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Post by Mickmack on Aug 29, 2020 21:44:18 GMT
‘Extremely good value for money’ – Kerry GAA defend cost of live stream weekend pass by Adam Moynihan | Aug 29, 2020 | App News, News, Sport
‘Extremely good value for money’ – Kerry GAA defend cost of live stream weekend pass Kerry GAA have defended the cost of their Senior Football Championship live streams after supporters criticised their pricing policy online.
With spectators unable to attend sporting events due to COVID-19 restrictions, the County Board have been streaming matches via third party websites at a cost of €5 per game.
This weekend, all four Kerry SFC quarter-finals are being streamed by Kerry GAA, but some supporters have taken issue with the price of the newly introduced day and weekend passes that are being marketed by the County Board.
Day passes for Saturday or Sunday, covering two matches each, can be purchased for €10. A weekend pass costs €20.
Clearly, this does not represent a discount but speaking to the Killarney Advertiser today, Kerry GAA PRO Leona Twiss says it was never marketed as such.
“With the weekend pass, it was never even suggested that it was a discounted price,” she said. “It wasn’t at all. It was to ease the work involved in making the transaction.
“We received a lot of comments over the last couple of weeks from people who didn’t want to be putting in their details multiple times for three or four games per weekend.
“We’re trying to simplify the system so if you want to watch four games, it’s just a quick transaction – you don’t have to put in your card details each time.
“The pass was never advertised or marketed in such a way that it would save money.”
Some supporters also raised concerns about the packaging of fixtures in pairs, which means that it is no longer possible to purchase one individual match for €5.
Fans must now buy either a day pass for €10 or a weekend pass for €20, regardless of how many matches they want to watch.
“If you were going to a double-header in Tralee or in Killarney, you would pay a double-header price,” Twiss said. “You couldn’t pay to go into one game and then come out.
“It’s the same reasoning here.”
When it was put to her that selling individual tickets for double-header games would pose logistical problems in real life, and those same problems do not exist online, the Kerry GAA PRO explained that this weekend’s double-headers are actually two streams as opposed to four.
“We’ve bought that period of time (the duration of the two matches plus the break in between) from the streaming company. It is substantially more expensive for us to shut it down and restart a new stream.
“There’s an awful lot of money in that.”
Twiss also defended the pricing of Kerry GAA live streams in general, describing the service as “extremely good value for money”.
“It’s rare that you see a quarter-final of a County Championship for €5. Cork, I know, are free to air, but we’re very competitive in terms of price point and in terms of value. If there was a way of reducing the price, we would certainly look at that.
“And you are talking about multiple members of a household watching it together on a device, whereas if they were going to the game it would be substantially more expensive.
“We would certainly be of the opinion that it is providing value for money.
“Tim Murphy has been clear from the start: this was never run as a money-making initiative. We really just wanted to cover the cost in such a way that we could provide the games for as big an audience as possible.
“It would be impossible for us to stream the games for less than €5 per game. It is a costly operation.”
Will Kerry GAA make a profit out of it?
“It’s very hard to know. This weekend, for example, we have paid for a higher spec package and it will cost us substantially more than previous weekends. We are now incorporating interviews before the game, action replays and multiple camera angles. We got equipment flown in from London last Tuesday that will stabilise the images even more.
“Each weekend we have taken the initiative to invest more money to improve the quality of the product. Each stage has cost more but we have never increased the price point.”
Meanwhile, a number of season ticket holders have complained that they have to pay for the live streams in the first place. They feel as though the streams should be covered by their annual passes, which, under normal circumstances, would have granted them free admission to any club matches they wished to attend.
Twiss said she was unsure if it was “feasible” to give season ticket holders the streams for free, but she added that the County Board will be taking their concerns into consideration.
“We are barely covering our costs at the moment. This weekend we might not even reach that point because of the equipment we got sent in from England. If we were to give the stream out for free to [season ticket holders], would that be feasible to run? I don’t know.
“That is a question for the finance committee and it’s certainly something that’s going to be on the agenda at next week’s finance committee meeting.”
