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Post by Ard Mhacha on May 31, 2015 23:13:41 GMT
Sooner or later they will have to combine counties to give a population of 120k or 130k to pick from. Longford have 40k. Cavan and Monaghan last week have populations of 70k and 60k. In other words, Cavan and Monaghan have the same population as Kerry. And eventually, they will have to split up Dublin. County borders redrawn so that everyone has the same population? Well, if there is a bit of gerrymandering, maybe we could pinch Conor McManus as I don't think them Tyrone boys would line out in orange. Not that they would get on our team anyway
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Post by ballynamona on Jun 1, 2015 10:52:36 GMT
I could only watch that game today for 20 minutes. I dont think it makes any difference where the dubs play so long as their opposition is the longfords and the wicklows of this world. Some class scoring in the first 20 though, the dubs are looking very slick. Thats not the point, this game was a non event for everyone in Croker today. The Dubs would beat a combined rest of Leinster team by a comfortable 10 points plus. Agree, the Dubs look slick, Brian Fenton looks very comfortable at midfield on the ball. You still have the suspicion, with the injury to O'Gara, that Dublin don't have a blue chip ball winner on the fullforward line. Their defence won't be tested in Leinster. They will arrive soft for a quarter final in August. Yes, and how the Connacht championship plays out could be very interesting. Roscommon might manage to beat Mayo, which would leave Mayo one game away from a QF with Dublin, undoubtedly the best time to play them. Conjecture now, but could happen.
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Post by glengael on Jun 1, 2015 11:27:30 GMT
How come there was no change with the all blue colour clash yesterday?
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Post by jackiel on Jun 1, 2015 11:44:04 GMT
A couple of the Dublin players commented about the colour clash alright, said that in the sun it was difficult to distinguish, not that it made a bit of difference. It really was a David & Goliath situation yesterday, all I can say is roll on August when the real football will be played.
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kot
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Post by kot on Jun 1, 2015 14:50:13 GMT
That was tough to watch. Not the football played by any means, the dubs were very aesthetically pleasing but like has been said ad nauseam already, what is the benefit to either Dublin or Longford on a 27 point beating to be dished out to 30% full stadium.
Thought Marty Clarke's suggestion of a revamp was interesting to go down the Aussie rules route to keep it competitive and give all teams plenty of games.
Tipp looking very very dangerous. We could get caught on the hop unless fully tuned in.
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Post by Mickmack on Jun 1, 2015 16:40:54 GMT
Eugene McGee: People who run the GAA need to examine their consciences after results like these
Eugene McGee
There was no Senior Football Championship game played in Croke Park yesterday.
Instead we got the sort of game that in years gone by would have been played on a Sunday evening to raise finds for a church renovation fund, where the match itself was irrelevant once the money on the gate had been collected.
Yesterday, the Leinster Council also collected their money.
But we have often been told that given the costs associated with big games at Croke Park, the break-even attendance for staging matches at the ground is around 30,000, and the attendance yesterday was a bit over 33,000, so takings will hardly be worth a lot to the provincial council.
The game yesterday will cost a lot more in terms of the damage such mismatches do to the image of Leinster football.
It was a humiliating experience for Longford football. Some GAA people in the county will chastise me for writing this but any thinking person in the county and anyone who plays football in county Longford knows this is the truth.
Ridiculous
This is no fault of the young men who play the game in Longford - they did their very best yesterday against ridiculous odds, and fair minded people in the county will not blame any player.
Quite simply the odds are just stacked too high against counties like Longford which has the second smallest population in Ireland after Leitrim.
Large populations in counties like Dublin, Kerry, Mayo, Cork, Donegal, Meath or Kildare have everything going for them because more bodies means more potential county footballers.
Also, large populations attract more sponsorship and therefore more money available to promote the game.
In recent years, as the money poured into those counties the gap between them and the weaker counties has got wider and wider, although the failure of Meath and Kildare to match the others is the exception.
The other big factor in yesterday's game was the absence for the first time in 15 years of the iconic Paul Barden, who retired last year.
Without such a great player, and also goalkeeper Damien Sheridan, a weak county like Longford is left bereft of inspiration and leadership, and Dublin ruthlessly exploited that.
