Ok.
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Lovely conditions for fishing
When you see the atmosphere that Feyenord and Roma fans brought to what is a third tier European final , and how Roma celebrated you’d have to wonder about the thinking of some counties towards tailteann cup… it’s like they don’t want to acknowledge their place in the game and are looking down their nose at the only competition they could realistically win …
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Ah it’s no miracle … they always produced good footballers … yes they could be easily rattled but they’ve won over 30 championships in Wicklow , mad to say that was done with 12 lads mad for fighting … if rathnew played in Dublin you’d never really hear of them because they wouldn’t have won as much and wouldn’t stand out as a dirty team , they’d be just your typical parish team like Mary’s of saggart , Fingal ravens , garristown were …
Wicklow Town is St Pats. Rathnew will soon be engulfed by Wicklow town, it is the same parish. Between them they won 8/10 senior football champs in the 2’10s.
The Rathnew lads plus a few more play hurling with glenealy. They are a traditional power house. Pats also field a team though they are shite. Of the 7/8 clubs in Wicklow they have two.
As Wicklow goes, Wicklow town is a veritable hot bed. It still struggles with other sports. Soccer is very strong there.
Brayruit are starting to fly at the hurling now. They could be like Naas they could take off altogether and not be held back by the Wicklow orbit.
Arklow & Greystones are devoid of Gah for different reasons
Not comparable.
A good comparison between the Europa Conference League and a GAA competition is the All-Ireland Junior Club Championships. There are thousands of GAA clubs in Ireland and there are thousands of football clubs in Europe. Getting to any final in that context is noteworthy.
County is different to club. It just is. Probably because there are far fewer counties than there are clubs, and because of tradition. The rhetoric of “why can’t county have Senior, Intermediate and Junior like the clubs do” is a call for a cookie cutter, off the shelf solution, with no thought put into it. Tiers at county level, especially in football, just don’t work. There aren’t the inherent differences there among the resources and demographics of various counties in football to justify cutting teams out.
International (association) football is a good comparison to county (Gaelic) football I think.
The Tailteann Cup is like saying to half the European countries that they can’t compete in the World Cup qualifiers and instead will compete for the UniCredit Vase. There’s no chance that would be accepted by those countries.
Surely the World cup finals are the championship. Where only the elite are allowed to play. And North American qualifying is like Munster, and Oceania qualifying is like Leinster.
Ah stop …all the teams do start off with a chance to get into all Ireland series… it’s only when they get bet at a certain stage does the tailteann cup become an option … i think it could be a great competition if teams accepted the reality of their situation
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It could be a great competition if an alternate reality existed.
It’s a losers’ competition.
Sure bring back the FA Cup 3rd and 4th place play off while yer at it.
How big is Rotterdam? How big is Rome? How big is Tullamore?
That wasn’t the point I was making . I’m saying the attitude towards a third tier European competition
Both teams are top teams in their national leagues.
Tailteann Cup teams are also-rans in theirs.
Players and managers love the crutch of being able to point at the strongest counties and saying sure how can we compete with them. There is definitely more than a grain of truth in the suggestion that some managers are afraid of the Tailteann because failure there will show them up for the spoofers they are. They will be given an achievable objective to win it, and when they don’t the questions will get a little trickier for them.
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Tullamore is not big enough to be included as a lyric in a Beautiful South song.
Incidentally all the cities that are mentioned in the chorus of the song “Rotterdam” by The Beautiful South have teams in European finals this year.
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Leitrim and Laois’s to lose
Dublin and La Rochelle? 
Sligo vs London gone to extra time. Sligo equalised right at the death
Jaysus they’ll miss the Champions League
Typical Londoners. Manchester United supporters.
Fermanagh got the better of Longford so it’s Leitrim, Cavan, Fermanagh and Sligo/London left in the Northern section