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Post by kerrygold on Feb 1, 2018 11:40:32 GMT
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Post by Mickmack on Feb 1, 2018 14:07:42 GMT
Tis strange now that the GAA national leagues start before the rugby six nations. For me always, the six nations signalled the start of the sporting year.
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Post by kerrygold on Feb 2, 2018 11:15:23 GMT
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Post by kerrygold on Feb 14, 2018 9:10:26 GMT
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Post by jackiel on Feb 14, 2018 9:47:41 GMT
That explains why MOTM was ushered into the dressing room when he came off on Saturday night.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2018 10:13:23 GMT
Very odd. I don't understand the issue here. What has changed?
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Post by buck02 on Feb 14, 2018 12:30:25 GMT
Very odd. I don't understand the issue here. What has changed? Jim needs to get one of his mates working on Eir. The camera behind Hill 16 was very handy to have for analysis in the past. Jim could get that from RTE where others couldnt.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2018 14:03:23 GMT
Seems pretty petty from gentleman Jim.
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Post by givehimaball on Feb 15, 2018 16:03:48 GMT
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Post by beantownfan on Feb 15, 2018 23:10:05 GMT
A pretty heartfelt piece from Paddy O'Rourke. I am sure there are plenty of other lads around the country that feel the same way. I was chatting with a Co. footballer from Leitrim a few years back and it was eye opening the lengths they went to compete. No booze from early Dec till championship ended, they got an 'exemption' for New Year's eve.. No fast food from New Year till the end of championship etc.. For a county whose biggest aspiration would be to win 2 or 3 championship games I thought it was a brutal training plan to inflict on players. aib.ie/gaa/blog/2018/02/paddy_o_rourke_im_finished_with_county
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Post by damarys on Feb 15, 2018 23:55:58 GMT
Very honest.I had a son on a dublin development team and it is scary the effort that is now required.Where is the fun?Your life is on hold.I think this interview will encourage other players to review their effort they put into county panels and come to the realisation that its not for them
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Post by kerrygold on Feb 16, 2018 9:26:45 GMT
Joe Sheridan was saying something similar recently also. If this is representative of the mindset in Meath they are in freefall. It has evolved a long way from the way Mick Lyons & Co. approached the game and the Meath jersey.
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Post by hatchetman on Feb 16, 2018 10:50:15 GMT
Hard to find fault with anything he said.
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kerryexile
Fanatical Member
Whether you believe that you can, or that you can't, you are right anyway.
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Post by kerryexile on Feb 16, 2018 11:04:34 GMT
You could even sense the frustration leaving him as he unburdens himself.
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Post by MrRasherstoyou on Feb 17, 2018 3:24:35 GMT
It's sad that he wants to give up. Like it is for anyone who follows a great goal and then doesn't want to anymore. But how is it different from any player playing for any county that doesn't have any success for years? It can be dressed up as something else but there have always only been a few really successful counties in any two eras, it just happens that Meath were one of those for the best part of 20 years and now they're not. They also didn't win Leinster from 1970 to 1986, that's a longer gap than recently.