For Jim Gavin, this was not even a serious A v B training session and he learned very little from the game.
Ciaran Kilkenny furthered his chances of being the starting centre-forward this year and Dean Rock improved his hopes of being a first 15 player.
As a team it looked at times as if Dublin were going to introduce more wing play through long, well-directed kick-passes but it was so easy to do that yesterday that further proof will be necessary.
This game was devoid of physical contact, apart from a few accidental collisions.
Some will wonder why Longford did not play a packed defence and try to keep the scoreline down but that is nonsense.
Longford do not have enough players good enough or fit enough to play that game; if they had played 13 men in defence, their meagre scoring tally of 0-10 yesterday would have been even less. The strength of panels is what really crucifies weaker, smaller counties and this was brutally exposed when we read the names of the subs used by Dublin: Alan Brogan, Paddy Andrews and Michael Daragh Macauley.
We have to go back to 1960 in Mullingar for a football massacre like this involving Longford and Dublin, when the Dubs scored 10-13 to Longford's 3-8 on a day when Johnny Joyce scored 5-3 .
This means yesterday's result was, by one point, even worse than that.
Consciences
Longford football will recover from yesterday, they always do. But people who run the GAA at provincial level in Leinster and Munster really should examine their consciences about results like this one and the defeat of Waterford by over 20 points as well.
How long more before GAA administrators bite the bullet and stop this ridiculous carry-on?
We can't continue the ludicrous concept in the GAA that every county has a chance of winning the Sam Maguire Cup or even a provincial championship.
Indo Sport
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Post by onlykerry on Jun 1, 2015 16:45:39 GMT
Sad fact is only a small handful of teams start the season with any real hope of winning the All Ireland and no amount of re-jigging the format will magically improve the situation. Hurling has grasped this by limiting the number of teams in the top tier championship and having secondary competitions. Football does not want to do the same for some strange reason and persists on playing dead rubbers time and again and then wringing their collective hands when drubbings are dished out. Remember Miltown Malbay when the four in a row team were on a roll. That said I firmly believe any county is capable of winning the AI but they must have a strong will to do so and build from the ground up for many years - very few are willing to do this and HQ needs to devise a strategy to encourage more to do so. Financial support for weaker counties and in particular those that are making attempts to develop is the key. All advertising revenue should be centralised and distributed in a manner that encourages and rewards endeavour and success.
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Post by ballynamona on Jun 1, 2015 17:21:33 GMT
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Post by MrRasherstoyou on Jun 2, 2015 18:37:05 GMT
I see the campaign continues unabated. When Kerry were regularly beating teams by 20 point s and more in the 1970s and 1980s, it was seen as being a result of them being a brilliant team, not a major crisis threatening the future of the GAA.
Kerry and Tyrone's carving up of 8 All-Is from the last decade was never even remotely viewed as an issue to anyone here, yet suddenly after 4 different winners in the last 5 years the GAA is in some sort of meltdown? Truly some tabloid level nonsense being uttered. Strangely though, it all seems to have a tellingly particular slant.............. Curiouser and curiouser. If only inspector Morse were still around.
People like me have been campaigning for a change in how the championship is structured for 20 years or more. That was, is, and will continue to be the issue here. The rest is smoke, mirrors, red-herrings and people getting their peculiar kicks.
And Eugene McGee has had finer moments. Did he write like this about Longford's 17 point hammering last year, against a weaker team? What's hos view on all the other sports that have a few very strong teams and lots of much weaker ones, has it ever concerned him much? Was he ever up in arms over Kerry & Tyrone's dominance in the last decade, in contrast to the much more interesting spread of winners so far this decade?
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dano
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Post by dano on Jun 2, 2015 19:45:53 GMT
I couldn't agree more Rashers. It's not Dublin's fault if Longford are so beatable, nor is it Kerry's( or Tipperary's for that matter) that Waterford are. I don't actually understand where any of the ones campaigning for change want. Should the world cup, for example, be reformatted so that largely populated countries don't have as good a chance? And that Kerry team of the 1980s were brilliant, so were the Dubs btw. Maybe they should do a trial run some year with 4 groups of 8 with certain teams becoming of another province, but I guarantee it'll be the same 8 as always at the business end.
