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Post by Ballyfireside on May 11, 2016 12:19:24 GMT
Dublin have more players than any other county, but a smaller percentage of the population play Gaelic, ands that is a factor we have no control over, so as I said, focus on what we can change to make the best in the prevailing circumstances.
An yes, I agree population is not as critical as one might first think, our National Rugby team does well enough, and it is 15 v 15/20 v 20.
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Post by MrRasherstoyou on May 11, 2016 14:04:33 GMT
Dublin have more players than any other county, but a smaller percentage of the population play Gaelic, ands that is a factor we have no control over, so as I said, focus on what we can change to make the best in the prevailing circumstances. An yes, I agree population is not as critical as one might first think, our National Rugby team does well enough, and it is 15 v 15/20 v 20. Snr level players? Cork have lots more players than Leitrim but I don't recall it being a hot topic of conversation in countless media articles/outlets and amongst so many people. I don't recall this topic being of much interest to most until since about 2013. That's what makes me curious
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Post by onlykerry on May 11, 2016 14:22:58 GMT
Put numbers together with good organisation and finance and you create a lethal combination - this is the issue. Most counties lack one or more of those ingredients. Dublin have all three in abundance and this creates a dilema for the GAA. Cork seem unable to organise a p.ss up in a brewery at present and would be the biggest threat if they could manage to harness all three. Other successful counties have good to decent organisation, good finances and reasonable numbers. The underperforming counties lack one or more of these ingredients.
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Post by Annascaultilidie on May 11, 2016 14:39:28 GMT
"The bigger they are the harder they fall."
----- some boxer in 1902
"They're big and that's unfair... waaaahhh!!!"
----- football in 2016.
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Post by Ballyfireside on May 11, 2016 14:50:20 GMT
I think Rashers is paranoid that we are focusing on Dubs. I don't know what was discussed before 2013 but as time goes on we should have more intelligent comment, what we are saying applies to all counties, Cork and Meath have off the field issues at the moment and good players are being denied their window of opportunity - nil to do with numbers. onlykerry lays it out above, Dublin did all the right things down the years and are now reaping the benefit and which is heightened as you also have a vintage crop of natural players, if you had an average crop you might still do well by doing all the other things right. Brian Cody has set a standard with The Cats and as previous great managers did, it will be interesting to see how Donegal maintain the standards what McGuinness set, albeit Rory's style might differ and the key players are arguably at the autumn of their careers. Cody was the most ruthless in retiring good players, but then again he had nurtured fellas coming through who were able to push older lads out. Dwyer and Harte paid the price for loyalty but maybe they didn't have the pipeline Cody had, and which begs the question as to why that was so? Kerry has an unparalleled and inherent culture of Gaelic football and we are consistently there or there abouts, and that we look second best today annoys us. My focus though is on the weakest teams, how do we bring them up? I would have given up on the GAA long ago if my county wasn't a contender, and I am sure we are loosing massive support in this respect. In contrast to soccer, we have the opportunity to see teams playing in the flesh as it is more local and that advantage has served the GAA well, although Ryanair prices haven't helped.
Among the core values of GAA codes is the physicality, i.e. the raw physics and which outshines soccer and rugby, both of them being less sophisticated. The amateur status is also a key differentiator but this will come under threat from a number of fronts. 1. Increasing commitment as standard rises, 200 hours a month for inter-county while holding down a job is crazy. 2. Rural depopulation will destroy clubs as players gravitate to urban centres, rural Ireland as we know it will be dead within 20 years, what with farms getting bigger and fishing all but stopped.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 11, 2016 15:03:36 GMT
This is a very interesting debate and one that I am sure is being had all over the country in the majority of conversations involving gaelic football.
Annascaultilidie's post says it all - the complaining about Dublin having what they have is only counties making excuses. It is up to all the other counties to up their game to contend with the Dubs.
From my point of view it all comes down to organisation and planning and having the right people in charge of a county board is a major factor. Dublin GAA is run like a business as how every county board should be and everything is planned down to a tee from the training structures within the county to how they attract sponsors. Dublin are now being rewarded for work that was done a long time ago and it is very easy be blinded by the other factors such as population/money/Croke park etc. As regards the money Kerry Group can easily compete with Vodafone financially.
This can perhaps be comparable to the club where the top clubs operate like a business - actively fundraising, seeking good sponsorship deals, putting in place training structures and standards and mainly not complaining. Take Dr. Crokes in Kerry for instance they put in place training standards and programmes, actively come up with their own fundraising ideas and even had AIG on their jerseys at one point. Crokes then reaped the rewards of work that was done years ago by winning however many championships while we all complained about them having what they have and even going to the extents of reforming the championship. Now you have Legion who also put these plans in place, all be it a bit latter than Crokes but are now competing with them and reversed the gap to being the top team in Killarney. Take even Rathmore a club who are also reversing their fortunes.
All in all I believe with the right people in charge a lot of Counties could be doing a lot better than they currently are.
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fitz
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Red sky at night get off my land
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Post by fitz on May 11, 2016 18:33:41 GMT
Dublin have more players than any other county, but a smaller percentage of the population play Gaelic, ands that is a factor we have no control over, so as I said, focus on what we can change to make the best in the prevailing circumstances. An yes, I agree population is not as critical as one might first think, our National Rugby team does well enough, and it is 15 v 15/20 v 20. Snr level players? Cork have lots more players than Leitrim but I don't recall it being a hot topic of conversation in countless media articles/outlets and amongst so many people. I don't recall this topic being of much interest to most until since about 2013. That's what makes me curious A couple of things. Rashers and Scauley are right - there was no cribbing/whinging when the Dubs were garbage pre 2010. Sure, we only couldn't wait to go up to play in the Park at any opportunity. Yes, they do have the numbers advantage...but they really have gelled their structures together and become a much more ruthless machine and have the right man managing their team. They are showing the way in sports performance and play a highly attractive brand of football at new levels of pace not seen before the last two years. That's down to application. Now - I do think they have a specific perfect storm of great players in this current team which just happens to be the final nail in the boot to the bollix of a non-Dublin supporter. I don't believe they can throw out another 15 just as good or will be able to. Nothing lasts forever, so now that they have raised the bar, best get a bar and do some raising...and control the things you can control.
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Post by Mickmack on May 11, 2016 22:02:22 GMT
Put numbers together with good organisation and finance and you create a lethal combination - this is the issue. Most counties lack one or more of those ingredients. Dublin have all three in abundance and this creates a dilema for the GAA. Cork seem unable to organise a p.ss up in a brewery at present and would be the biggest threat if they could manage to harness all three. Other successful counties have good to decent organisation, good finances and reasonable numbers. The underperforming counties lack one or more of these ingredients. I think that this is probably the best post i have ever read on this forum as regards getting to the nub of an issue so cogently. Take a bow!
