Who are the worst GAA bandwagon fans

[anon95599269]

Sunny side up for the GAA majority

There was a great Fast Show sketch satirising one of the Johnny Come Lately English soccer supporters who battened on to the game when it became socially acceptable in the aftermath of Euro '96. Trying to bond with a couple of proletarians in a pub, our hero informed them that he was an Arsenal fan. “I used to be a Spurs fan,” he revealed, “but they didn’t win enough so I switched to Arsenal instead.”

It is an article of faith that no such followers inhabit the GAA. We are assured ad nauseam that your average follower of Gaelic football and hurling is a uniquely fanatical individual, one whose love for his county has been inherited from the generations which came before him and will never die.

Unfortunately, there’s evidence that this isn’t exactly true. In fact, the GAA’s crowds, impressive though they are, seem to contain a huge amount of sunshine supporters. In his report to Congress, the Association’s financial director Tom Ryan pointed out that 23 per cent of receipts from the 2007 championships came from just six games played in August and September. Given that there were 91 matches played in the championships, this indicates that many fans only tog out on the very biggest occasions.

The huge crowds at the business end of the season make overall championship attendances look very impressive indeed. The average championship crowd of 19,274 in 2007 would place the competition tenth among sports leagues worldwide, just ahead of the Japanese soccer league and just behind French soccer’s Ligue 1. It’s an astoundingly impressive statistic.

And also an essentially false one. Here’s the rub. Factor in national league attendances and the overall picture would be much less impressive. And, to be fair, you would have to factor in national league attendances if you were to get a true picture of the devotion of GAA fans.

There is, after all, no sporting association in the world which would regard as true fans those who attend, at most, four or five games a season. Those Japanese and French soccer supporters are turning out most weeks of the year.

There have been some pitiful attendances this year in the championships. (Fermanagh’s 14,500 gate against Monaghan bucked the trend but then the Lakelanders are rivalled only by Leitrim for loyalty).

The 1,700 who went to the Limerick-Tipperary football match in Fermoy last week equates to about eight people per club in those counties. Just 2,196 souls troubled themselves with the Waterford-Clare game in Ennis but perhaps worst of all was the 3,900 crowd at the Dublin-Westmeath, Offaly-Laois double-header in O’Moore Park.

After all, if you were a 30-year-old Offaly fan, you’d have seen the hurlers win three All-Irelands and reach another three finals. Croke Park would have been packed on those days with spectators swearing eternal loyalty to the Faithful County, the streets clogged on homecoming nights. Yet, only eight years after their last All-Ireland final appearance, Offaly can’t muster more than a handful of those followers.

Pointing out that Offaly are currently in decline or that Tipperary footballers were never great anyway merely allies you with our friend from the Fast Show.

You’d wonder if all the hyped up match-day behaviour of the jester’s hat-wearing, Bulmers-swigging, flag-waving hordes who attend the big championship matches has its roots in a suspicion of their own phoniness. Because going to four matches a year is not the stuff of fanatical supporters.

Even Cork’s famous hurling fans don’t make it to all the games. There might have been 36,252 spectators at the Munster semi-final against Waterford last year but Cork and Tipp between them mustered 12,833 for an important qualifier, also in Thurles. Not a bad crowd but more evidence that the fans who make all of the matches are outnumbered by those who pick and choose.

The core GAA audience is pretty much what it always has been. Onto the bandwagon have come people for whom an All-Ireland semi-final or final is just another day out, another version of Witnness or Slane Castle.

Last week Sunshine Boy was a Manchester United fan. This week it’s Munster rugby. In the summer, he’ll be a GAA man. But not until then.

The National League? The qualifiers? Never heard of them.

[Bandage]

I think that article was in The Sunday Independent the other day. I think it’s fair to say that the ‘bandwagon’ phenomenon affects Irish sport and culture generally and not just GAA supporters. In my not very humble at all opinion, there’s a huge majority in the country who are event junkies and who make it their business to be seen at whatever it is that’s hip and happening at that particular time. It can vary from rugby to soccer to GAA to something else entirely like a concert for example.

It’s the biggest supported teams that get the most grief about the bandwagon element that follows them but, in fairness, given the relative numbers of supporters involved it’s natural that they have the largest number of bandwagoners too. So I’d argue that while there’s always going to be cases of Dublin GAA supporters who have never set foot in Parnell Park or Munster rugby followers who don’t really know what the Magner’s League is, there’s equally a significant bandwagon element to other teams but just not on the same scale numbers-wise.

For example, I often hear people from outside Wexford praising the great support we have and how we always support the team no matter what. This is the same support that stayed away from the Leinster Hurling semi-final against Kilkenny in 2004 in massive numbers because they thought we’d get hammered but returned en masse in a 44,000 crowd for the Leinster Final after we beat them.