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Joxer
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Post by Joxer on Jun 2, 2015 19:46:53 GMT
I do think Rashers Tierney esq, the right honourable member from Ballymun and its environs, has made some very telling and entirely correct points. That Leinster is a weak provincial championship currently is in no way attributable to the brilliance of Dublin but is entirely attributable to the failure of other counties , the likes of Kildare, Offaly, Meath & Laois in particular to get their internal structures right and develop strong competitive teams at all levels. No, they will not be winning All-Irelands straight away if they were to get that right but being competitive has to be the first step. Dividing up Dublin is a hoary old chestnut that raises its head every time Dublin are successful. If its any consulation Rashers, its unlikely to be heard much later this year when we knock seven shades of whatsit out of ye.....
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Post by MrRasherstoyou on Jun 2, 2015 20:52:27 GMT
I do think Rashers Tierney esq, the right honourable member from Ballymun and its environs, has made some very telling and entirely correct points. That Leinster is a weak provincial championship currently is in no way attributable to the brilliance of Dublin but is entirely attributable to the failure of other counties , the likes of Kildare, Offaly, Meath & Laois in particular to get their internal structures right and develop strong competitive teams at all levels. No, they will not be winning All-Irelands straight away if they were to get that right but being competitive has to be the first step. Dividing up Dublin is a hoary old chestnut that raises its head every time Dublin are successful. If its any consulation Rashers, its unlikely to be heard much later this year when we knock seven shades of whatsit out of ye..... If Donegal hadn't done the job last year Kerry would have stuck 6 goals past us. Leinster teams didn't make an All-I final between 2001 and 2011. Can't recall much of a campaign to save Leinster from these quarters then. What we need is a Love Leinster (and the poor Dublin hurlers!) Parade in Killarney.
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Post by southward on Jun 2, 2015 20:58:54 GMT
"Large populations in counties like Dublin, Kerry, Mayo, Cork, Donegal, Meath or Kildare have everything going for them because more bodies means more potential county footballers."
McGee is talking through his h*le here. In a league table of County populations, as per 2011 census, Donegal comes in at 12th, Kerry 14th and Mayo 17th.
Even in Munster, Kerry has a smaller population that Cork, Limerick and Tipperary.
Kilkenny, the perennial hurling champs, are down at 21st. Enough said.
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Post by Mickmack on Jun 2, 2015 21:50:58 GMT
It wasn't until the 50s when Dublin started playing native born Dubliners that football took root, and this was mainly due to the great Vincents team. Prior to that Dublin fielded lots of guards up from the Country etc. I think it was in 1943 final that 3 of the 4 midfielders were from Dingle.
Jimmy Keaveney described playing for Dublin in the 60s .... almost embarrassing to be seen playing GAA.
The 70s changed things dramatically but the Dublin County Board were still an amateurish set up. While Kerry were having steak after training (believed to be the ideal thing at the time), the Dubs had to have sprints at the end of training to win a bottle of milk to drink. There wasn't a bottle for everyone.
Dublins blue wave policy that started about fifteen years ago saw Dublin finally begin to tap into its vast potential.
The sheer weight of numbers and resources will mean, in my opinion, that Dublin will never again go through a valley period like all counties will , even the Kilkenny hurlers.
I don't think people based outside of Dublin have any clue of the scale and potential of Dublin in the next ten years and beyond.
In a nutshell, it wasn't till this millennium that Dublin got its act together. Drawing comparisons with anything before that is meaningless and ridiculous.
In my opinion.
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Post by veteran on Jun 2, 2015 21:51:46 GMT
I suppose it is due to the proliferation of media outlets, national and local, print and electronic, that there has been an exponential increase in nonsense propagated on various topics , both within and without sport. The latest hot topic seems to be the deteriorating competitive nature of GAA sport- too many weak teams, not enough teams with a realistic chance of outright victory etc.
In the major international field games- rugby and soccer- in all their tournaments- nobody suggests that all the participating teams should have an equal chance of ultimate glory. It is accepted, and has always been so, that the majority of the competing teams are no more than appetisers for the major contenders. For example, last Autumn I could have told anybody who cared to listen that Barcelona/Bayern Munich , for example,would be likely European champions come June and that conversely the club representing the League of Ireland would be no more than a limb loosener for the stronger teams. In the same vein, New Zealand would be a strong fancy for the Rugby world cup whereas Georgia will be brought along as fodder. That is the wicked way of the wicked world.
