No mate, it’s quite simple. I used the AFL Grand Final example as it is the no. 1 in Victoria pre Federation.
The GGA should have the same cultural resonance, it doesn’t.
As for 2%, did you do maths in school? The population of the island is 7m.
The Irish rugby team are the most popular team on the island.
For the purpose of this debate, using as it is RTE viewing figures, its just the 26 counties population. Happy to help you there.
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Of no interest to me. That said it’s telling that the core of the Dublin GGA team for a decade went to fee paying rugby schools and were B/C players at best.
But the professional game has destroyed the grassroots. What good is it having paddy bandwagon slugging pints of piss in a plastic cup cheering on the goys or singing about a field in galway?
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B/C at rugby? I’d hope so - that they weren’t eating creatine at 13
Partitionist.
There is nothing special about the attendances in international terms. It’s a cheap event. English football league attendances are significantly more impressive.
Not relevant to the debate at hand.
Its an indicator of the popularity of the sport. Success is driving a lot of it. There was always a strong core of rugby support in ireland but like everything in ireland success is a bandwagon. I dont see the wheels falling off it anytime soon, the irfu have done a steller job but hurling and football are far more popular basing it off tv ratings is ridiculous
The core rugby grassroots KPIs have gone up in the last two decades.
It is not relevant to this discussion though. I am not saying rugby is more popular than association football or the GGA.
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We’ll disagree on the relevance, you can have all the KPIs you want but grassroots is struggling big time. Savage drop off of players transitioning to play adult. Less teams and levels, lack of referees etc.
If it was all island viewing figures for these events I am sure the Al-Ireland football final would still be the most watched sports event but the Fifa World Cup games would leapfrog all rugby games and the hurling in terms of viewing numbers, with soccer having a far bigger share of the TV market in the 6 counties than rugby or hurling. However that is merely speculation on my part, we must deal with the facts here as presented which show the All-Ireland football final as the most watched sports event in the 26 counties.
Would you have many examples where 2% of a country’s population attend a single ticketed sports event elsewhere in the world?
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Nah. Perhaps if a Nordie team gets to the final.
The BARB Sky Sports figures for NI are terrible for the GGA, hence why it’s been dropped and nobody will pick it up.
It isn’t 2% of the population so what point are you trying to draw here?
have you anything to back that up, where did you get the BBC & ITV figures?
It was in a table posted higher up there somewhere, scroll up and you will see it. These are the facts as presented, it’s all we have to deal with until we get something else, and unfortunately anecdotes don’t count here.
you need to change your wording then mate
we must deal with the facts here as presented which show the All-Ireland football final as the most watched sports event in the 26 counties. on RTE
But that would be excluding the Virgin Media figures for no good reason, we must be thorough. We cannot be misleading on the Internet.
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The core? I dont think so. Jack McCaffrey went to Belvo and they tried to make him play rugby and he told them to go fuck themselves. Mannion was at a private school CUS i think but didnt play either afaik. McAuley was at Terenure. He was a basketballer. Murchan did play junior cup with Belvo but gave it up after that because he wanted a sporting career that lasted into his 20s. I dont think there was anymore.
Philly didnt go to school at all.
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He was a tubby young fella so they told him to try the rubby instead