There is no argument that the vast majority of players have no hope of winning any major trophy for their whole career, as it always was, for varying reasons. Things were arguably much worse before the qualifier system came in. The 1990s were something of an anomaly. The 60s are seen as a great era but three counties won 9 of the All-Irelands. In the 00s two counties won 8. Two counties completely dominated Ulster from the late 90s til about 2011
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Post by Mickmack on Feb 17, 2018 11:43:29 GMT
It's sad that he wants to give up. Like it is for anyone who follows a great goal and then doesn't want to anymore. But how is it different from any player playing for any county that doesn't have any success for years? It can be dressed up as something else but there have always only been a few really successful counties in any two eras, it just happens that Meath were one of those for the best part of 20 years and now they're not. They also didn't win Leinster from 1970 to 1986, that's a longer gap than recently. There is no argument that the vast majority of players have no hope of winning any major trophy for their whole career, as it always was, for varying reasons. Things were arguably much worse before the qualifier system came in. The 1990s were something of an anomaly. The 60s are seen as a great era but three counties won 9 of the All-Irelands. In the 00s two counties won 8. Two counties completely dominated Ulster from the late 90s til about 2011 Its unarguable that at any time in the past 100 years no more four counties could win it. Great teams came and went in Cavan, Roscommon, Meath, Down, Offaly etc. But the difference now and going forward is that the top four teams may not change much. Dublin simply cant drop out now due to money, population and structures mainly funded by the GAA. Kerry will be there too as long as the population stays round the 150k mark which is two and a half times the size of the likes of cavan, monaghan and roscommon. Mayo and Kerry are two of the counties most likely to be hit hardest by brexit. A sobering thought. So looking back over 100 years and saying different teams popped up to challenge from time to time does not mean that this model will apply in the future. If i were a player with a smaller county with no change of winning i would concentrate on playing club rather than buying into the current inter county system and simply making up the numbers
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Post by kerrygold on Feb 17, 2018 12:07:41 GMT
Ya but the Meath players should be be demanding success of themselves. Meath should be a major football franchise. They are in the middle of everything as neighbours to Dublin. The challenge for the GAA going forward will be to apply the same level of financial doping across Leinster as enjoyed by Dublin now.
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Post by Mickmack on Feb 17, 2018 12:27:21 GMT
Brogan’s real value to Dublin will only be evident in his absence For all their strength in depth, champions may miss a finisher of his proven class
Divining anything real or substantial from league football is like the art of reading tea-leaves: you can see whatever you choose to see and because everything is so vague, nothing is really wrong.
That’s how it went after Saturday night’s entertaining Dublin-Donegal match in Croke Park, when the visitors surprised everyone by pushing the All-Ireland champions until the very end.
Some interpreted those 70 minutes as evidence that the pack is closing in on Dublin and that Donegal demonstrated how to make the champions feel uncomfortable.
The counter argument was that even on a so-so night, Dublin rattled off 0-20, took ownership of the critical closing 10 minutes and offered a formidable glimpse into the sky blue future in the athletic, free-scoring performances of Brian Howard and Colm Basquel.
Bernard Brogan had been pencilled in to start in that game but it was announced shortly before throw-in that Paddy Andrews would be replacing him. Then on Monday, it emerged that Brogan had torn his cruciate ligament at training the previous Thursday night, leaving his availability this season hanging in the balance.
The reaction to the news was surprisingly muted; sympathetic and bolstered with words of hope that he would fight back from the injury and return for the 2019 season, when he will be 35.
But there was no real sense that anything had changed in the greater scheme of things. In any other county, losing a player of Brogan’s calibre – a four-time All-Star, a former footballer of the year, a five time All-Ireland medallist (and MOTM in one of those finals, with a 2-3 return against Mayo in 2013) – would cause an instant re-evaluation of the prospects for the season ahead.
Most counties have one attacking player whose absence would cause incalculable damage. Kerry have more riches than most but nonetheless, a period of general mourning took hold in Kerry in the weeks after Colm Cooper suffered a severe knee injury while playing for Dr Crokes in the club championships in November 2013.
That was a terrible blow for a player who had seemed to be made of titanium but also deemed fatal to Kerry’s chances of competing at the highest level in what was Éamonn Fitzmaurice’s first season in charge.
In retrospect, the series of early-season disasters and setbacks followed by the summer charge and the reappearance of the totemic Cooper in the squad for the All-Ireland semi-final replay looks like a staggering example of Kerry cuteness. Everyone writes them off; James O’Donoghue fills the void by having the season of his life; Kerry win a surprise All-Ireland and Cooper is there, in the wings, ready for the following season. Even when all was lost, Kerry somehow won.
Limitless riches The difference with Brogan and Dublin is that the All-Ireland champions are regarded as having limitless riches. They absorbed the loss of full back Rory O’Carroll after 2015 and still went to win the All-Ireland – twice. They facilitated Jack McCaffrey’s period away from the game in 2016 without suffering any visible diminishment in performances.