Yet, some folk tell us, that in the GAA utopia most ,if not all participants, should be equal in the eyes of Sam. How deluded can some people be.
It was ever thus that the strong prevail. How does one get strong? You organise shrewdly and industriously. Get into the schools and clubs at underage level. That is the starting block. As my friends the Jesuits might say, give me the boy and I will give you the man, or words to that effect. Tradition has to start somewhere. Decades ago, who would have predicted that Tyrone would become such a power. How did they do it? I imagine they took the advice of our Jesuit friends.
The most significant result in football in recent times was achieved last Sunday. No, it wasn't the Longford massacre. It was Tipperary's shredding of Waterford. Not so long ago, Waterford was as likely to defeat Tipperary as the other way round. Pummeling Waterford was the brief of Kerry and Cork. The reason for the transformation? Start with the small boys and develop. Remember our friend the Jesuit once more.
Rather than crying into their porridge and looking for this , that and the other , let counties like Longford and Waterford look towards Tipperary for the recipe. And remember this Tipperary underage football success was achieved in a county where hurling is preeminent. We now have an intriguing situation where Tipperary, by dint of hard work, can engender a certain nervousness in the followers of the All-Ireland champions as we approach the 14/06/2015.
I weep when I see people call for a second tier championship. Did we not have the Tommy Murphy cup not so long ago. A lot of the "weaker" counties refused to participate. Why? Was it beneath them ? An old friend of mine, Thomas Hardy, was right when he said "there's so quare as folk".
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Post by MrRasherstoyou on Jun 2, 2015 23:15:13 GMT
Ohhh the feeeeeeeear!! God save s us all and the GAA from this impending doom and tyranny!! Mis-used facts, stats and skewed agendas can be applied to all sorts of topics. The aul population chestnut is a great one. If you were to look at the serious GAA-playing population of each county that would be a useful statistic. Even then, it's a red herring. It only ever becomes an issue when people with a certain bias and sense of paranoia want to use it.
Championship structures, now there's a good debate. How Donegal rose to the top, there's another. But let's not waste time with that silly stuff. The more something is repeated over and over and over the more chance it has of being accepted as reality. And if it affecting and influencing people's decision-making. That could be a good debate. Whatever we do let's not debate the real issues
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kot
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Post by kot on Jun 3, 2015 10:56:26 GMT
I see the campaign continues unabated. When Kerry were regularly beating teams by 20 point s and more in the 1970s and 1980s, it was seen as being a result of them being a brilliant team, not a major crisis threatening the future of the GAA.Kerry and Tyrone's carving up of 8 All-Is from the last decade was never even remotely viewed as an issue to anyone here, yet suddenly after 4 different winners in the last 5 years the GAA is in some sort of meltdown? Truly some tabloid level nonsense being uttered. Strangely though, it all seems to have a tellingly particular slant.............. Curiouser and curiouser. If only inspector Morse were still around. People like me have been campaigning for a change in how the championship is structured for 20 years or more. That was, is, and will continue to be the issue here. The rest is smoke, mirrors, red-herrings and people getting their peculiar kicks. And Eugene McGee has had finer moments. Did he write like this about Longford's 17 point hammering last year, against a weaker team? What's hos view on all the other sports that have a few very strong teams and lots of much weaker ones, has it ever concerned him much? Was he ever up in arms over Kerry & Tyrone's dominance in the last decade, in contrast to the much more interesting spread of winners so far this decade? As long as Munster has been in existence its football championship has been derided and the fact that Kerry "only had to beat Cork every year" was levelled at them along with the "soft all-ireland tag". So wind the neck in a small bit Rashers. This is not a debate about "change because Dublin are hockeying teams". It is looking for a change to get rid of that batterings that are seen year on year. Teams from Div 4 and the lower echelons of Div 3 are never realistically going to give Kerry, Mayo, Donegal, Cork, Dublin etc a game. So why continue with this charade?? Magee talks a lot of codswallop in that article but the current championship situation is flawed. As I recall the qualifiers were introduced to give "lesser teams a