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fitz
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Post by fitz on May 11, 2016 23:54:42 GMT
If I'm reading correctly then it is numbers that's letting us down from OK's formula or is our organization also questionable?
I think there's worth in that formula but it's not the silver bullet.
To explore further, Dublin have always had numbers and finance. So it is Gavin's stewardship that has really advanced this team?
I think that is the biggest factor but he has generated a culture, created a hunger and the players are buying in big time. Maybe our guys subliminally do not quite have Dublin's hunger. That's a question not an assertion.
I think the two key things to the current succes are 1) Gavin and what he can wield 2)This is a freakishly exceptional bunch of first 15 players.
I don't believe Dublin can maintain the current standard for the longer term because I don't believe there will be such exceptional players coming through in the current volume concurrently
Interestingly if Gavin had the Dublin team in 06/07 would they have beaten Kerry, given Gavin only had what he knew at that time?
I think no, that Dublin team was decent but not good enough for me.
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dano
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Post by dano on May 12, 2016 2:14:38 GMT
Can't blame Dublin for using what they have, moneywise, facilitywise, anywise!. It is up to us and the other 31 (NY) to try to be better. It is a great time for the boys in blue. I don't begrudge them one bit and, in a way, am happy enough that they are doing well. Historically, great things seem happen in Kerry after a golden era for the Dubs.
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Post by offalyoutsider on May 12, 2016 3:37:56 GMT
I think one of the biggest advantages Dublin has over my county is there ability to look after its players. I can't imagine there is any Dublin player who would struggle to get work or be given guidance and or a leg up on their academic/career paths. This is not a complaint, I think its only right that players who put in so much of their time are looked after but, unfortunately that's not a option available in every county. From my own experience I have a friend who worked in a bar for almost two years while trying to play inter-county football. This meant finishing up work late on Saturday night and then trying to train or worse play a national league game the next morning. During this period the player in question, suffered with consistency and was getting pillered by some for it. The fact that he stayed playing through that spell is a credit to him but I can see why a lot of lads in a similar position wouldn't put themselves through it, especially when there is absolutely no chance of silverware at the end of it.
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Post by Ballyfireside on May 12, 2016 7:14:39 GMT
Just because we use Dublin's emergence as a reference point is because they are a near perfect example of how a team having everything right at the same time will win. There is no other reason and that many on here acknowledge their achievement is testament to that.
It takes numerous factors to be at the fore and Kerry are there but you'd have to say that if The Dubs have anything on us at the moment it is pace, and because some of our fellas have been around longer. Gavin is also getting better and once success takes grip then the greatest enemy is yourself and that was often their Achilles heel but methinks they have now addressed that. Luck also plays a role and that can be with injuries during the campaign or on the day.
I think we are all saying the same thing really. What we might now focus on is given that outside factors, many economic, favour the better teams, how does the GAA best steer the ship.
The first thing is funding and of course not all teams will get the same, but the gap at the moment is too wide. We also need to see more expertise shared by successful counties and things like this cost money. The government are allocating resources to Rural Ireland so that might further help on the finance side. If we had those basics sorted then the complexion of the overall issue would be different. One thing we will never have control of is the vintage crop factor and we can leave that to the Man above, just like Healy-Rae thinks about climate change! Seriously though, such one off crops are random and there is nothing nicer than a team coming through.
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Post by kerrygold on May 12, 2016 8:13:43 GMT
Snr level players? Cork have lots more players than Leitrim but I don't recall it being a hot topic of conversation in countless media articles/outlets and amongst so many people. I don't recall this topic being of much interest to most until since about 2013. That's what makes me curious A couple of things. Rashers and Scauley are right - there was no cribbing/whinging when the Dubs were garbage pre 2010. Sure, we only couldn't wait to go up to play in the Park at any opportunity. Yes, they do have the numbers advantage...but they really have gelled their structures together and become a much more ruthless machine and have the right man managing their team. They are showing the way in sports performance and play a highly attractive brand of football at new levels of pace not seen before the last two years. That's down to application. Now - I do think they have a specific perfect storm of great players in this current team which just happens to be the final nail in the boot to the bollix of a non-Dublin supporter. I don't believe they can throw out another 15 just as good or will be able to. Nothing lasts forever, so now that they have raised the bar, best get a bar and do some raising...and control the things you can control. Nobody is criticising or whinging about the Dubs, we all admire and respect the brilliance of their success. We are just engaging in a discussion. The great fear is that the Leinster championship will suffer as a result of this runaway success of the Dubs. Just as the GAA needs a strong GAA base in Dublin it also needs to have a successful base throughout Leinster with the great impending population shift to the greater Dublin area. We all know what is going to happen over the next 8 weeks or so, Dublin will canter through Leinster, meet and pulverise Kildare in the Leinster final. Hardly a sustainable model if not addressed in some way?
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Post by onlykerry on May 12, 2016 8:38:29 GMT
If I'm reading correctly then it is numbers that's letting us down from OK's formula or is our organization also questionable? I think there's worth in that formula but it's not the silver bullet. To explore further, Dublin have always had numbers and finance. So it is Gavin's stewardship that has really advanced this team? I think that is the biggest factor but he has generated a culture, created a hunger and the players are buying in big time. Maybe our guys subliminally do not quite have Dublin's hunger. That's a question not an assertion. I think the two key things to the current succes are 1) Gavin and what he can wield 2)This is a freakishly exceptional bunch of first 15 players. I don't believe Dublin can maintain the current standard for the longer term because I don't believe there will be such exceptional players coming through in the current volume concurrently Interestingly if Gavin had the Dublin team in 06/07 would they have beaten Kerry, given Gavin only had what he knew at that time? I think no, that Dublin team was decent but not good enough for me. Your analysis of what I said is simplistic - there are a multitude of factors including age of some of our key players as to why we are second best at present. Age can be both physical and mental. I have omitted one important ingredient and it is mental strength - a curious ingredient and often the first to crack and when it does the fall out can be spectacular. The effort required to be the best can be a double edged sword.
