Antrim?
Antrim. Even if you only count half of their population. Wicklow are a disgrace though. Rugby and soccer are top dogs there
No way. Antrim got to an all Ireland hurling final. Wicklow have literally done nothing ever. In either code. Is it themselves and Fermanagh have never won a provincial? Have they even got to a final or had a run in the qualifiers? I’d say they are the worst gaa county in Ireland never mind population.
The lads in Bray think they’re Dubs. The lads in Greystones look down their nose at Gaa. By the time you get to Rathnew and Wicklow town sure you’d be bullin for a row and that’s how they play.
It’d be easier to drive from Wicklow town to Wexford town then Wicklow town to Blessington. The divide created by the mountains is surreal. Lads in Blessington and Baltinglass have more of an affinity to Kildare or Carlow than Wicklow.
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615k in Antrim though. I’d guess 200k or so would be GAA persuadable?
Don’t forget Antrim got a bye into the hurling semi-final every year and we all know if they’d been in Leinster or Munster they’d never have got within an asses’s roar of that final.
I think geographical determinism fucks Wicklow a bit. The county is divided by mountains and has very little flat land.
They’ve done alright at club level. Baltinglass won a club All-Ireland and Rathnew won Leinster.
Wouldn’t argue against their overall record being shite however.
On an all-GAA basis you could reasonably and probably correctly argue that Antrim might be slightly less underachieving based on the fact they’ve a reasonably healthy hurling scene.
But you look at them and think to yourself that it’s a county that should be winning Ulster football titles and probably contending for All-Irelands at least every once in a while, yet they are consistently dogshit.
If you were to confine things to football they’re appalling underachievers.
They have to be the county that has the most amount of inner hatred. You’d hear of club rivalrys but Wicklow is off the charts by comparison. We laugh at poor Johnny Price being locked in the boot of a car in the 80s but if you think logically about it how is that at all excusable?
Even last year was it some underage match between Kilcoole and someone else and you’d parents looking to absolutely kill each other on the line. The Rathnew lads absolutely love a row - the fact they won big games was a miracle as 12 of the 15 lads had interest only in fighting.
Even Micko couldn’t really unite the county. They’ve no hope.
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Carnew aswel…Jesus they would fight with their shadow
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Great point. A village stuck in the middle of the Wexford, Wicklow & Carlow border. They’ve a brilliant school there but absolutely nothing else. The kids there are born into a complex.
Baltinglass won the AI club football back in the 80’s don’t forget and they dethroned reigning NFL champions Laois in the opening round of Leinster in 1986 on their home patch in Aughrim. An unsavoury occasion as the historians recall it.
Currently their goalkeeper, I think his name is Jackson, is phenomenal from dead balls outside the 45.
We beat them in the qualifiers in 19 after a struggle. Aughrim is a tough spot to go to in every sense.
In a former life, I used to drink down in McCreas and our club would get the odd practice match off them. But by God you’d nearly bring the boxing gloves with the hurl to play them. Just stone mad on the pitch (and sidelines)
Just read a recent article on this match on the Laois today website that had this wonderful prose:
Unsurprisingly it holds a notorious place in the county’s sporting history, magnified, as it is, by the fact that it came so soon after Laois had celebrated so joyously in Croke Park. It was akin to winning the lotto only for the arse to fall out of your trousers
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Yeah the mountains don’t just divide the county, they takes up most of it - the Wicklow Mountains aren’t a ridge like, say, the Galtees, they are a big featureless, upland bog. By area most of the county is empty.
@Pikeman @McGeady1916 and myself had the pleasure of one of the McCreas teaching us Irish for years. I’d have learned more Irish in Fiji than from him.
Got to the 4th round of the qualifiers under Micko in 2009 scalping Down, Fermanagh and Cavan en route.
A lot of them would support Wexford in the hurling too. They usually contribute quite well to the Wicklow hurling team though, certainly not one of the main underachievers in Wicklow GAA. Wicklow won 4 games in the Leinster minor football championship this year but were blown away then by Kildare in the semi-final.
There’s simply no argument they are the worst gaa county in the country. They’ve never even won a Nicky rackard or one of them like the likes of Carlow. Kildare are the worst underachievers I’d say.
Mayo says hello
Anticipation is off the charts for this weekend. Westmeath rolling into the town. A grain of rice tips the scale. We’ll fucking do em.
To be fair to Antrim they’ve played and lost 2 All Ireland hurling finals and 2 All Ireland football finals. They’ve been in one club football final and six club hurling finals winning one. In hurling they are hobbled by geography. Belfast is historically a soccer town, like Derry. I wouldn’t say crossing Belfast with your GAA gear bag on the back seat would have been the smartest move and they lost a generation of young men in nationalist areas to the national struggle and politics in general. I wouldn’t be too down on them.
As regards Wicklow apart from Bray and Greystones, Arklow and Wicklow town bring nothing to the party. I’m not sure what the issues are there?
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When was the last time they reached an All-Ireland football final or won Ulster?
They reached one Ulster final in 2009, the previous one they reached was 1970.
Open to correction but did St. Gall’s not have a good few blow ins in 2010?
The two All-Ireland hurling finals Antrim reached were purely a function of them being given a bye to the semi-final and catching an overconfident Leinster team on the hop. In the two finals they did reach they were hopelessly out of their depth. In 1989 the truth is they were probably the eighth or ninth best team in the country, at best. Was a similar story when they caught Wexford on the hop in an under-21 semi-final in 2013. They were pulverised in the final.
Being reasonably competitive in club hurling is really the only contribution of much note the county has made in living memory.
Most places of any decent size on this island are “soccer towns” and other counties “lost a generation” to The Movement™. Didn’t stop those other counties reaching or winning All-Ireland finals while the Troubles were still going on. And the Troubles came to an end a quarter of a century ago. These are not excuses.
Antrim has massive advantages lots of other counties don’t have and they make no use of them.