chance". So lets look against whether a change is needed rather than - ohh why should we change anything now sur this team was battering teams 45 years ago. Qualifiers introduced in 2001, final contested by 2 teams who had been in 2 finals each in the previous 5 years. Not much change there. After that between 02-05, the final was contested by the same 3 teams interchangeably. Between 06-10 we had the same 4 teams before Down bucked the trend. Since 2011, it has been Donegal, Mayo, Dublin & Kerry in the final. Teams like Waterford, Longford, Leitrim are still getting steamrolled and are out of the championship usually before the summer solstice. So why bother? Whats the point in Kerry hockeying Waterford and not playing for 5 weeks. Or the Dubs battering Longford? Or sending Galway half way across the world to annihilate a team of expats? Surely there is more merit in having a system where teams earn the right (by playing and winning against teams at their own level) to progress upwards and only play the bigger teams when they are good & ready to at least put up a showing! Hurling redrew the borders and nobody batted an eyelid, heres news for you.... Galway arent in Leinster! Derry & Down are never going to beat or get within 30 points of Killkenny in the championship so they don't bloody well play them. The result, hurling in general has a lower quantity but a higher quality of games than football. We all know that bar Ulster, Kerry & Cork (& now Tipp potentially in coming years) in Munster, Mayo & Galway (sometimes Roscommon) that the provincial championships are lame ducks now. At least when it was knockout there was that do or die attitude. I used to come away in the '90s gutted from Pairc Ui Chaoimh if we lost in July. Now the only reason I would care that much is if they beat us in Killarney because that just not allowed So what has the current qualifier system done to improve / change things? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! You still have the odd suprise packages every so often like Fermanagh in '04 but they were there before them (Offaly '97, Leitrim '94, Clare '92). So either you change the whole thing completely from what it is now or go back to straight knockout and (i) Make the provincial championships really matter again (ii) give the clubs back some time with their players. Thats the issue being discussed, not "we should change because Dublin are dominant". I have been saying the same thing for years back when Dublin were being pasted rather than giving the pastings in Croke Park so please, spare me!
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Post by donegalman on Jun 3, 2015 12:28:36 GMT
There would be nothing wrong with having a provincial competition running before the championship, run the league earlier and scrap the fbd league etc. The League would provide seeding for the 8 x 4 groups of the championship which would have a straight knockout from the last 16 on. Of course there will be teething problems with home/away venues but it would be an exciting development for the game. If it didnt work, then you could always return to the old format.
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kot
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Post by kot on Jun 3, 2015 13:00:26 GMT
There would be nothing wrong with having a provincial competition running before the championship, run the league earlier and scrap the fbd league etc. The League would provide seeding for the 8 x 4 groups of the championship which would have a straight knockout from the last 16 on. Of course there will be teething problems with home/away venues but it would be an exciting development for the game. If it didnt work, then you could always return to the old format. To be honest, I would scrap the league and run everything intercounty from a couple of weeks after the club final through to middle of July. County Leagues can continue in clubs but players are available for an aligned set of county championships across the country once intercounty is over. No more of a county's top club fixtures being played in mud and weeds of a December pitch. Split Ireland East / West or North / South conference wise down the middle and assign teams to the tier 1 competition / tier 2 competition based on where they are on the last league before formation (Div 1 / 2 - Top Tier, Div 3/4, second tier). 4 groups of 4 in tier one lets say. The Bottom team in each group meet 1 of the other and the 2 losers go down to tier 2 next year. The teams who come third don't qualify for knockout and their season is over but they have had 3 games. Top 2 from each group into the quarter finals. Knock out from then on. Meaningful games against similar standard. Tier 2 - same format without teams 3 / 4 season being over. Teams 1 & 2 from each group go into quarters. Both finalists going up and play each other for the right to go up as champions. How does that sound?