Last summer, they shipped the blow of Diarmuid Connolly’s long summer suspension and sailed through to the All-Ireland final anyway. The glittering debut season of Con O’Callaghan seemed to offer proof that the next generation of Dublin players will just keep pushing the standard. Brian Howard was billed as the name to watch prior to this season’s league and in the opening three league games, he has just slotted into the Dublin attack as though he has been there all of his life.
In addition, Brogan spent most of last year’s championship as part of the most decorated substitute bench in Gaelic football history, unable to get a proper look in as the new crew simply cruised to the All-Ireland final.
He was introduced in the 65th minute of that game. This can be interpreted as proof that he had indeed moved to the periphery of Jim Gavin’s plans or as evidence that, when it came to it, Dublin absolutely wanted him on the field during the critical passage of play in a gripping finale against Mayo.
One of the minor intrigues of Dublin this season was watching to see how the senior stars like Paul Flynn, Michael Darragh Macauley and Brogan would respond to the challenge of reclaiming pitch time. On the opening night of the league, Brogan started in Croke Park against Kildare and he was outstanding, creating both Dublin goals with back-to-the-goal touches which were wonderfully efficient.
“You could see he had that zest for the game,” says Andriú MacLochlainn, the former Kildare man-marker specialist who was given the task of shadowing Brogan as he gradually developed into Dublin’s marquee forward.
MacLochlainn feels that the consensus is probably correct; that even if Brogan is unable to recover from his injury this season, Dublin will simply absorb his absence as they have done all others. But he agrees that Brogan is unique in the variety of threats he presents as an attacker.
“He offers a really good mix of threats for management because of the ways in which he can cause difficulties. Because he is not a small lad but he is not a massive guy either. He is not lightning fast but he is by no means slow either. He can take a ball whether it is in front of him or over his head and then the critical thing for any good forward is that he is comfortable on both feet once he has half a yard of space. Those are the key things.”
And that is the exceptional thing about Brogan. He doesn’t rely on what has become the overwhelming quality of the Dublin collective: speed. He never tries to burn his man a la Kevin McManamon or Paul Mannion or, more recently Niall Scully or Con O’Callaghan or Brian Howard.
Brogan’s game is based on that deceptive ability under a high ball but most of all on his infinite patience; the willingness to remain almost invisible until the moment arrives when his marker loses a step or concentration or gets sucked towards the play when one of Dublin’s platoon of aggressive ball carriers – Macauley, McCarthy, Bastick/Fenton, Connolly – come charging down the central column.
Uncanny ability Then you’ll invariably see Brogan, hanging on the very edge of the play, receiving hand raised and always, always perfectly positioned to turn towards goal. The most striking difference between Brogan and the other stellar attacking players –Kilkenny or McManamon or O’Callaghan – is that their prevailing qualities are either obvious or, in the case of Diarmuid Connolly, downright extravagant.
What Brogan does isn’t necessarily the jaw-dropping stuff. Those two goals in the 2013 final were point blank goals scored with his hands. Yet the first he created out of nothing: a teardrop kick into the square where he had to beat both fullback and goalkeeper to the ball with his back to goal.
And that goal – like the one in the second half – was a lifeline to his team. When you watch Brogan, he seems to have this uncanny ability to find himself in the space to kick relatively simple points regularly. As he made the metamorphosis into one of the brand faces of Gaelic football, his opportunities for introspection tapered off but in a podcast-thingy he did with former Meath defender Anthony Moyles a few years ago, he offered this astute self-assessment.
“I am not naturally gifted at football. I work hard at what I do. If I lay back and don’t practice my kicking the percentages and it goes off. I have to kick 50 balls three times a week to make sure I am sharp on match day. It is something I learned. I had to work harder than the other people out there.
“We all train four and five times a week but I had to do more because what I was doing wasn’t enough. If I take a couple of weeks off and carry a niggle, I struggle. So keeping well and fit is very important for me. As a striker or someone who takes scores you need to have the ball in your hand and practice. There is no substitute for it.”
There’s an irony in the parade of fully-formed ball players crowding the auditions for places in Dublin’s starting roster now in that Brogan’s emergent years couldn’t have been more different. He was 20 when he tore his cruciate ligament, a setback that delayed his progress by almost a year.