Then there’s our footballers whose levels of support is nothing short of sickening. Mac listed out just a selection of the cracking victories they’ve provided us with over the past 5 or 6 years since coming from the lower depths of the inter-county scene and still our great supporters can barely be bothered to get off their arses to support them. Even on Sunday, we were coming into the game off the back of an unbeaten league campaign and we were playing in fooking Carlow, which is a bordering county, and we were hugely outnumbered in a crowd of 10,000, probably only providing about 25% of the attendance. That’s fooking shocking. People often complain about ticket prices in GAA but you would have paid €60 minimum for a ticket to that insipid Ireland-Serbia friendly the other week and I paid €15 into Dr Cullen Park on Sunday for one of the best games I’ll ever witness.

In short, I believe a huge proportion of Irish people are gombeen fooking clowns who decide to go to events based on what’s hyped up or perceived to be cool at the time. Wait until U2 announce another run of nights in Croke Park in a few years and you’ll have geebags who’ve never heard of The Joshua Tree frantically trying to get tickets and whining when they can’t.

G’wan Wexford!

[anon95599269]

[quote=“Bandage”]I think that article was in The Sunday Independent the other day. I think it’s fair to say that the ‘bandwagon’ phenomenon affects Irish sport and culture generally and not just GAA supporters. In my not very humble at all opinion, there’s a huge majority in the country who are event junkies and who make it their business to be seen at whatever it is that’s hip and happening at that particular time. It can vary from rugby to soccer to GAA to something else entirely like a concert for example.

It’s the biggest supported teams that get the most grief about the bandwagon element that follows them but, in fairness, given the relative numbers of supporters involved it’s natural that they have the largest number of bandwagoners too. So I’d argue that while there’s always going to be cases of Dublin GAA supporters who have never set foot in Parnell Park or Munster rugby followers who don’t really know what the Magner’s League is, there’s equally a significant bandwagon element to other teams but just not on the same scale numbers-wise.

For example, I often hear people from outside Wexford praising the great support we have and how we always support the team no matter what. This is the same support that stayed away from the Leinster Hurling semi-final against Kilkenny in 2004 in massive numbers because they thought we’d get hammered but returned en masse in a 44,000 crowd for the Leinster Final after we beat them.

Then there’s our footballers whose levels of support is nothing short of sickening. Mac listed out just a selection of the cracking victories they’ve provided us with over the past 5 or 6 years since coming from the lower depths of the inter-county scene and still our great supporters can barely be bothered to get off their arses to support them. Even on Sunday, we were coming into the game off the back of an unbeaten league campaign and we were playing in fooking Carlow, which is a bordering county, and we were hugely outnumbered in a crowd of 10,000, probably only providing about 25% of the attendance. That’s fooking shocking. People often complain about ticket prices in GAA but you would have paid 60 minimum for a ticket to that insipid Ireland-Serbia friendly the other week and I paid 15 into Dr Cullen Park on Sunday for one of the best games I’ll ever witness.

In short, I believe a huge proportion of Irish people are gombeen fooking clowns who decide to go to events based on what’s hyped up or perceived to be cool at the time. Wait until U2 announce another run of nights in Croke Park in a few years and you’ll have geebags who’ve never heard of The Joshua Tree frantically trying to get tickets and whining when they can’t.

G’wan Wexford![/quote]

good points bandage- the Dublin fans get picked out for particular attention but hasnt Parnell park being full for all league games, still a bad turnout for the hurling -

[Mac]

[quote=“Bandage”]I think that article was in The Sunday Independent the other day. I think it’s fair to say that the ‘bandwagon’ phenomenon affects Irish sport and culture generally and not just GAA supporters. In my not very humble at all opinion, there’s a huge majority in the country who are event junkies and who make it their business to be seen at whatever it is that’s hip and happening at that particular time. It can vary from rugby to soccer to GAA to something else entirely like a concert for example.

It’s the biggest supported teams that get the most grief about the bandwagon element that follows them but, in fairness, given the relative numbers of supporters involved it’s natural that they have the largest number of bandwagoners too. So I’d argue that while there’s always going to be cases of Dublin GAA supporters who have never set foot in Parnell Park or Munster rugby followers who don’t really know what the Magner’s League is, there’s equally a significant bandwagon element to other teams but just not on the same scale numbers-wise.

For example, I often hear people from outside Wexford praising the great support we have and how we always support the team no matter what. This is the same support that stayed away from the Leinster Hurling semi-final against Kilkenny in 2004 in massive numbers because they thought we’d get hammered but returned en masse in a 44,000 crowd for the Leinster Final after we beat them.

Then there’s our footballers whose levels of support is nothing short of sickening. Mac listed out just a selection of the cracking victories they’ve provided us with over the past 5 or 6 years since coming from the lower depths of the inter-county scene and still our great supporters can barely be bothered to get off their arses to support them. Even on Sunday, we were coming into the game off the back of an unbeaten league campaign and we were playing in fooking Carlow, which is a bordering county, and we were hugely outnumbered in a crowd of 10,000, probably only providing about 25% of the attendance. That’s fooking shocking. People often complain about ticket prices in GAA but you would have paid 60 minimum for a ticket to that insipid Ireland-Serbia friendly the other week and I paid 15 into Dr Cullen Park on Sunday for one of the best games I’ll ever witness.