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kot
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Post by kot on Jun 3, 2015 13:01:13 GMT
There would be nothing wrong with having a provincial competition running before the championship, run the league earlier and scrap the fbd league etc. The League would provide seeding for the 8 x 4 groups of the championship which would have a straight knockout from the last 16 on. Of course there will be teething problems with home/away venues but it would be an exciting development for the game. If it didnt work, then you could always return to the old format. To be honest, I would scrap the league and run everything intercounty from a couple of weeks after the club final through to middle of July. County Leagues can continue in clubs but players are available for an aligned set of county championships across the country once intercounty is over. No more of a county's top club fixtures being played in mud and weeds of a December pitch. Split Ireland East / West or North / South conference wise down the middle and assign teams to the tier 1 competition / tier 2 competition based on where they are on the last league before formation (Div 1 / 2 - Top Tier, Div 3/4, second tier). 4 groups of 4 in tier one lets say. The Bottom team in each group meet 1 of the other and the 2 losers go down to tier 2 next year. The teams who come third don't qualify for knockout and their season is over but they have had 3/6 games depending on whether you do home vs. away. Top 2 from each group into the quarter finals. Knock out from then on. Meaningful games against similar standard. Tier 2 - same format without teams 3 / 4 season being over. Teams 1 & 2 from each group go into quarters. Both finalists going up and play each other for the right to go up as champions. How does that sound?
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Post by playitfair on Jun 3, 2015 13:04:50 GMT
In my opinion every county should not be entitled to play in the senior championship. You have to earn that right, just like the hurling championship.
If you look at each county, the clubs in each county do not automatically play in the Senior club Championship.
As a "once-off" its interesting but the qualifier system has lost its jizz since the mid-noughties. The definition of madness is usually referenced as to keep doing the same thing and expect a different answer.
While Veterans argument has a certain merit, the reality is that all teams playing in the soccer Champions league have earned the right to be there. The GAA are now operating in the entertainment business and "Joe-Public" will not attend if it is not competitive. I am all for Sean Kelly's proposal with the added carrot that the final is played on All-Ireland Sunday in preference to the minor match. I think this approach is more beneficial in the longer term for the so-called weaker counties.
I anticipate there will be the usual reaction that everyone should get to play in the Senior Championship. I do not share that view.
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Jun 3, 2015 13:19:30 GMT
I still believe in the possibility of a team getting its house in order in one or two years or maybe even from Championship 2030 to League 2031. This team could be in great shape, just miss out on promotion from Division 3 or 4 due to whatever reason and find themselves playing against the same old teams when they might love a craic at a Division 1/2 team.
For example,
Antrim vs Cavan Tipperary vs Kerry (happening this year) Sligo vs Roscommon Wexford vs Meath
A lot of these proposals are throwing out all of these games.
I think the GAA need to be conservative enough here. Some ideas would be disastrous... for example splitting Dublin would be a disaster. The Dublin GAA fan isn't going to get behind North Dublin or whatever.
I don't think there is a chance in hell that a CC or PB is going to support a structure where teams aren't at the very least entered into the race for Sam. Split a little later maybe... use seeding and advance entry maybe...
I would urge caution. The GAA is built on tradition --- now some traditions should be changed but not all.
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Post by givehimaball on Jun 3, 2015 14:03:28 GMT
At the very bottom of the pile, the fear is that more teams will do a Kilkenny and pack in intercounty football. The Leitrim county secretary spoke about dropping out of senior and having their senior team competing in the Junior All-Ireland a few months back. In the smaller "bottom of the pile" getting players to commit is a massive battle. The Waterford county board and a significant number involved in hurling have no interest in competing in football and bitterly resent every cent spent on football. There's probably a significant number of Waterford hurling folk only delighted by getting trounched by Tipp on Sunday. The football folk in Waterford are probably in despair as they know that this will be used to reduce their funding even more. I think if one of these very bottom of the tier counties pull out of the race for Sam you could very easily see a mini-domino effect with 2 or 3 more Division 4 teams packing it in as well. I would urge caution. The GAA is built on tradition --- now some traditions should be changed but not all. Football has gone from 21-a-side, 17-a-side to 15-a-side and was originally a game where points only counted if it was a draw game in terms of goals and where club sides represented counties. The founders of the GAA were the least traditional most radical men ever.
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kot
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Post by kot on Jun 3, 2015 14:11:27 GMT
Have we a separate thread for competition structure? I fear we are in danger of all going of topic (again) from the subject of this thread.