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Post by MrRasherstoyou on May 12, 2016 9:14:32 GMT
I think one of the biggest advantages Dublin has over my county is there ability to look after its players. I can't imagine there is any Dublin player who would struggle to get work or be given guidance and or a leg up on their academic/career paths. This is not a complaint, I think its only right that players who put in so much of their time are looked after but, unfortunately that's not a option available in every county. From my own experience I have a friend who worked in a bar for almost two years while trying to play inter-county football. This meant finishing up work late on Saturday night and then trying to train or worse play a national league game the next morning. During this period the player in question, suffered with consistency and was getting pillered by some for it. The fact that he stayed playing through that spell is a credit to him but I can see why a lot of lads in a similar position wouldn't put themselves through it, especially when there is absolutely no chance of silverware at the end of it. Great post Offaly, I think that's a massive point in terms of fairness/opportunity. I think Bally has explored that issue to some extent and I wonder do the GAC look at things like that? It's a national (in terms of economy, policy-making etc) & local issue. But at the same time, in each case (and it has to be looked at in each individual case), if it's lack of handy opportunity, that such and such a lad wants to do things, and just can't without moving well away from home, then what can be done? In your example above the lad did actually have a (presumably at least fairly local) job, the issue there is about the required commitment these days, so much preparation at the top levels. For those players who's background was somehow off the land it's a particularly difficult issue in the last 20-30 years. It has been noted that a fairly high proportion of people who excelled in gaelic sports were already training/studying and/or working in the 'professions'. As such, to some extent, they were given flexibility. But that's not to say any player working in any sort of job wouldn't be given flexibility, it's always been a culture everywhere in GAA that county players are supported locally as much as possible. On the other side of the coin again, I think some lads training to be doctors for example have had to take time out from games to complete certain parts of their training? It's often been said that many players are teachers because of the time off. I wonder is that as true as it sounds? These days I believe teachers have quite alot of commitments outside of their actual working hours. It's been said by others, the commitment for amateur sports' people has become far too much, and I'd agree. Even with flexible training regimes (individually tailored) I can't see how lads are going to want to keep doing it, in high numbers, with competing professional sports as an option at the higher levels. And for people who are struggling to get employment, keep going with courses etc, I feel the GAA should (if not already) be trying to support county boards in a targetted way to in turn support their players, in whatever way is possible. There's lots of money coming into the organisation, the debt from Croker is payed off, alot is spent on preparing teams but if player numbers drop off, what's the main need then? I presume there is already alot of thinking and possibly action around these issues.
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Post by MrRasherstoyou on May 12, 2016 9:19:38 GMT
A couple of things. Rashers and Scauley are right - there was no cribbing/whinging when the Dubs were garbage pre 2010. Sure, we only couldn't wait to go up to play in the Park at any opportunity. Yes, they do have the numbers advantage...but they really have gelled their structures together and become a much more ruthless machine and have the right man managing their team. They are showing the way in sports performance and play a highly attractive brand of football at new levels of pace not seen before the last two years. That's down to application. Now - I do think they have a specific perfect storm of great players in this current team which just happens to be the final nail in the boot to the bollix of a non-Dublin supporter. I don't believe they can throw out another 15 just as good or will be able to. Nothing lasts forever, so now that they have raised the bar, best get a bar and do some raising...and control the things you can control. Nobody is criticising or whinging about the Dubs, we all admire and respect the brilliance of their success. We are just engaging in a discussion. The great fear is that the Leinster championship will suffer as a result of this runaway success of the Dubs. Just as the GAA needs a strong GAA base in Dublin it also needs to have a successful base throughout Leinster with the great impending population shift to the greater Dublin area. We all know what is going to happen over the next 8 weeks or so, Dublin will canter through Leinster, meet and pulverise Kildare in the Leinster final. Hardly a sustainable model if not addressed in some way? But there are and have been for a long time many of the same and similar issues. Take the whole provincial system red-herring out of it and you're looking at elite counties around the country, and then many counties who can't get close to the elite. That's the issue. The gap is wider than it used to be due to the amount of effort and resources required. Talking of Leinster in particular is irrelevant. Or Munster etc. You have to just look at individual counties, and cases.
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Post by hatchetman on May 12, 2016 9:41:39 GMT
Put numbers together with good organisation and finance and you create a lethal combination - this is the issue. Most counties lack one or more of those ingredients. Dublin have all three in abundance and this creates a dilema for the GAA. Cork seem unable to organise a p.ss up in a brewery at present and would be the biggest threat if they could manage to harness all three. Other successful counties have good to decent organisation, good finances and reasonable numbers. The underperforming counties lack one or more of these ingredients. Tradition has often been touted as the reason for Kerry/Kilkennys success down the years ... though it's difficult to quantify exactly what tradition is? I believe a large part of it is ex-players coaching young kids in the fundamentals of the game while maintaining very competitive underage structures. I presume that the huge input of paid coaches at underage and schools level in Dublin has significantly reduced or removed that 'advantage' in the development of quality young players.
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Post by onlykerry on May 12, 2016 12:28:39 GMT
Tradition is the look in a young lads eye when he sees his heros and he says I want to be like him. I know several of the retired players (like most) and it never ceases to amaze me the number of people from outside the county who ask to have their picture taken with them even though they are long retired. The coaching angle may also be part of it but I think the status of being a player with celtic crosses to your name in immense in a positive way.
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Post by Mickmack on May 12, 2016 17:49:45 GMT
Can't blame Dublin for using what they have, moneywise, facilitywise, anywise!. It is up to us and the other 31 (NY) to try to be better. It is a great time for the boys in blue. I don't begrudge them one bit and, in a way, am happy enough that they are doing well. Historically, great things seem happen in Kerry after a golden era for the Dubs. Its about the haves and the havenots and trying to even things up a bit more. Kerry are one of the haves. The piecemeal changes over the years have all widended the gap .... the qualifiers...big teams wont be caught napping twice in a short space of time, the doubling of the amount of subs that clearly benefits teams with lots of players to pick from, the introduction of sponsorship where successful teams are likely to get more money... etc. I would love to see Cavan and the Rossies meet in a final in a few years..... and for offaly to return but the elite are moving away too much and Dublin look like they will move away out of sight of everyone. Funnily enough, the Dublin people i talk to are not interested in this happening either...Dublin moving out of sight of everyone i mean
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Post by MrRasherstoyou on May 12, 2016 18:07:34 GMT
Can't blame Dublin for using what they have, moneywise, facilitywise, anywise!. It is up to us and the other 31 (NY) to try to be better. It is a great time for the boys in blue. I don't begrudge them one bit and, in a way, am happy enough that they are doing well. Historically, great things seem happen in Kerry after a golden era for the Dubs. Its about the haves and the havenots and trying to even things up a bit more. Kerry are one of the haves. The piecemeal changes over the years have all widended the.... the qualifiers...big teams wont be caught napping twice in a short space of time, the doubling of the amount of subs that clearly benefits teams with lots of players to pick from, the introduction of sponsorship where successful teams are likely to get more money... etc. I would love to see Cavan and the Rossies meet in a final in a few years..... and for offaly to return but the elite are moving away too much and Dublin look like they will move away out of sight of everyone. Funnily enough, the Dublin people i talk to are not interested in this happening either...Dublin moving out of sight i mean There you go again with the campaign, emotive, scaremongering stuff like "moving away out of the sight of everyone." That sort of stuff, after 3 All-Is. Each of the 3 very hard won, kick of a ball in it for all of the 3 semi-finals and finals. Yet for years Kerry won All-Is pulling up on several occasions. The fact that you can't accept the comparison indicates the bias in your stance. Kerry won 5 All-Is in the noughties, and appeared in 8 of the 10 finals; in three of those years they won handy semi-finals and absolutely thrashed the opposition in the finals, there was one close one with a replay (semi & final), and one where they won the semi & final comfortably. Yeh Dublin win 3 in 5 years, all of them very tight, didn't reach the final the other 2 years, and the sky looks like falling in. It just doesn't wash. And no matter how many times you say that you're just talking about haves and have nots and the good of the game and all that, what it really boils down to is a way of being able to say it's a problem with the advantages Dublin have, in one fell swoop undermining both what has been achieved and what might still be achieved by a bunch of great players and one very good coach.
