For men. 13. Six football and seven hurling.
Apology accepted
Imagine if youâd left it though, it would have been perfect. Because I mean, football is a global game, every fucker has played it.
Every day is a school day though. Come back stronger.
@caoimhaoin still hasnât found a professional player that started at 13⌠Thereâs surely one, law of averages says soâŚAs you say, itâs the only truly world game and the one we can best use to adjudge his claim.
You are talking about something completely different
I am not. I am talking about how Brolly espouses rugby as everything GAA is not and rugby destroyed its clubs deliberately to create 4 super clubs.
Half the links you posted were opinion pieces. As I said, Iâve read it all before. Gerry Thornley after Munster were beaten in round 1 of the 2005/06 season by Sale, âend of the golden period for Irish rugby in Europeâ blah blah blah.
How are the Irish teams getting on this year?
Hereâs some facts, go take a look at the IRFU Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet. They have big cash reserves and land banks all over the country. They are profitable.
Blackrock RFC are still going 3 years later and if I didnât know any better Cuala arenât playing there. So go figure.
Wowsers Crokes and Cuala have lots of teams in South Dublin.
Compare the schools in the area. There is one proper GGA school and it has 450 students. Most traditional GGA schools have big soccer teams now.
Club wise in the AIL or recently in the AIL you have Blackrock, Seapoint, Railway Union, Monkstown FC, Wanderers, Lansdowne, Wesley, Bective, Old Belvedere and probably more Iâm forgetting.
Crokes and Cualaâs catchment is essentially Dublin 4 to Shankhill. Two big clubs covering hundreds of thousands of people.
You are basically comparing 2 big clubs versus a diverse range of clubs and schools playing the game. 8000 members in a population centre of a few hundred K is not that big a deal.
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Oh dear, you mean 245 senior members. Blackrock do not include Minis and Youths as members. You also realise there is a school down the road from there with a couple of thousand kids where rugby is the absolute number 1 with parents and past pupils pumping money into it, most of whom have little to do with the club. It might not be a âmembershipâ number which the GGA crave, but anyone from the area knows what is number 1.
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Oh dear 
The GGA. Again. Cringe.
Post up how many kid members they have so.
Blackrock has 1000 or so pupils. Not a couple of thousand. We can open up the can of worms of Blackrock and schools rugby if you like.
Were Blackrock students the lads who kicked another rugby school boy to death?
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Last point is an abomination
Yes they do have around that number.
There is a Junior School and a Senior School. Within the Junior School they include 1st years. There are around 200 per year group in the secondary school.
Itâs quite funny how you think the GGA is âoh dearâ but now youâve brought up Annabels as your argument is completely useless. Do you think I give a shit about defending that schoolâs name or something?
You seem to think this channel of Dublin we are talking about comes down to Cuala/Kilmacud Crokes versus Blackrock Rugby Club. Blackrock Rugby Club is a small slice of rugby in the area we are talking about but you are obsessed over it, for some bizarre reason.
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Not obsessed at all. Just pointing out that GAA in Dublin has made massive inroads into the âaffluentâ
suburbs that were once all rugby. It irks people like you who call it the GGA. Those clubs now dwarf rugby clubs and continue to grow.
For what itâs worth I think they are too big. Serves no benefit for lots of reasons.
Adult rugby outside professional level has been allowed to die to create an elite level. People attending Ireland international games are corporate entertainment fans to a very large extent.
Anyway we have been down this road so will leave it at that.
Theyâve made average inroads and what you forget is that rugby has grown in the area as well, mini rugby has grown hugely in the area as well. Mini rugby is what has saved Blackrock RFC.
There has been GGA in the area we are talking about since the suburban housing estates sprang up in Stillorgan, Blackrock, Clonskeagh, Killiney et cetera in the 50s and 60s. The GGA were pushing their game in the rugby schools in the 70s. It isnât some new phenom. Cuala/Crokes have been bigger clubs than Blackrock RFC for a long time.
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Its a farce the GAA has allowed 1 or 2 clubs become super clubs and has not grown the game properly by creating clubs if needed.
Crokes is not something to be holding up as a sign of success, in fact it shows the GAAâs dreadful strategic skills once again. Tgere are towns and areas around Ireland with 3 senior clubs with smaller populations than Kilmacud. To use it as a badge of honour for the GAA is laughable.
Itâs hard to believe how little coverage it gets in Australia. They couldnât care less about it.
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Its like 10 years of TFK rolled into 100 posts.
All it needs is @thedancingbaby to throw in a winning tip and itâs done.
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How many professional football players started playing the game at 13?
How many Inter-county hurlers started playing the game at 13?
Thank you.
Iâm not sure the GAA should be trying to take high moral ground when it comes to violence surely?
@Tim_Riggins kicking @TheUlteriorMotive up and down the forum here. When you have to resort to a fifteen year old crime to try and backstop your position itâs time to back off and put the phone down.
Only a fool would deny that rugby is improbably well organised in this country and has developed a very successful template and is making inroads into GAA heartlands up and down the country. You donât have to like rugby to recognise that.
The 1000s of kids playing GAA in South Dublin, while welcome, is an equivalent to the soccer Mom phenomenon in the US, parents who wonât let their kids play a sport as rough as rugby or mix with the ruffians that play soccer.
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Wasnât ever really that popular at grassroots level.
Deciding that your bread and butter competition would become an unwieldy cross timezones mess didnât help after the buzz they did get in 2003.