Even after that, he had to labour in obscurity while his brother Alan became a Hill favourite, waiting until 2007 until he made his full debut and coming to prominence during three summers when Dublin went through scalding and valuable losing experiences.
“It wasn’t until Dublin started to develop a system in which they were unselfish and he was the guy doing a lot of the finishing that he came into his own,” says MacLochlainn.
“He was obviously putting a severe amount of work on his frees as well and he made those an add-on to his game. The way Dublin play tends to mean a lot of overlaps and Bernard doesn’t mind stepping out of the direct play and creating the space where he can go through and score a goal. He is a very clever player and he has developed that as he has gone on.”
The GAA has become notoriously ageist but at 34, there was nothing to suggest that the best of Brogan lay in his past. It remains to be seen if he can rehabilitate the injury without surgery and perhaps yet play a part as Dublin push on. Either way, he will be hell-bent on ensuring that it doesn’t end on this aggravating note.
And if that’s the last we have seen of Bernard Brogan for the 2018 season then it can be said the All-Ireland champions have lost the one player for whom they have no automatic replacement. And that absence might only be felt if the cast of young stars fail to flare at the critical moments of the championship. It’s only then that Dublin will truly need a forward whose brilliance lies in turning a match on nothing moments. So the odds on Dublin retaining the All-Ireland championship didn’t budge whatsoever with the news that Brogan may be out. But maybe, just maybe, they should have done.
R
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Post by kerrygold on Feb 17, 2018 12:44:25 GMT
It is clutching at straws to think BBs absense could tilt Dublin's challenge for Sam over the edge this year.
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Post by MrRasherstoyou on Feb 18, 2018 2:21:38 GMT
It is clutching at straws to think BBs absense could tilt Dublin's challenge for Sam over the edge this year. Agreed, but as a cautious person by nature, and a student of the layers of factors to be read between the black lines and white spaces, Brogan's impact may well be most felt in a mental way by those who remain. He brought confidence and challenge and standards to his presence/to the team, even when not playing. He could always be relied on to step in and do a job, sometimes a very unselfish one. He is not just a leader but an elder figure for the team. It's hard to judge til the pudding is is tasted just what impact it will have. For Kerry in 2014 it was if anything a liberating and motivating thing when Gooch was out, as so much had depended on him for the last few years, and he was such an outstanding icon of Kerry football and beyond. Brogan doesn't occupy that place for Dublin now or recently. I feel he simply has been a very steadying influence, occupying alot of effort from opposition to deal with, and being a large part of that fabled "strength in depth". So in summary this year for the forwards especially becomes more about stepping up into greater leadership and responsibility, and for those like Connolly who've been around a while to focus themselves even more to greater effort.
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Post by stevieq on Feb 18, 2018 8:38:43 GMT
"for those like Connolly who've been around a while to focus themselves even more to greater effort."
-Good luck with that!
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Post by kerrygold on Feb 18, 2018 10:24:42 GMT
It is clutching at straws to think BBs absense could tilt Dublin's challenge for Sam over the edge this year. Agreed, but as a cautious person by nature, and a student of the layers of factors to be read between the black lines and white spaces, Brogan's impact may well be most felt in a mental way by those who remain. He brought confidence and challenge and standards to his presence/to the team, even when not playing. He could always be relied on to step in and do a job, sometimes a very unselfish one. He is not just a leader but an elder figure for the team. It's hard to judge til the pudding is is tasted just what impact it will have. For Kerry in 2014 it was if anything a liberating and motivating thing when Gooch was out, as so much had depended on him for the last few years, and he was such an outstanding icon of Kerry football and beyond. Brogan doesn't occupy that place for Dublin now or recently. I feel he simply has been a very steadying influence, occupying alot of effort from opposition to deal with, and being a large part of that fabled "strength in depth". So in summary this year for the forwards especially becomes more about stepping up into greater leadership and responsibility, and for those like Connolly who've been around a while to focus themselves even more to greater effort. It will be seamless like when Dublin moved on seamlessly without their fullback a number of years ago.