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Post by Annascaultilidie on May 12, 2016 19:24:22 GMT
Can't blame Dublin for using what they have, moneywise, facilitywise, anywise!. It is up to us and the other 31 (NY) to try to be better. It is a great time for the boys in blue. I don't begrudge them one bit and, in a way, am happy enough that they are doing well. Historically, great things seem happen in Kerry after a golden era for the Dubs. Its about the haves and the havenots and trying to even things up a bit more. Kerry are one of the haves. The piecemeal changes over the years have all widended the gap .... the qualifiers...big teams wont be caught napping twice in a short space of time, the doubling of the amount of subs that clearly benefits teams with lots of players to pick from, the introduction of sponsorship where successful teams are likely to get more money... etc. I would love to see Cavan and the Rossies meet in a final in a few years..... and for offaly to return but the elite are moving away too much and Dublin look like they will move away out of sight of everyone. Funnily enough, the Dublin people i talk to are not interested in this happening either...Dublin moving out of sight of everyone i mean Life isn't fair. Get over it. We can't all be equal. The belief that everyone is or should be equal holds a lot of people back. If a team wants to get better they need to get motivated, get organised, work harder and stop making excuses. When you make excuses you are only giving yourself a free pass for failing to take care if what you can control. I really think Dublin are a fine, fine team but no team is unbeatable. This whingeaton must stop. Rant over.
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Post by Mickmack on May 12, 2016 20:14:46 GMT
And you clearly cant read the English language. But we cant all be equal. Dont let it hold you back. Continue to make ignorant rants all you want.
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Post by yourholiness on May 12, 2016 20:28:24 GMT
A lot of good responses here and a bit of reasoned debate For what it's worth I think there has been a bit of a perfect storm where Dublin are concerned . I think Dublin have some supremely talented players and a coaching team that has them primed . It's worth noting that this is the fruits of seeds long sewn . We are not talking AIG money here . More likely Arnotts and the GAA .
I think money is a bit of a red herring . Innovation is the key and I don't think Dublin are miles ahead of any of the elite teams in this regard .
There is a lot of talk about the Games promotional officers in the county but again I think their effectiveness has been overstated. As someone who has worked alongside them both at club level and in a school environment I think I'm well placed enough to say that their influence on the county scene has been negligible( certainly in terms of football )
I think the change of John Costellos position from county secretary to CEO has been significant .
But I think the primary reason Dublin are winning All Ireland's at present is that the current crop of players are very talented and well coached .
The reasons that are being proffered for their success are wide of the mark at present but the fear is they will become a self fulfilling prophecy as money and population will be of greater significance in 10 years time following the success of this crop .
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Post by Mickmack on May 12, 2016 21:45:40 GMT
Merciful hour yourholiness!! If the benefit of the AIG money hasnt been seen yet we might all as well fold the tent.
Great teams have always come and go but as you say in your final paragraph, no one knows what will happen when this crop moves on. We can only surmise based on whats happening at the moment.
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Post by Mickmack on May 14, 2016 20:11:17 GMT
Tomas OSe
I suppose I knew I was in trouble as the cavalry on Twitter arrived in defence of my honour and there, sat on the lead horse, was none other than Joe Brolly.
Joe is maybe more comfortable in this neck of the woods than me. As a barrister, he has the language skills to beat away what fires he lights and be chuckling as he does it. Me? I'm no Red Adair. I can talk myself into trouble with the best of men; talking my way out is another matter.
All things considered, I thought our preview of RTE's new season of The Sunday Game went well in Thurles last Sunday. I did a few newspaper interviews and a live radio chat with Dessie Dolan and Darren Frehill. Came away not casting a second thought back to anything that was said.
Then I turned my phone back on and, holy Christ, the thing all but exploded in my hand.
My use of the word 'scumbag' and Dublin in one sentence was clumsy, I'll give you that. But I've never held myself up as some kind of Wordsworth in front of a live microphone and maybe this episode tells you why. Since finishing with Kerry and sitting into the pundit's chair, I've considered honesty to be my one real obligation to the public.
That's not been to everybody's taste and there are plenty of old acquaintances who've maybe regarded my candour as some kind of betrayal.
But this took things to a different place. In hindsight, I'm actually able to laugh at the fall-out now because I recognise how some people chose to pounce on that one, single expression and tart it up into some kind of national outrage. 'Hold the back page. Kerry lunatic calls Dubs scumbags'. Lovely.
So can we just cool the jets a second here.
I find it hard to believe that anybody paying attention to what I've been saying these last couple of years is in any doubt about how I regard Jim Gavin and his players. My admiration is total. The team that has dominated Gaelic football since 2011 - winning three All-Irelands and, essentially, re-defining how the modern game is played - and is one of the greatest we've ever seen in the GAA.
I've been saying for some time that I believe they're the best Dublin team there's been (and in Kerry we'd like to consider ourselves well versed on that particular subject).
They have it all: pace, aggression, attitude, skill, mental toughness.
Feared
Their backroom team has taken things to a whole new level in terms of mental and physical preparation in my view. They've pretty much re-written the rules.
I love watching them.
And I love how Gavin conducts himself in interviews even if, for media, it's largely frustrating. He is a master at speaking at great length but saying nothing. His guard is never down, his words never careless.
And I envy him this ability to filter everything down into vanilla ice-cream.
When I was a player, I ran from media interviews for the simple reason that I couldn't do that.
I just feared I'd always be susceptible to a loose phrase or expression that could end up on a wall in the opposition dressing-room.
So I pulled the shutters down. Kept my mouth shut. Headed for the hills.
This week you can probably see why.
So can I please be absolutely clear on something here? My use of the word 'scumbags' last Sunday was not intended to be in any way derogatory.