Killarney Legion take on St Brendan’s at 5pm in the first of today’s Kerry SFC quarter-finals with champions East Kerry playing St Kieran’s at 7.15pm.
Tomorrow, Dr Crokes go up against Templenoe at 2pm followed by Kenmare Shamrocks versus Mid Kerry
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 3, 2020 22:37:56 GMT
Consent
GAA
Streaming is now a live option as the GAA looks to broadcasting future
Conor McKeon
September 02 2020 02:30 AM By any metric, these past two months have been a transformative period in GAA broadcasting.
Initially, when Covid-19 simply meant restricted crowds at club games, streaming was a useful service some county boards opted to supply.
When the virus forced all games behind closed gates, it became a necessity - and a hastily sourced one at that.
"We weren't ready for this at all," admits Irial Mac Murchú, CEO of Nemeton, the Waterford-based production company that somewhat inadvertently, have found themselves as central players in the deluge of streaming of GAA club games over the past two months.
"It almost happened by accident. And we really only had weeks to prepare for it in the run up to the last weekend in July. We've been swamped ever since and basically running to catch up."
So far, Nemeton have broadcast 102 games from Waterford, Galway, Kilkenny, Antrim, Roscommon, Kerry and, most recently, Tyrone.
That's in addition to the 100 or so GAA matches per year they produce for TG4.
"The GAA nationally and at county level is broke," Mac Murchú explains.
"There is no money anywhere. So we had to devise the most cost-effective solution."
Nemeton's plan was to send one multi-skilled operator to each venue, equipped with a camera and a streaming kit.
The match would then be streamed back into the 'cloud,' accessed by production staff at the company's headquarters in An Rinn, the Gaeltach area near Dungarvan in Waterford.
Those staff insert graphics and manually load replays, all of which is then beamed out to the general public through a purpose-built platform called beosport.ie.
"When we started we quickly realised none of the county board websites had the bandwidth to carry live video and they didn't have the stability to operate a successful paywall," Mac Murchú explains.
"So quickly, we had to set up this platform because the games needed somewhere to exist. And it's through that platform that we stream everything linked to each county board's website."
Naturally, given the precarious financial situation in which county boards find themselves, the desire to broadcast as many club games as possible must be offset against the requirement for the exercise to pay for itself.
The cost to counties of Nemeton's basic package is just under €1,000 per match.
There are several subscription models currently being utilised.
Westmeath, for example, have charged a flat €10 rate per game and are understood to have averaged around 150 views per match.
Wexford have employed a different model, incorporating a season ticket whereby subscribers can watch every match in their football and hurling championships. Other counties have opted for a more 'bells and whistles' approach.
Dublin's stream features bespoke graphics and a higher frequency of replays, while they also provide live commentary and match analysis.
The cost is €6.99 per single game, although weekend/daily packages have also been available. Roughly, they must attract 360 purchases per game to break even.
If the basic economics make the process sound simple, there have - and will continue to be - issues around technology and infrastructure.
"The single biggest challenge with streaming is if you don't have fibre or if you don't have some sort of wired connection, you're at the mercy of the cell towers," Mac Murchú explains.
Over the weekend, there were drops in feeds of various severity reported in Roscommon, Kerry, Mayo and Antrim.
The Kerry county board issued an apology via their website for the outage and dropped responsibility for the error on the lap of their providers, 247.tv.
On Saturday, one of Nemeton's feeds, a Roscommon Intermediate quarter-final between Éire Óg and St Dominic's in Strokestown went down consistently due to a lack of connectivity.
"We just could not get a stable signal to the nearest cell tower," says Mac Murchú, who points out that Nemeton had a "100pc record" in streaming quality and speed before last weekend.
Similarly, the feed from an Antrim SHC game between O'Donovan Ross and Cushendall suffered from repeated stalling due to the fact that there were upwards of 400 people at the game, each of whom had mobile phones vying for the same 4G connection as the broadcast equipment.