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Post by southward on Feb 18, 2018 13:56:51 GMT
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Post by kerrygold on Feb 21, 2018 10:52:58 GMT
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Post by kerrygold on Feb 27, 2018 9:41:40 GMT
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Post by onlykerry on Feb 27, 2018 9:51:29 GMT
Pitch in Pairc Ui Chaoimh looked terrible on the TV last weekend - huge investment in concrete but the pitch should be centre stage and in better condition.
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Post by ddtinexile on Feb 27, 2018 11:47:24 GMT
That place was always a bog and will remain a bog. Not sure if it's true or false bu t I was told when the tide in the Lee is full it seeps under PUC and they have under ground pumps pumping the water out from under the pitch.
True or False....anyone.
Might be ok in the summer if we get a summer.
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Post by glengael on Mar 1, 2018 9:22:31 GMT
I note Laochra Gael on TG4 has belatedly changed to a one hour format for the new series. Lar Corbett was featured last night. No Kerry people this season I think.
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Post by Mickmack on Mar 2, 2018 0:08:42 GMT
Loneliness and controversy: Life as GAA director-general
Páraic Duffy on retirement: ‘If Croke Park was in Monaghan, I’d have the perfect job’ Sat, Feb 24, 2018, 06:30
Malachy Clerkin The GAA's director general steps down after a decade in the job l
Director-general of the GAA. Would you do it? Would you want to? It’s a uniquely conditioned role in Irish life. You’re the face of an organisation over whose body you realistically have little control. In theory, you’re the chief exec, the grand poobah. In practice, you’re the complaints department. The suit of all suits. Them Hoors Above in Croke Park made flesh.
At some point over the next couple of months, Páraic Duffy will take the lift down from the sixth floor of Croke Park for the last time. He will point his car up the M1, turn off at the Ardee bypass and kill the hour from there to Scotstown with, probably, some class of podcast. Major League baseball will be coming round by then so maybe something to do with the Red Sox. Or Spurs maybe. Sport, anyway.
His phone won’t ring with the next day’s problem. His mind won’t drift to the length of his to-do list. He will melt back into rural life, and the future of the country’s biggest sporting and cultural organisation will be someone else’s look-out. And he will be thoroughly and genuinely content for that to be the case.
“If you asked me to do another year, I just couldn’t face it,” says Duffy. “Partly that’s because when you decide to go, you’re halfway out the door already. For the last year, I’ve known that this was going to be the end of it. At the moment, I’m doing the work but my head is back in Monaghan.
“For the last 21 years – between a decade as principal in St Macartan’s [College in Monaghan] and 11 years working here – I’m not complaining but it’s been two pretty intense jobs. Both of them are never-ending, they’re all-year-round. I know the big concern my family have is how I will settle down into not working at a very intense rate. They wonder how I will fill my time, how I will slow down. I think I’ll manage it.”
One way or another, he is done. When he took over from Liam Mulvihill in November 2007, his intention was to do the seven-year term and let that be that. Liam O’Neill asked him to stay on as the eighth year loomed and he was enjoying it enough to keep trucking.
Dark side of the moon But in his head, Duffy was never going to do any more than three more years. Scotstown isn’t exactly the dark side of the moon – he can go door to door in two hours – but it’s There, not Here. He has lived apart from his family for a decade. It’s time to go home.
Páraic Duffy: “If you asked me to do another year, I just couldn’t face it. Partly that’s because when you decide to go, you’re halfway out the door already.” Photograph: Donall Farmer/Inpho Páraic Duffy: “If you asked me to do another year, I just couldn’t face it. Partly that’s because when you decide to go, you’re halfway out the door already.” Photograph: Donall Farmer/Inpho “That’s been the hardest part. That’s the one thing above all others that I’m looking forward to seeing the end of. I’m looking forward to getting back to Monaghan. That was the biggest negative for me. I used to travel back to Dublin religiously on a Sunday night, I never left it until Monday morning. I always said that if Croke Park was in Monaghan, I’d have the perfect job. Living away from home for 10 years has been difficult, no doubt about it.