I've long had the utmost respect for men like Stephen Cluxton, Paul Flynn, Ciaran Kilkenny, Michael Darragh Macauley, Jack McCaffrey, Philly McMahon, Cian O'Sullivan, the Brogans and, well, I could just jot down 25 names here while I'm at it.
Before the current group, one of my favourite footballers was my fellow pundit, Ciaran Whelan.
The Kerry team I played on had some of the qualities I most admire in Dublin now. Primary among those qualities is an ability to win ugly, a toughness and self-belief to keep stringing victories together even on the days you're not at one hundred per cent.
Right across the generations, the best teams have always been able to do that. They can play, but they can dish it out too. They can charm you with the quality of their football or, just as quickly, pin you to a wall.
I regret only one thing that I said last Sunday. One word.
I was trying to convey a quality in Dublin's play that captures this resourcefulness. Trying to portray them for what they are: a magnificent group of men who play on the edge. Who will not be walked on by anyone. Who - day in, day out - do what it takes. Who will hit you where it hurts, pushing the boundaries as far as they can without crossing the line into trouble.
Maybe one of my problems as a player was a weakness for crossing that line. I had the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
Look, I'd have used that 'scumbag' expression about myself without ever over-thinking too deeply into what it actually meant. But I accept it's probably not the language of the pundit's chair. Maybe I should have gone with 'boyos' or 'divils' or 'quare hawks' last Sunday.
But I wasn't calling Dublin anything that I wouldn't have called my own brother, Darragh. That I wouldn't have called Paul Galvin. And I consider them two of the greatest footballers I ever played with.
I wasn't calling Dublin anything that I wouldn't have called three or four of the Tyrone team that became the bane of our lives in Kerry.
Determination
Think of the great Meath team that won two All-Irelands in the late '80s. Or the great Cork team they went to war with. They both had the kind of players I'm talking about. The kind of lads you knew would not take a backward step. They had skill to burn but, bottom line, their greatest quality was a determination to win at all costs too.
They WERE my kind of players. And this Dublin team? They ARE my kind of players.
That's what I was trying to get across in Thurles last Sunday. Trust me, I'm not clever enough to play mind games. I was simply expressing an opinion in the same way I would if I was chatting to someone in the street and my choice of a single word just kicked over a big hornets' nest.
Listen, here's the thing. If I was doing that interview again, there's actually very little I'd say any differently to what I said last weekend. That's just the way I speak.
I suspect the Dubs themselves understand that. They've never had a deficit in the humour department and I think they know exactly what I was trying to say last weekend.
I'll be in Nowlan Park in a few weeks time for their opening Leinster Championship game where I don't doubt that the colour and wit of their supporters will bring a fantastic atmosphere to Kilkenny.
And if I'm the butt of a few jibes, so be it. They know the score with me. I say it as I see it and make no apologies for that.
I'm no vanilla ice-cream.
Indo Sport
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Post by Mickmack on May 14, 2016 20:12:06 GMT
When you are explaining you are losing!
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Post by Mickmack on May 14, 2016 20:15:18 GMT
The GAA Championship summer, warts and all
Malachy Clerkin asks are you ready for the Championship 2016 off, stuttering as it may be?
Malachy Clerkin
1
This is not an A to Z of the championship. It’s a 1 to 70. As in, the 70 minutes of a championship game. There’ll be a small bit thrown on the end as a nod to stoppage time. You may or may not have left to beat the traffic before then.
2: mystery of time
It is not, either, a numerical guide. The minutes of a championship game bear no particular correlation to the wider world, after all. The full forward didn’t, for instance, score the goal in the 25th minute to mark your silver wedding anniversary. So there’s little point going looking for the number that will match up to, say, the amount of games Marc Ó Sé needs this summer to equal his brother Tomás’s all-time appearance record.
3: the magic number
It’s three, by the by. (This is the only time that will happen.)
4: unmistakable Fennelly
A few weeks back, I interviewed Michael Fennelly in Kilkenny for The Irish Times Championship 2016 our championship magazine. Eamonn Sweeney had a great line one time about meeting the Waterford footballer Gary Hurney, who he described as being immediately identifiable as an intercounty midfielder even if you had happened upon him loping towards you across the Gobi desert. Ditto Fennelly, as he walked through the lobby of the hotel.
5: crocked body
Fennelly arrived in flip-flops and was still a head over everyone in the place. You wouldn’t have said that the T-shirt he had on him was especially tight but he was wearing every thread of it. Up close, he is muscular without being over-muscled, square of jaw and shoulder, the outward picture of supreme health and wellbeing. Then he sat down and talked at length about how crocked he is.
6: still young
“I’ve only just turned 31 in February so I’m still young,” he said. “If I was a few more years down the line, definitely I would be questioning if the body could still take the punishment. But yeah, it will be interesting in years to come. I hope to God my body’s not going to be too bad in terms of functioning in everyday life. We’ll see at that stage whether I resent it or not.”
7: the GAA = the Amazon
It. “It” covers a multitude. Broadly, “it” is the GAA, the great Amazon that snakes its way through Irish life, slow and vast and vital and unstoppable. But more specifically for our purposes, “it” is championship.
8 : one of the greats
Fennelly has won six All-Ireland medals on the field of play and two more as a panel member. He has played in eight All-Ireland finals. He’s won three All Stars, he’s been Hurler of the Year. He has three club All-Irelands and has been man of the match in All-Ireland finals for club and county. If a bus hit him tomorrow and he never pucked another ball, that bus would be skittling down a hurling career matched by maybe only 30 people who have ever lived.
9: back troubles
The weird thing is, it would take a bus. Fennelly has no notion of retiring. Since the start of 2013, his back has curtailed his involvement to such an extent that of Kilkenny’s last 46 games in league and championship, he has started and finished just 12. Those numbers constitute the sort of hint that even the dimmest mind ought to be able to take – and he is anything but that. His day job is lecturing in strength and conditioning at Limerick IT. If anyone should know better, Mick Fennelly should.
10: hurling’s hold
Weird is the wrong word. Let’s say it’s remarkable, then. Remarkable that a 31-year-old, soon-to-be-married expert in physiology should be subjecting his body to all this hardship given what he knows it might mean for his future. Remarkable that he is hanging in there not just for one more go but for an indefinite amount of goes. A few more years, he says. Remarkable that hurling has this hold on him when there’s life to be lived.
11: fatal attraction...
Okay, maybe it isn’t. Maybe he’s the wrong example here. More likely, he’s like Debbie McGee that time Mrs Merton asked her what first attracted her to the millionaire Paul Daniels. So Michael, what is it about playing for perennial All-Ireland favourites Kilkenny that so attracts you to intercounty hurling?
