Less games. Back to knock out so.
BBC NI seems to have vanished from the Virgin Media platform.
The Paisley series wasn’t carried by Virgin despite being advertised and neither was Armagh v Antrim.
The championships have gone like those threads where posters shout “cunt” at each other for 200 posts, which nobody else reads.
More content, more noise, less attention.
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If only there was a format there from 2002-2017 to refer back to.
Would you like a bye to the semi final for Tipp also while you’re at it?
Sure I was thrown all sorts of insults and abuse.
We basically have a six week club championship that is interesting but is also being destroyed by the authorities.
We then have a horrendously boring and bloated 9 month inter county season.
It isn’t rocket science.
Lads talking about resting players in the opening game to prepare for another game later on in the round robin.
There be auld fellas spinning in their graves at the thoughts of it.
Attendances rose dramatically when live TV came on the scene properly in the mid-90s.
Extensive free to air television coverage, playing matches in stadiums that suit them, analysis and argument that people want to watch, and proper regular time slots at the peak time of year are what works.
Instead we have meaningless games shoehorned onto laptop subscription services on bleak April weekends. It’s the GAA’s version of a fat munter trying to make a buck on OnlyFans.
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We are in a cost of living crisis so the gaa Create even more games sometimes in random locations and then put a portion of the games behind a pay wall and lads on here are desperately defending it as some sort of victory.
All this reminds me of how American democracy relied on a system of norms, not rules.
So did the GAA.
The GAA relied on lads killing themselves in every match, inter-county, club, championship, league, Railway Cup, Oireachtas, Grounds Tournament.
It relied on there being no tactics. It relied on dumb long balls into the forwards which the forwards wouldn’t win. It relied on dumb kickouts down the middle. It relied on spectacular overhead pulling duels for zero gain.
Once the system of norms started to break down and teams started using possession tactics, everything started to break down. They started putting rules in place to try and enforce the things that were dying out, competition formats were tampered with, and all sorts of unintended consequences started happening, and the whole thing became more and more meh.
Even when there’s a good match, like yesterday, our instinct is to look to pull it down. “It didn’t matter”. “At the wrong time of year.” The crowd was shit". But all of those things are true.
Once you get the Carabao Cup-isation of championship games - and this has been creeping in at least since 2018 and the introduction of round robins, and in truth probably before that, you have a problem, a big problem.
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Whatever about Limerick next Sunday I won’t see a single minute of Clare v tipp and I don’t really care because I know I’m not really missing anything.
Hurling is on life support. It’s a huge pity people don’t wake up.
Look at the fuck fest they made of the Heineken cup.
Even the journalists on Twitter seem to be mixed up about who’s playing who in Leinster this weekend. Barely anyone cares.
I remember Wexford playing Dublin in Wexford Park on a glorious late June Saturday in 2014 and an elderly neighbour and his wife taking it in as part of their summer holidays in the South-East. A right good contest and occasion too if i remember rightly @Bandage @Aertel220 You’ll never get that with these April Round Robins.
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Not everyone wants to watch GAA or sport in general on TV.
This is all very snowflakey
The same lads wanted rid of sky.
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I’ve just brought up the half century and you are correct, that’s a task that sounds beyond my technological capabilities On a personal level it’s all the same anyway. Tied up with kids and their sporting schedules at weekends pretty much until the school holidays at the end of June, so like a lot of parents, don’t have the time to be sitting down on a Sunday afternoon in April and May to watch the split season inter-county Championship. I don’t have the interest really any more either. As @BruidheanChaorthainn has alluded to, the GAA are now following the lead of European Rugby, who butchered a terrific competition that they had in the European Cup with constant structural and scheduling changes. Public interest in the inter-county Championships is dwindling rapidly
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The decision to put Waterford v Limerick on telly instead of Clare v Tipp is bizarre.
Waterford v Limerick will have swathes of empty terraces at a neutral venue where supply for tickets massively outstrips demand. Having it at a neutral venue will diminish demand for tickets. The decision to have it on telly will feed into a lower crowd again.
Clare v Tipp at least will be a full house and the result of it will have a meaningful bearing on qualification.
I could be completely wrong and it could turn into a thriller and the other game could be a damp squib, but on the face of it, Clare v Tipp is a much more appetising prsopect.
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This generation want everything now, and then when they get it they’re not happy with how its been given to them. It really is like raising a toddler.
It’s the sociology people the GAA and other sporting organisations should have gone to when deciding what it is people want from the GAA, because they don’t know their own market. Like Brexit, they were swayed by shouting by idiots.
Things like paying for a live stream on the internet and then setting it up, and then connecting it to a telly, these are things which are barriers to a lot of people. They’re awkward, inconvenient, annoying.
Same with the ticket situation. Not being able to make a late decision to walk up to a ground and buy a ticket from a cabin beside the gate is annoying.
For younger people, the GAAGO thing means they can’t comment on matches as they are happening because you have to use your laptop to watch.
Part of sport is the feeling that other people are watching with you, that it’s a communal event. With GAAGO, you always feel you’re the only person watching. It’s a bit like what I imagine it would be like watching a YouTube stream of @Aertel220 playing Championship Manager.
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Who on earth watches things on a laptop? You put it on your phone and cast to TV. Do people even own laptops any more?
The Sky situation was a lot better. You had to pay, but at least you got plenty of other bang for your buck, and at least it was on actual telly. You don’t any more bang for your buck with GAAGO. You aren’t going to go to the bother of hooking up the laptop for a game you’re not that interested in. Whereas you might watch it if it was on the actual telly.
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