“I used to find the evenings very long. I was living in an apartment – my daughter was with me so that was a help but she has her own life to live. I used to miss the evening time being at home, going out training teams with Scotstown and all the craic involved with that.
“That’s the one thing I’m really looking forward to. Being at home, being involved with the club, being involved locally. That was the biggest negative of living in Dublin. Financially it would have made a lot more sense living at home but you couldn’t have done the job as well as you’d like.”
Whether or not he has done it well depends on your own context and the prism through which you see the association. That Duffy is popular with his staff is obvious when you talk to anyone in the building; that he is impressive in the face of questioning – for instance during his annual trip to the Oireachtas committee – equally so. Even his loudest critics regard him as an honest broker and an indefatigable worker.
Duffy calls on individual counties to address club fixtures issue And yet, and yet. It is undeniable that the broader view towards him from within the plain populace of the GAA has turned attritional over the past few years. He has become a lightning rod for the myriad ills that have chipped away at the association’s soul. Take your pick from the Sky deal, the fixtures morass, the championship structures and plenty more.
Symbolic problem Some of it is his own fault, certainly. The Sky deal would be a symbolic problem regardless of how it was arrived at, but for it to come no more than a year after he had effectively ruled it out in Michael Moynihan’s book GAAconomics: The Secret Life of Money in the GAA was a bad misstep.
“With our TV rights we’re constrained, rightly, because we wouldn’t get away with selling the rights to the championship to Sky Sports,” he said, before doing just that. Whatever about the ins-and-outs of the move – all of them well-aired at this stage – the abrupt about-turn made him appear disingenuous, a charge nobody was ever able to level at him before.
“On that, I would say that’s fair comment. People do have a right to change their mind, at the same time. But I’ll tell you, Liam Mulvihill’s last report was in 2007 and it was when Setanta came in and had National League rights for the first time. And he talked about how this was a challenge for the association and so on, the first time our games had gone onto a subscription channel. That was a watershed moment at the time and yet it didn’t seem to cause anything like the same furore.
“I accept the fact that it is a problem for people. I have said that numerous times and I have written it numerous times. People will have a different perspective on this to me. They have well- and sincerely-held views and I have never questioned that, and I never ever would. But I have a different view too and people know my reasons for them.”
At the heart of every virtually every criticism that comes his way is the GAA’s unabashed move towards commercialism. Partly this is down to the fact that everyone in the GAA thinks everyone else is making out like bandits. But mostly, it’s down to the fact – readily admitted to by Duffy – that they have chosen their direction deliberately and unapologetically.
“Obviously, it’s something we have taken a fair bit of criticism about. But for me, it’s simple. I want the GAA to be better and stronger and relevant. You can’t do that without finance. We have to compete and our sport has to be presented in the best possible sense. Certainly you would be queasy sometimes and you have to get the balance right. But I think the vast majority of GAA members understand.
“I think first of all they’re very proud of the stadium here and what it has become. At the end of last year, for example, the stadium gave us a cheque for €7.2 million to put into developing the association. I understand people’s concerns but I think we do try to maintain a balance.
‘Defending positions’ “I find myself sometimes defending positions that people are uncomfortable with. But I do genuinely feel that most members are with us on most things. I have been around the country, clubs all over the place. I don’t think that sometimes it’s as big an issue for members as it’s made out to be. I think people understand we have to keep up with the times and that we have to be commercial to remain relevant.”
Money, money, money. Now more than ever, it’s the GAA’s very bloodstream. Nobody has enough, nobody thinks the other crowd deserve it more than they do. If the inter-county game wasn’t where the money was, there’d be no problem with club fixtures. If the provincial councils weren’t maintained on the revenues from the provincial championships, the overall structures could be changed to something more sensible. In time, Duffy reckons, that’s what’s going to have its say.
“There is a problem with the provincial championships. You can’t deny that. The Leinster Championship at the moment doesn’t look good for the year ahead. When you see Meath last Sunday and Kildare at the bottom of Division One, you have to ask where in Leinster is the challenge coming from. And to be honest about it, that’s the biggest problem because Dublin at the moment are in a position where they can freewheel until the provincial championships are over. I think this year that will be a little bit different because the round robin will change things for everyone.