12: taken for granted
Still, it feels sometimes that we’re far too quick to take this whole thing as a given. We don’t step back from it to try to reason it out. The football championship starts on Saturday in Portlaoise and on Sunday in Tullamore and Enniskillen. The hurling championship has been rumbling away for a few weeks in places such as Tralee (!) and Mullingar and next weekend it will explode in Thurles. For the next four months it will, at various times and in various places, matter more than anything else than is happening in those places at those times. We take it as inevitable that this will occur. But why? Why should it? Why will our interest in and fealty to the championship endure through a summer that will include the Euros and the Olympics and, for all we know, another general election or three? Why do players put so much into it? Why do county boards spend so much on it? Why do advertisers rain cash out of the clouds for it?
13: the why of it
So that’s what this is. A piece on the why of it all.
14: part of us
Look, it’s probably a stupid question. Probably an irritating one too, let’s be honest. Why are we interested in the championship? Because we are, ya bollocks. The championship is just . . . there. It’s always been there. It’s part of us and always will be, as impervious to Irish Times pseudo-psycho what’s-it-all-aboutery now as it ever was.
15: a constant...
It is constantly surprising, though, the range of people who care that it remains just . . . there. Because we can say for sure that the championship matters not just to the Michael Fennellys. Not just to All-Ireland winners. Not just to players, even. Nor just to their coaches, their medical teams, their stats crews, their bus drivers. Mattering isn’t, either, confined to supporters or officials or referees or stewards or turnstile operators. Or publicans or gardaí or journalists or that pair of chancers outside the ground with the squeezbox and the banjo and the rebel songs.
16: a summer in numbers
Last summer, the championship visited 29 Irish towns and cities in 28 counties for at least a day. Dublin had 19 games, Thurles had 12, Tullamore and Mullingar had six apiece. Portlaoise and Cavan got four days of it; Ennis, Armagh, Enniskillen and Carlow all saw three. Six more had two games, 13 had one. Derry was the only county to bring it to more than one venue – Celtic Park and Owenbeg. Since you ask, the four counties where it did not land in 2015 were Kildare, Down, Wicklow and Mayo.
17: off the beaten track
To be in those places on those days is to know, however obliquely, that there is something happening. And most of them are places where, in general, there is a lifetime’s nothing happening. Towns such as Clones and Navan and Roscommon and Ballybofey and Drogheda aren’t on any tourist trail. Nobody overnights in Omagh or hits up Tullamore for a short break. No best man ever sends a stag party to Longford town. Or if he does, he gets a hosing on the WhatsApp group for it.
18: rural cleansing
It feels like we hear a lot about the plight of rural Ireland. We don’t, of course. If you grew up there, you know that we don’t hear half enough about it. What we hear about are things such as bad broadband and closed post offices and rows over milk quotas. And obviously none of that is unimportant. But hardly anyone ever talks about the fact that the towns we grew up in are places that have been routinely cleansed of youth.
19: lost generations
Sit and have a coffee in a shopping centre in a medium-sized Irish town some day. Sit and people-watch for a while. You will see any amount of schoolkids, all hair and acne and hubbub. Plenty of grown-ups too, from starter-home couples with a site out the road to grandparents pushing buggies until six o’clock comes around. But it won’t be long before you realise that there’s next to nobody in their 20s.
20: sucked of energy
That’s what deadens a rural town. It’s the school-leavers who go to college and end up staying on in Dublin or Galway or Cork or Belfast when they’re done. It’s the backpackers who strike out for all points of the compass and disappear on tangents that never occurred to their teenaged selves. It’s the jobbing ex-pats who know they’ll come back to Ireland at some stage but can’t rightly see themselves going home. Drib by drab, a town leaks energy and ideas and bouldness and agitation.
21: flag days
But a county team going on a run – now that shakes a place up. A couple of years back, I was in Cavan for their Ulster championship opener. They were in the preliminary round of Ulster that year and Armagh were due in Breffni Park. Down the town beforehand, I was standing in the carvery queue someplace and overheard two little old ladies in conversation. “Well, what about the match?” asked one. “Aw, I haven’t even put out the flag this year,” replied the other.
22: moment in the sun
And why would she? At the time, Cavan hadn’t won an Ulster championship match since 2009 and hadn’t beaten anyone other than Fermanagh or Antrim in it since 2004. But that was the day that Martin Dunne scored eight points from play against a comically helpful Armagh defence and, from there, Cavan started to pick up momentum. They played seven games that summer and made it all the way to August before falling to Kerry in Croke Park. Half the county was in the stands that day and when it was over, the team walked off to a standing ovation.
23: standing in hope
That standing tells you a bit, I think, about what we want out of the championship. When it came down to it, Cavan didn’t do a whole lot more than they should have that summer. Their five wins came against Armagh, Fermanagh (twice), Derry and London. They were done out of a draw against Monaghan by a poxy refereeing decision and they left it way too late to make any sort of shape against Kerry. It goes without saying that they never threatened to actually win silverware.
24: the run is everything
But it was the run. The run was everything. From Breffni Park to Clones to Enniskillen to Derry to Croke Park. They played four weekends in a row from mid-July to early August that included a hammering of Fermanagh in Brewster Park, an extra-time win on the road in Celtic Park and a first win in Croke Park in 61 years. It didn’t matter that it was against London and that they weren’t that all impressive, what mattered was the run. They barely ruffled Kerry’s hair but the people standing to clap them off were saying thanks for the summer.
Related Blue-sky thinker - Jim Gavin, the more we see the less we know Cork football isn’t dead - Eoin Cadogan is ready to bring the glory back Kieran Donaghy 10 years on: The second coming or a league midfielder
Second Captains
25: hope is jet fuel
Thanks for the hope, too. Don’t forget the hope. As much as we spend our GAA lives fetishising the past, hope for the future is the jet fuel of any sport. Without it, you’re glued to the tarmac, stuck with the grim certainty that there’s no prospect for take-off. Cavan got a bit along the way that summer and bound up in the standing ovation was the presumption that they’d get a bit further the next year.
26: the comedown
They didn’t, of course. In the two championships since then, they’ve been gone after three games both times. Hey, that’s part of it too.
27: the belonging
“I think it’s probably a sense of belonging,” says John Gunnigan, owner and curator of the MayoGAABlog website. “It’s the journey. I mean, I don’t buy into this thing of our journey being a purer journey because we don’t ever get there. All this aren’t-we-great-for-keeping-at-it stuff, I don’t go with that at all. I’d swap it all for one win and I think we all would. But at the same time, there’s a sort of renewal to it every year. Every year you crash and burn and every year you pick yourself up and you try again.”
28: childhood heroes
Gunnigan is a soft-spoken, mid-50s, tech professional who hasn’t lived in Mayo since the very early 1980s. Usual story – went to Dublin, went to London, came back, settled in Dublin. Lives in Drumcondra, kids play for St Vincent’s. The kids are Dubs but they have heroes on both coasts. They think life will always be this good.