By comparison, Mac Murchú stresses "not one frame has dropped in all the games we've had in Kilkenny," due to Nowlan Park's fibre optic cable connection.
Clearly, infrastructure in some GAA grounds remains an issue but it's easy to see how, with greater planning, both the quality and quantity of live streamed GAA games will escalate over the coming years.
The GAA's main broadcasting contracts are up for renewal in 2022 and Mac Murchú says he would be "very surprised if Croke Park weren't looking at where streaming fits in".
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Post by jackiel on Sept 4, 2020 10:37:36 GMT
I'm happy to pay €5 per match, it's great to get to watch matches I wouldn't otherwise see living up here in Meath. Incidentally Meath GAA are charging €6 per match for a far less satisfactory service. Looking forward to this weekend's fare.
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 4, 2020 17:52:09 GMT
Irish Examiner Logo
NEWS SPORT LIFESTYLE OPINION Aidan O'Mahony believes Tony Brosnan has played himself back into Kerry reckoning
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 03, 2020 - 11:47 AM EOGHAN CORMICAN
Former Kerry footballer Aidan O’Mahony believes Tony Brosnan could feature for the Kingdom in the upcoming All-Ireland championship.
Brosnan is enjoying a rich vein of form in the Kerry county championship, amassing 2-18 across Dr Crokes’ opening round and quarter-final victories.
The attacker has not played championship for Kerry since his debut in 2016, what was a brief appearance off the bench at the end of the county’s comprehensive All-Ireland quarter-final win over Clare.
O’Mahony, who also came off the bench that afternoon at GAA HQ, has been most impressed with Brosnan's recent displays.
“I had him myself this year with Tralee IT, he has a great attitude and he's one of your typical Crokes players. He's like a thorn in your side, always looking for the ball and making menacing runs.
"Tony was in and out last year and probably would have been disappointed that he mightn't [have been] on the panel, pushing for the team, and at times that can drive someone on.
"He's had an excellent county championship this year. Some of the guys marking him and trying to pin him down are some of the top backs in Kerry. He's in a great vein of form at the moment and you'd be hoping he'd take that into the [inter-county] championship. I think that's the beauty of the club championship at the moment, where someone like Tony mightn't be going well in the league and mightn't be seeing game-time and then all of a sudden he's playing championship with his club and expressing himself, and hopefully he'll take the confidence into Kerry as well. I don't see a reason why he can't.”
O’Mahony, who said Kerry left Sam Maguire behind them in last year’s drawn All-Ireland final, was encouraged by the younger players stepping up during the league earlier this year, particularly in the dramatic home win over Galway.
On their championship chances, he is adamant Peter Keane’s charges won’t be looking any further than the Munster semi-final against Cork on the weekend of November 7/8.
“Our neighbours are waiting in the long grass and they will be a dangerous proposition.”
O’Mahony's Rathmore teammates Paul Murphy, Shane Ryan, and Brendan O'Keeffe are key members of the East Kerry side chasing back-to-back county titles. Divisional sides, for the second year running, occupy three of the four county semi-final spots, but O’Mahony doesn’t see the format as being in any way unfair towards the eight clubs in the Kerry SFC.
“When you look at East Kerry, there’s around 12 teams involved. You could say, yeah, it's tough on other teams, but if you look at the games that have been played, the likes of Legion, Kerins O'Rahillys and these teams, they haven't been too far away. Even the last day, St Kieran's really pushed East Kerry.
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Post by Galway breeze on Sept 6, 2020 9:21:19 GMT
m.independent.ie/Croke park are facing some hard calls over the next few years as finances look bleak. IMO one of the biggest burdens to counties is the paying for backroom staff. S&C , Physio’s, managers and the likes are changing heavily for their services, it’s got to stop or clubs and counties will be put under pressure. Maybe I’m wrong?
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 6, 2020 10:53:38 GMT
Consent
GAA
Inter-county championship set to cost GAA €19.5m The GAA's Croke Park headquarters. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile 1 The GAA's Croke Park headquarters. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile Dermot Crowe September 05 2020 10:39 PM
The GAA has warned that the cost of staging the football and hurling All-Ireland championships this year will “impact the Association financially for years to come”.