“But it’s definitely a problem. If we continue with a situation where Dublin win, say, nine out of the next 10 Leinster championships and Kerry do the same in Munster, as seems possible, I do think it will get to a situation where the provincial championships won’t go on forever. It is being questioned now more than it ever was before.
“Now, as a Monaghan person I do still see a value in it and even in Connacht it has a certain value. There will be an attachment to it in some counties. But I think eventually, if it continues in this way, you will get to a situation where people will decide, look, the provincial championships should be a competition on their own earlier in the season. I think that change will come. I do. So much has changed in the past 10 to 15 years, I think it’s inevitable.”
Classic conundrum Dublin’s pre-eminence in the football championship has come about on his watch, during which the association aggressively targeted the city for growth. In a way, this is the classic conundrum for the person in his chair. Had the GAA stood idly by and done what they’d always done in Dublin, their foothold in the suburbs would have slipped unacceptably. By pouring funding in at grassroots level on an unprecedented scale, they have protected their sport. At the same time, they’ve contributed to the moribund nature of the top end of it.
“Dublin got their act together and money is part of it, yes,” says Duffy. “But I’ve said this before, the credit goes to John Costello and it goes to the Dublin county board and to Jim Gavin. We will look back and see what a fantastic team this was. But it will pass. It won’t last forever. They could win it this year or next year but that’s sport. Unless you are going to talk about the way the GAA is organised, on the basis of county boundaries, I don’t have an answer to it.
“The one alternative is to make Dublin weaker, is to split them into two or three or four or whatever it takes to make them not as strong as they are now. I don’t think that would be good for the GAA and I have outlined the reasons in my report. If you want to make sure that Dublin will be weaker, that’s the way to do it. But that, to me, is a price I wouldn’t pay.
“You can say I am being disingenuous but to me, that is the logical argument. Look, you have to hope that Dublin won’t dominate forever. I don’t think they will, personally. I think sport teaches us that all around the world. I would find it very hard to believe, for example, that Kerry won’t win an All-Ireland in the next three or four years considering the talent they have coming through at underage.”
Interested observer If and when they do or if and when they don’t, Páraic Duffy will be no more than an interested observer. He’s a selector with the Scotstown reserves this year and will fiddle away at this and that around home. He’ll get over to Spurs a good bit more and set the DVR at night-time for Red Sox and Celtics games to watch back during the day. He’ll go to Monaghan matches in the summer and be happily idle when they’re over. A retired GAA official. Someone they used to talk about.
“There’s things I want to do. I keep buying books that I don’t read. I want to get into watching movies again. I love the movies but I very rarely go. I’ve gone a bit more in recent years but I’m just too tired in the evenings.
“I feel a bit of a regret that I lived in Dublin for 10 years and didn’t really get the most out of it. To be honest, I’d just be too tired. I would go to a film and I would have to bring a can of Red Bull with me in case I would fall asleep. I know – that’s terrible.
“I would go to the Gate theatre maybe three or four times a year, that was the one thing I tried to do. But I couldn’t go without my can of Red Bull. I would have to take it after 10 or 15 minutes, otherwise I would fall asleep. That’s just the way I was – I’m a morning person and I work early in the morning and by the evening time, I’m just wrecked. You work hard here, it’s an intense day’s work every day. There’s always stuff coming at you.”
Not anymore.
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Post by kerrygold on Mar 6, 2018 9:13:57 GMT
Duffy tells us we'll never see the naming rights to Croker sold, he also told we would never have pay per view & Sky which came 12 months later. He says "money is a reality". Yes Paraic, money for everyone except the county players who are asked to prepare like professionals and rest & recover like amateurs who also happen to work full-time. I'll take the name rights of Croker with a pinch of salt after the pay per view with Sky sellout. Sky Park sounds like a nice name...................... www.rte.ie/sport/gaa/2018/0305/945217-duffy-rejects-claims-of-rampant-gaa-commercialism/
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