29: points of view
He started the blog in 2007; it has grown indecently since – the hit-counter long ago passed 2.5 million visits. It’s a site for Mayo supporters to come and mingle and in an effort to prevent it becoming just another internet cesspool, Gunnigan (through his online alter-ego Willie Joe) moderates with a tight rein. Personal abuse of players and managers and other posters isn’t tolerated and playing bouncer takes time and effort that he could very easily be giving to something else. Well he knows it, too.
30: life’s work
“My background training is in economics so I know all about opportunity cost. But you don’t think about that. It’s been enormous fun. It’s been an enormous millstone.”
31: Mayo’s wait
We meet for coffee in Nelly’s at the top of Clonliffe Road. Out the window, the back of the Hogan Stand juts out over the little red Lego houses of Fitzroy Avenue and Russell Avenue. He grew up not knowing the place because Mayo were useless then. People talk about Mayo waiting 65 years for an All-Ireland but really, they’ve only been seriously waiting on one for the past 20 or so.
32: final agony
“The last 10 minutes of the ’96 final, I was catatonic. I couldn’t move in my seat. People wonder why Mayo people don’t shout at matches. It’s because we’re trying to breathe.”
33: a county, a people
Mayo people. A phrase that reminds us the GAA is one of the last places in polite society where you can generalise about a group of citizens and nobody minds. It’s encouraged, frankly.
34: a glorious splash
Mayo people are not long-suffering, by the by. Gunnigan won’t hear of it. “The last years have just been incredible for Mayo. I just cannot take people giving out that we should be doing better. Because this is not our natural habitat. A glorious splash every now and then before going into the doldrums again is more our thing.”
35: big beasts rule
It’s more everyone’s thing, really. Take out the big beasts in hurling and football and the doldrums are a familiar and crowded locale. Between them, Kilkenny, Dublin and Kerry have won 20 of the 32 All-Irelands since the turn of the century. They’ve been runners-up in another eight. Of the past 25 seasons, only two – 1996 and 2001 – have ended without at least one of them contesting a final in September.
36: keep on keeping on
So whatever it is that keeps us interested, variety ain’t high on the list.
37: we know the flaws
It’s hardly as if we’re blind to the flaws of the thing either. You can list them off in your sleep. Amateur sports that are fundamentally weighted towards the counties who can raise the most money. A football championship that is deeply unfair in what it asks different teams to achieve in order to reach the same point of the competition. A hurling championship that we pass off as our national game even though the vast majority of the country has only ever seen it on TV.
38: and there’s more
More, plenty more. A sporting culture where the abuse of referees is so blithely accepted that GAA president Aogán Ó Fearghail actually thinks making the teams shake hands before a game will make a difference in combating it. Verbal abuse of a referee is a black card offence in football – when did you last see it happen? Did you ever?
39: innocents abroad
And the sanctimony. Dear God, the sanctimony. As if no other sporting organisation on earth had volunteers or fundraisers or community involvement or supporters who blacken the roads following their team around. As if the fact that the players don’t get paid entitles them to some sort of leeway when it comes to dope-testing. As if hurlers and footballers don’t cheat and dive and sledge the same as every other group of motivated sportspeople in the world.
40: a word on the Euros
The Euros are coming up. Dunno about you but I can’t wait for the Euros. Feel free not to Tweet about the differences between hurling and soccer during it. People who do that are a pain in the hole.
41: luck of the draw?
Imagine, as a quick aside, a Euros where Ireland had to beat four teams – including three of the top six in the tournament – to reach the quarter-finals, while Germany only had to win two to get there, and only one of them against sticky opposition. The tournament would be a laughing stock.
42: some joke?
Well, replace Ireland with Fermanagh who start tomorrow against Antrim and will have to beat Donegal, Monaghan and Tyrone to reach August and change Germany for Kerry who don’t start for another month and have to get past either Clare or Limerick and then Cork to do the same. Some joke, eh?
43: football’s broken ways
The football championship is broken, everyone agrees this. And yet there is no appetite to fix it. The reason we know this for sure is that serious people went away and spent a year trying to come up with a way to fix it and returned with the only solution that has been shown to fail in the past.
44: don’t mention Congress
That happened at Congress, by the way, on which we will not get started.
45: players forgotten
Except to wonder – again – at exactly why it is we stick with this thing. The 2016 Congress was by common consent one of the most elitist and conservative in years. Again, everyone agrees that club players are being screwed by the length of the intercounty season and still they couldn’t get the All-Ireland finals played two weeks earlier. Nor could they get replays abolished to make a bit of room.
46: Cash is king...
Those were two small changes that could have made a big difference. But Congress chose to go with the money. Scrap replays and you’re scrapping replay cash. Bring the All-Ireland forward and you’re handing September to the rugby crowd. Money, money, money.
47: ...and money talks...
Same with the Dubs and Croke Park. For years, it’s the other 11 Leinster counties that have kept them playing there. Now that they’re being moved for just one game, it’s to a neutral venue in Nowlan Park rather than ceding home advantage. Money, money, money.
48: ...Shhhhhhhhh!
Money is the great unspoken, always. On RTÉ Radio during the league quarter-finals in Thurles, John Mullane started talking about the financial backing of one of the teams, only for Brian Carthy beside him to chuckle nervously and go, “Don’t talk about money in an amateur game, John!”
49: don’t mention the €22m
Look, it’s live radio and the air won’t fill itself so it doesn’t do to be too harsh about these things. But isn’t that a bizarre thing to say? To think, even? Never in the history of the GAA has the effect of money invested in county teams been clearer to the naked eye. It took €22 million to run them last year. And we’re not supposed to talk about it?
50: under-the- table wedge
That €22 million doesn’t cover whatever under-the-table wedge the various county managers got, obviously. We can take it though that nothing has changed since the days when former president Peter Quinn opined that not only could his investigative committee into managerial payments not find the money, they “couldn’t even find the tables under which the payments were being made”.
51: club chagrin
All of this feeds into a low-level hum of disillusionment. Clubs that are already going thin and wan with players moving to the cities resent losing the best of those who stay behind to the county set-up. Small counties shake their fist at big counties for taking in Brink trucks of sponsorship money and not throwing a cut their way. Supporters spit the names of them bastards up in Croke Park who they believe to be making out like bandits.
52: intercounty
The intercounty game grows more and more remote from its people every year. One team closes off its training sessions, others follow suit. One team shuts down engagement with the press, the rest aren’t far behind.
53: media blackout
Media access to county teams now is the worst its ever been. Which wouldn’t matter in the slightest except it means that public access to county teams is the worst its ever been. Outside of product launches and free-for-all press nights, you’re generally at nothing trying to talk to players. On the whole, managers just don’t want them doing it.