In a stark bulletin, issued on Friday by the finance director Ger Mulryan to provincial councils and county boards, the GAA estimates the inter-county championships will cost €19.5m and stated that the financial implications of the pandemic put a growing reliance on Government aid and increased borrowings.
The letter referred to “a suite of financial supports and control measures” to support players, teams and county boards in anticipation of the championships taking place. But Mulryan says it is a cost the GAA “cannot take lightly”, adding it will lead to “reduced capital, coaching and operational grants across all our units” in the coming years.
To make the championships financially viable, with crowds prohibited from attending matches, the GAA is looking at additional bank borrowings. The proposals go before the Management Committee on Friday next for ratification. The details are not being revealed until then, but it is claimed that they take account of “feedback” received over recent months.
Croke Park, the communication also revealed, is “fully engaged” with Sport Ireland and submitting applications under three of the four headings to the Government’s €70m rescue fund for sport. Those being targeted include a €40m fund to assist the three main field sports’ national governing bodies, the €15m fund to support those bodies’ affiliated clubs and the €5m to support sport restart and renewal plans.
The application date deadline is September 15, with an expected announcement of grant funding in mid-October.
Croke Park says it will create and administer a ‘Club Support Grant Scheme’ for all clubs based on the funds awarded under the clubs grant scheme. This will be supplemented by borrowings.
It stated that in common with “each and every unit of the GAA” the Croke Park head office income streams have been reduced to “almost zero” over the past six months.
Read More Ten years ago today, Tipp halted Kilkenny’s 'drive for five' - a game Ger Hartmann couldn't win “The number one financial priority to date has been to introduce significant cost-saving measures to ensure we remained in a stable position with the ability to provide the various head office support functions to all our units and equally important to maintain the GAA’s current and active coaching networks across the island.”
The letter also touches on the “ever-increasing financial challenges” that await in 2021, noting that pandemic-related restrictions are likely to continue into next year.
The €40m grant fund will need to cover not just the year’s shortfalls for the GAA at national, provincial and county level, but also be part of a “much contracted 2021 budgeted spend”.
“It is intended to reintroduce and advance the 2021 operational grant as early as possible in 2021 to allow counties plan and forecast accordingly,” Mulryan added.
Online Editors
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 10, 2020 22:24:02 GMT
"New Gaels" was a lovely programme tonight. Inspiring. Zach Moradi for President!
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Post by dc84 on Sept 11, 2020 9:20:52 GMT
"New Gaels" was a lovely programme tonight. Inspiring. Zach Moradi for President! The Kurdish lad with the Tallaght accent who plays hurling with Leitrim? What a country we now live in ! I enjoyed the show aswell
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Post by jackiel on Sept 11, 2020 9:52:04 GMT
Very enjoyable programme, reminders of all the things and people I'm missing this year.
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 11, 2020 10:17:52 GMT
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Post by Ballyfireside on Sept 12, 2020 15:05:41 GMT
'that victory was a huge boost for hurling in Leitrim' - wow! 'Zakín' says that the best club players won't bother with the county and you won't win without hard work - what I am reading into this is that Zak has the only formula for 'correcting' the Dubs dominance and in the absence of splitting the county and which will never ever happen anyway for reasons I have previously aired on here. i.e. it is only one of hundreds of Dublin teams that are dominant so do you split them all, you can't do a partial split, and this is all before the solicitors start picking the legality of it! Leitrim for Sam!
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 13, 2020 8:10:00 GMT
Consent
GAA
Premium
GAA facing decisions on future coverage in fast-moving digital age
Conor McKeon September 12 2020 02:30 AM In March of 2011, Bernard Brogan missed a league game between Dublin and Mayo due to a mix-up over a flight home from New York.
Invited to meet Barack Obama as part of the White House's official St Patrick's Day celebrations, Brogan and a friend, David Whelan, had arranged their own travel itinerary which also took in two nights in the Big Apple on the way home.