In short, I believe a huge proportion of Irish people are gombeen fooking clowns who decide to go to events based on what’s hyped up or perceived to be cool at the time. Wait until U2 announce another run of nights in Croke Park in a few years and you’ll have geebags who’ve never heard of The Joshua Tree frantically trying to get tickets and whining when they can’t.

G’wan Wexford![/quote]

Strange comment about the concert phemnomenon Bandage, never thought of that one before. But having been at 2 of the Springsteen gigs I can actually remember people who went and stood with their backs to the stage chatting to their mates for the whole gig.

Wexford Football supporters would be a pet hate of mine but like I said, the proper supporters have seen both the good and the bad days and days like Sunday make it all worthwhile. As the Leinster semi in 2004 did.

[Bandage]

ncc, that’s the point I was making about the likes of Dublin - they’ll sell out Parnell Park for league games with their core support but then their support goes from those 10,000 to say 50,000 for the championship, as opposed to other counties who might be going from a league support of say 2,000 to a championship support of 8,000 or something. There’s bandwagoners in both sets of support but, given the sheer numbers involved, the Dublin element gets highlighted more because it’s more easily apparent. I suppose there’s also the Hill 16 factor and lads go up there with preconceived ideas about how they have to act hard and intimidate the boggers from down the country and a lot of them just look like idiots. I recall a guy in his Manchester United jersey firing down firecrackers at Redmond Barry when he was taking a penalty at the Hill 16 end against Dublin in 2005. Arsehole.

Mac, I was always of the opinion that the concert bandwagon phenomenon exists too. It was cringe in one of my old workplaces seeing the clowns who were going off to see U2 that time a few years ago. Then you get newer bands who the music press dub as cool and so loads of gimps make it their business to be seen at their concerts despite not having a notion about the music - I’ve witnessed it with the likes of Arcade Fire and The Arctic Monkeys over the past couple of years.

[Gman]

in fairness, as Bandage points out, I also think Wexford has a large bandwagon support. I remember games like Limerick in 01, first round against KK in 96, KK in 04, Tipp last year, every football game where we have been hugely outnumbered, but generally after one of these big wins int he hurling, you have everyone back looking for tickets again.

The support for Wexford footballers is absolutely pathetic. They deserve far better. Forde said afterwards how the crowd really got them going, and I was chatting to 2 of the team after and they were saying how they were really lifted by the crowd in the last 5 minutes. In fairness to those there, we did make a good bit of noise. I was in the stand at the town end, and the chanting was loud there, and I could see a big section just to the Dublin side of the main terrace accross the way where there was a good few Wexicans too. I suppose the lads on the team are used to having no one at their games, and hearing that does lift them, but fook sake, surely we can get more then 3,000 to Carlow on a lovely summers bank holiday afternoon.

[Rocko]

It’s all relative too compared to other sports. For the population we have there’s a very healthy attendance at most GAA games.

There’s a definite bandwagon culture in this country but the GAA doesn’t suffer from it any worse than other sports.

[anon95599269]

[quote=“therock67”]It’s all relative too compared to other sports. For the population we have there’s a very healthy attendance at most GAA games.

There’s a definite bandwagon culture in this country but the GAA doesn’t suffer from it any worse than other sports.[/quote]

one statistic I find shocking is that 80000 would watch the footballers in Croker but only 310 would watch the hurlers in the championship - what a huge difference

[Bandage]

Just thought I’d bump this ahead of the All Ireland finals. News reports have been full of poor unfortunates with their houses painted in their county colours and bunting and flags all over the place who simply can’t get tickets. You’d wonder if they made it to any National League games earlier this year.

[dancarter]

Surprisingly NCC has a keen enough interest in the old GGA it appears.

Some good posts here, and I agree with the opionions mainly but IMHO there is one thing worse than the bandwagoners, and thats the bandwagons snobs who look down there noses at fans who only go to the big games.

If your a real fan youl get a ticket end of. I have never failed to get a ticket for any match I really wanted to go to.

[anon95599269]

i hope all the waterford fans that were at the antrim game get sorted anyway

bird i work with never mentioned waterford or hurling all summer- at 15.00 on friday she sent a mail to the company saying that the two people who were going to get tickets for her had let her down & had anyone any spares - that kind of bandwagon jumping pisses me off

[Mark_Renton]

About a thousand Clare fans in Thurles yesterday. About 5k in Limerick for the Cork match and it right on their door step. A horrible shower of cunts with no pride in their county.

[Tassotti]

Cork without a shadow of a doubt, especially the hurling

[JamesBrown]

Dublin fans… Don’t have clue about the game.