54 : sponsorship grip
Mind you, players know their worth too. A colleague from another paper tells a story about ringing up a player for an interview. He’d got to know him reasonably well on All Stars trips so he thought there might be a chance. “Yeah, no problem,” came the reply. “Now, is this the Adidas one or the Allianz one?” “Oh. Eh, it’s neither,” said the reporter. “It’s just me.” And the player laughed and said thanks but Jesus he couldn’t be doing that.
55: packing it in
In the past two years, five of the GAA reporters from various newspapers have upped and decided it wasn’t for them anymore. That’s five out of a pool of maybe 20-ish who moved on and did something else.
56: outside the bubble
Everyone had different reasons and by no means was it all to do with access. But each of them would tell you that it has become far more of a grind in recent years. The paranoia, the sanitisation, the mind-numbing futility of chasing team news. All because county teams hold that bubble sacrosanct.
57: why can’t we quit?
So why do it? Players pay with their bodies, supporters pay with their wallets, the media pays with its self-respect. So why will we all pile in for the next four months and, come September, proclaim it another fine year? Why can’t we quit the championship?
58: because we can’t
Mostly, we don’t want to. It never really occurs to us. What would we talk about at home?
59: a different Kildare
Cian O’Neill manages Kildare now. Over the past decade or so, he’s been to All-Ireland finals with the Mayo and Kerry footballers and the Tipperary hurlers. He has seen the elite side of the championship in both codes and is about to experience what it means at a different level. This feels different already. Not better, not more real, nothing like that. Just different.
60: links within links
“Identity is such a huge thing. People feel a part of it because of the structure of it, with the clubs feeding into counties. It’s ‘I know him, I went to school with him, he went out with my sister’ – that kind of thing. Subconsciously or not, it’s ‘they’re succeeding so therefore the county is succeeding, therefore I am succeeding’. People want that connection.”
61: pure escape
A few weeks back, Kildare played a challenge match against Laois to open a new clubhouse in Monasterevin. O’Neill got off the bus and the first face he saw was a guy he had played with at minor and under-21 who was on stewarding duty. He got inside and the committee was lashing up sandwiches in the kitchen. There was a fete on for the kids. The two teams got a run-out and the players signed everything in sight afterwards. For a couple of hours, nobody talked about Irish Water or homelessness or government formation.
62: connections
The identity thing matters. Connections matter. O’Neill was with Tipp for four years but he finished up in September 2011. He still gets wedding invites from that panel. His wife still has friends from there and from Mayo and from Kerry.
63: home is home
But Kildare is home. It’s his first managerial job so it would have its own pressure anyway. But home is home. The week after Kerry won the 2014 All-Ireland, he was back on the line with his club Moorefield as they won the county championship. Sure where else would he be?
64: the passion
“It’s a bit silly, the whole thing,” said O’Neill that day in Rathfarnham. “The time you put into it is definitely a bit silly. When you’re married, you should probably be doing other things as a married man. And the time that players put into it and supporters put into it, it is a bit silly. But that’s what you do. It comes from the passion we all have for it.”
65: the challenge
“What else would you be doing, I suppose?” said Michael Fennelly that day in Kilkenny. “What would you be doing? Playing club, tipping away. But this, setting a goal, playing for Kilkenny, trying to get on the team, trying to win things, that’s your goal in life. If you weren’t playing this, you’d be playing club but you still want something to challenge yourself.”
66:the alive-ness
“Look it, we’re alive,” said John Gunnigan that day in Drumcondra. “It’s something to do while we’re alive. There’ll be many a long year when we won’t be.”
67: the belonging
That’s the long and short of it, really. We do it because we do it. Because it’s there. Because it feeds into the part of us that wants to belong to something, even if that something doesn’t always mean that much to us throughout the other months of the year. Without the championship, it’s entirely possible we might very well regard our native counties as no more dear to us than English folk do theirs.
68: the exception
Cork people excepted, obviously.
69: the never-ending
The championship endures and it will outlive us all. What are the threats to it, after all? Disinterest? Four of the top 20 most-watched TV events of 2015 were GAA matches. Just over 1.3 million people went to games, broadly the same as the previous two years, both of which were bumped out by replays in All-Ireland finals. Not bad going when only three teams can feasibly win the football and one crowd are untouchable in the hurling.
70: the here and the now
No, it’ll be there as long as it likes. In all its maddening, elitist, unequal, weirdly structured, professionally amateur, amateurishly professional, hypocritical, respect-handshake-me-arse glory. Because today or tomorrow or next week or next month, you’ll be standing in a stadium somewhere and the anthem will be rising and none of that stuff will enter your head. You’ll let a roar and rub your hands together and know, if only for that moment, you wouldn’t be anywhere else.
70+: the last word
We’ll leave the last word to the fearr láidir from Kerry whose column will return presently . . . “What else are we going to do? Go home? Go to Mass? Sure we tried that!” – Darragh Ó Sé, The Irish Times.
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Post by sullyschoice on May 14, 2016 21:42:32 GMT
I got to number 7 and then just wanted to shoot myself in the face.
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Post by Mickmack on May 15, 2016 11:04:06 GMT
reading the bit about Michael Fennelly, you would have to wonder at times do GAA players suspend the "cause and effect" bit of their brain for the pursuit of another medal.
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Post by clancy on May 15, 2016 12:41:58 GMT
Its about the haves and the havenots and trying to even things up a bit more. Kerry are one of the haves. The piecemeal changes over the years have all widended the gap .... the qualifiers...big teams wont be caught napping twice in a short space of time, the doubling of the amount of subs that clearly benefits teams with lots of players to pick from, the introduction of sponsorship where successful teams are likely to get more money... etc. I would love to see Cavan and the Rossies meet in a final in a few years...Annascaultilidie.. and for offaly to return but the elite are moving away too much and Dublin look like they will move away out of sight of everyone. Funnily enough, the Dublin people i talk to are not interested in this happening either...Dublin moving out of sight of everyone i mean Life isn't fair. Get over it. We can't all be equal. The belief that everyone is or should be equal holds a lot of people back. If a team wants to get better they need to get motivated, get organised, work harder and stop making excuses. When you make excuses you are only giving yourself a free pass for failing to take care if what you can control. I really think Dublin are a fine, fine team but no team is unbeatable. This whingeaton must stop. Rant over. I think Annascaultilidie and me rashers are making valid points. We say this every year "the all ire winner is unbeatable" until they are beaten. I understand the money ect however in afraid Mick mac is not happy with the dubs dominance due to the fact it stops Kerry being totally dominant. As for the malacy clerkin purse now that's some piece of rubbish.
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