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Post by playitfair on Jun 3, 2015 14:48:31 GMT
Not at all, people are only discussing the most topical issues arising from non-kerry games this year to date. I watched the Sunday game last Sunday night and there was really nothing else arising from these matches to discuss.
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Post by donegalman on Jun 3, 2015 18:33:52 GMT
There would be an issue re scrapping the league. That would be sponsors of the league. Couple this with this years league being very good, bar the final. Lots of twists and turns and very close hard games. Plus the league would be a very useful way of seeding things were they to introduce change.
Back to the topic, I am looking forward to Derry and Down play out of interest rather than expectation. I fancy Derry. I think that they were a tad unlucky in the league. Narrow losers to Dublin and Mayo . Tyrone scraped a last gasp draw. Down have lost some players this year again. I think that the league final may have set them back. But you just dont know with them either. They can get traction very quickly if they get a run going. But I still have a sneaky feeling that derry will prevail.
Galway and Mayo is a more interesting prospect. I think that Galway did not do themselves justice in the league, but maybe they were keeping themselves right for this time of the year. Division 2 has turned out to be every bit as competitive as division one (well, almost), and if Galway use young Walsh to full potential this year, then they could be a force.
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kot
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Post by kot on Jun 4, 2015 8:36:36 GMT
There would be an issue re scrapping the league. That would be sponsors of the league. Couple this with this years league being very good, bar the final. Lots of twists and turns and very close hard games. Plus the league would be a very useful way of seeding things were they to introduce change. Back to the topic, I am looking forward to Derry and Down play out of interest rather than expectation. I fancy Derry. I think that they were a tad unlucky in the league. Narrow losers to Dublin and Mayo . Tyrone scraped a last gasp draw. Down have lost some players this year again. I think that the league final may have set them back. But you just dont know with them either. They can get traction very quickly if they get a run going. But I still have a sneaky feeling that derry will prevail. Galway and Mayo is a more interesting prospect. I think that Galway did not do themselves justice in the league, but maybe they were keeping themselves right for this time of the year. Division 2 has turned out to be every bit as competitive as division one (well, almost), and if Galway use young Walsh to full potential this year, then they could be a force. Sponsors have contracts so I assume these contracts are on a fixed term basis. So just don't renew. Secondly, no doubt if you had 1 large tournament a year you would have no shortage of sponsors wanting to attach their names. More games, more coverage to be split admist tv means more money too. Its already a farce having an amateur sportsman competing in as many tournaments as professional soccer player anyway on top of club / school / college commitments. Yes the league could be used to seed the first tournament but if you have a new structure then your promotion/relegation will sort all that. So my theory would be that the new groups replace the league and dead rubber early championship rounds. And you have your quarters then for the knock out. And lets face it, nobody is bothered too much regarding the league anyway. I don't think the Dubs for example look back on last year too fondly despite having stormed to the league. Nor will they accept May's trouncing of Cork as sufficient to rest on their laurels for this year. Is Mark Poland back in for Down, does anyone have a clue what Marty Clarke's story is? Is he going back in for Down at all? Injured? Taking some time off? Galway Vs. Mayo not for another week? Think we have Kildare Vs. Laois. Hard to know where either are, Kildare seem to be in a serious downward spiral. Whoever wins I don't see either making it very far into July.
