual Co Boards, itās a massive negative on the Association as the core principle of games promotion is flushed down the toilet.
Revenue on gameās development is the key issue.
Where is the Revenue Croke Park amasses going?
My brother is living in a Football stronghold and is trying along with a few other to train a hurling team in the club Underage.
He said itās next to near impossible to get support to fix training, coaching, matches etc.
Whilst adult numbers of either code may be indifferent there is no chance of balancing the numbers of underage structures are not adhered to or given an actual chance.
If that motion was to pass, you are effectively saying that underage efforts are in vain and giving two fingers to the ethos of the Association.
Hurling isnt populsr in most of the country
Its either a shit sport or the gga as an organisation is so bad it cant develop it
Gradually the north and south of the country will retreat more and more into football only and hurling only respectively. Only a matter of time before the Waterford footballers go the way of the Leitrim hurlers. Football will have an advantage in sustaining itself in that it is a fundamentally cheaper and easier sport to keep going.
You arenāt far wrong here imo. Football is cheaper to play too.
Fogarty is right. Him and Cahill were fighting it for years but they were betrayed as much by their own counties as the others.
Yes
Would hockey the best of the Junior Teams
However itās teams like Tooreen etc that would be clubs then that would annihilate them
Id have my doubts. Leitrim wouldnāt win all Ireland club junior hurling. They should enter it.
Both Sligo and Monaghan have had clubs play in the junior club final in recent years and put up decent showings. Leitrim are a fair bit better than any individual club in the weaker counties.
That Sligo team was very poor last year. Well beaten. Ballygiblin only going through the motions.
Iām not sure any club would just go through the motions in a Croke Park final but in any case Leitrim would be a good deal better than that Sligo club. And the Sligo club made the junior club final.
They donāt have to enter it. And youāre wrong.
You also have to remember a lot of the good footballers would play hurling too and be good at it but donāt play because of the scheduling.
As an example in Kerry the hurling club championship is invariably run off while their footballs are still in the senior all Ireland.
Well the thrust of the argument was actually that the inflated sums spent on keeping a county team afloat would be better spent on underage structures, which is perhaps an argument that holds water, depending entirely upon whether any money saved actually ends up there.
We played a Sligo club ,St Josephās Calry iirc s few years back. It was the usual thing for a small club in a non stronghold, they had a handful of exceptional hurlers, a few decent ones and three or four lads dragged out of the bookies.
No casting aspersion on Leitrim, but given a good club junior team will often be on the way straight up to senior, Iām not so sure, but theyād be competitive alright.
You can bet anything that they offered coaching money to these counties. But Iād bet this money isnāt ringfenced for hurling development.
Id be the first to criticise the GPA but one of the best things they did was to get county boards treating hurling in these counties better. Itās not perfect but thereās a level of parity.
Although I remember Sligo came to play us one year, my mate was selector and he told me the county board chairman wanted the trip done on the cheap so they could spend more on the footballers going to New York. Even though the money for the trip was given to them from Croke Park so was costing the county board nothing.Needless to say the hurlers tagged on an extra night and made full use of the funding.
If counties are looking to save money, look at the sums they pay outside coaches