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Post by donegalman on Jun 4, 2015 10:34:48 GMT
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Post by MrRasherstoyou on Jun 4, 2015 15:49:18 GMT
I see the campaign continues unabated. When Kerry were regularly beating teams by 20 point s and more in the 1970s and 1980s, it was seen as being a result of them being a brilliant team, not a major crisis threatening the future of the GAA.Kerry and Tyrone's carving up of 8 All-Is from the last decade was never even remotely viewed as an issue to anyone here, yet suddenly after 4 different winners in the last 5 years the GAA is in some sort of meltdown? Truly some tabloid level nonsense being uttered. Strangely though, it all seems to have a tellingly particular slant.............. Curiouser and curiouser. If only inspector Morse were still around. People like me have been campaigning for a change in how the championship is structured for 20 years or more. That was, is, and will continue to be the issue here. The rest is smoke, mirrors, red-herrings and people getting their peculiar kicks. And Eugene McGee has had finer moments. Did he write like this about Longford's 17 point hammering last year, against a weaker team? What's hos view on all the other sports that have a few very strong teams and lots of much weaker ones, has it ever concerned him much? Was he ever up in arms over Kerry & Tyrone's dominance in the last decade, in contrast to the much more interesting spread of winners so far this decade? As long as Munster has been in existence its football championship has been derided and the fact that Kerry "only had to beat Cork every year" was levelled at them along with the "soft all-ireland tag". So wind the neck in a small bit Rashers. This is not a debate about "change because Dublin are hockeying teams". It is looking for a change to get rid of that batterings that are seen year on year. Teams from Div 4 and the lower echelons of Div 3 are never realistically going to give Kerry, Mayo, Donegal, Cork, Dublin etc a game. So why continue with this charade?? Magee talks a lot of codswallop in that article but the current championship situation is flawed. As I recall the qualifiers were introduced to give "lesser teams a chance". So lets look against whether a change is needed rather than - ohh why should we change anything now sur this team was battering teams 45 years ago. Qualifiers introduced in 2001, final contested by 2 teams who had been in 2 finals each in the previous 5 years. Not much change there. After that between 02-05, the final was contested by the same 3 teams interchangeably. Between 06-10 we had the same 4 teams before Down bucked the trend. Since 2011, it has been Donegal, Mayo, Dublin & Kerry in the final. Teams like Waterford, Longford, Leitrim are still getting steamrolled and are out of the championship usually before the summer solstice. So why bother? Whats the point in Kerry hockeying Waterford and not playing for 5 weeks. Or the Dubs battering Longford? Or sending Galway half way across the world to annihilate a team of expats? Surely there is more merit in having a system where teams earn the right (by playing and winning against teams at their own level) to progress upwards and only play the bigger teams when they are good & ready to at least put up a showing! Hurling redrew the borders and nobody batted an eyelid, heres news for you.... Galway arent in Leinster! Derry & Down are never going to beat or get within 30 points of Killkenny in the championship so they don't bloody well play them. The result, hurling in general has a lower quantity but a higher quality of games than football. We all know that bar Ulster, Kerry & Cork (& now Tipp potentially in coming years) in Munster, Mayo & Galway (sometimes Roscommon) that the provincial championships are lame ducks now. At least when it was knockout there was that do or die attitude. I used to come away in the '90s gutted from Pairc Ui Chaoimh if we lost in July. Now the only reason I would care that much is if they beat us in Killarney because that just not allowed So what has the current qualifier system done to improve / change things? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! You still have the odd suprise packages every so often like Fermanagh in '04 but they were there before them (Offaly '97, Leitrim '94, Clare '92). So either you change the whole thing completely from what it is now or go back to straight knockout and (i) Make the provincial championships really matter again (ii) give the clubs back some time with their players. Thats the issue being discussed, not "we should change because Dublin are dominant". I have been saying the same thing for years back when Dublin were being pasted rather than giving the pastings in Croke Park so please, spare me! You're preaching to the converted. And I was referring to a couple of particular posts by others in the thread. As I said above, in the very post you quoted, people like me have been making those points and suggestions for more than 20 years. Con Houlihan was banging that drum for at least 40 years. That is the major issue. Weak teams have been getting battered by the top teams for generations, and they always will do. The main issue was laways the lack of anything better for weak tames to aim for in summer. The only improvement in recent times was the qualifiers to give teams a 2nd game at least, which most of the weakest teams will lose. As I said elsewhere, the fact that the majority of counties still have 2 or 3 games only in the best months of the year doesn't make sense. And as we know the reasons given for it not having changed so far are 'tradition' and the fixtures calendar. And sure enough, the club fixtures have to be protected, they are already messed around enough as it is. And most people want the Provincial championships retained. So it's a matter of working around these needs. But the point here is that discussing that debate is derailed by nonsensical hoo-haa about one team being much better than the weakest teams when that has always been the case. Where has been all the campaign on the forums to change things in Leinster hurling when Kk were winning everything around them, at all levels? And probably will continue to win most things for a while yet
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Post by givehimaball on Jun 4, 2015 16:06:18 GMT
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