It would, they concluded, have them comfortably back on Irish soil by the morning of the match on Sunday, March 20.
The trip had been agreed in advance with Pat Gilroy. His only proviso was that the reigning Footballer of the Year be present and available to play against Mayo. When the pair submitted their passports for inspection at Newark Airport on Saturday afternoon, they were politely informed they were early for their flight - 24 hours early.
Worse.
Holed up in a New Jersey hotel, they had no way to watch or even follow the score of the game online.
That Dublin hit 4-15 that afternoon, winning by five points, meant the embarrassing reason for Brogan's no-show never became public knowledge, even if Gilroy wasn't best pleased.
For Whelan, an idea was born.
Partly to alleviate the boredom of inactivity after breaking his wrist while hurling with St Oliver Plunkett's/Eoghan Ruadh, and partly as an experiment, he began attending club games and tweeting scores from his personal account. The reaction was instant. Followers piled up.
So Whelan established an account specifically for the purpose of providing scores and results from GAA matches around Dublin.
His brother-in-law, Dave Kennedy - a Tipperary man - suggested a name. 'DubMatchTracker'.
Last year, DubMatchTracker covered around 125 matches, across various ages, grades and both codes. It supplies an essential service to those with any degree of interest in Dublin GAA.
It also provides a useful window into the levels of public interest in Gaelic games outside of the inter-county scene in this, the longest period of inter-county inactivity in living memory.
Croke Park's communications and marketing departments have yet to conduct any detailed study into the extent to which a shortened inter-county season would have on national GAA coverage.
But with a split season widely mooted, it is an area they will inevitably examine.
There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, media coverage is essential for the health of Gaelic games, particularly in the areas of promotion and sponsorship.
At central level, the GAA acknowledge that broad national coverage is not only an integral part of the success of the inter-county game, it is also an important force in the recruitment drive of the next generation of club members.
On a purely economic level, a scaled-down inter-county season would inevitably mean reduced sponsorship and media rights.
But it would also diminish the promotional scope of Gaelic games at a time of year when little else by way of major sporting activity is happening.
The traditional metrics of TV, radio and newspaper coverage now only tell part of the story. Websites, streaming sources and apps are catering for a more diverse audience.
The only two occasions on which the DubMatchTracker account attracted over a million tweet views for a single game were a club match - the 2014 Dublin SFC final between St Oliver Plunkett's/Eoghan Ruadh and St Vincent's - and an Allianz League game; the 2018 Division 1 clash of Dublin and Galway in Salthill.
The common denominator is that neither match was televised.
This is the space into which streaming has quickly inserted itself in the consumption of Gaelic games, although the early figures are mixed.
And the relatively new concept of pay-per-view GAA means it is difficult to make any precise conclusions.
In July, DubsTV - the Dublin county board's streaming service - broadcast a senior football championship group game between St Jude's and Na Fianna from behind a paywall.
It drew around 400 subscriptions, marginally above their break-even figure of 360.
Only a few days later, Whitehall Colmcille streamed their opening group game against St Vincent's in the same competition for free.
The feed had around 4,000 views.
Given the rushed novelty of streaming then, TV audience figures remain the most reliable gauge of interest.
David Whelan. Photo: Sportsfile 3 David Whelan. Photo: Sportsfile Last Saturday, an average of 63,000 tuned in to watch Breaffy and Ballaghaderreen in the Mayo SFC, a six per cent share of the audience watching television in Ireland at that time.
Those figures rose to 88,400 and nine per cent for the Ballintubber v Knockmore game, but still fell well short of a comparable broadcast for an inter-county game.
On February 8, RTÉ2's live screening of the Allianz Division 1 match between Dublin and Monaghan from Croke Park drew an average of 259,000 viewers, a 20 per cent audience share.
The following week, the Division 1 hurling clash of Cork and Tipperary attracted 246,000 viewers or 21 per cent of the available audience.
Naturally, viewership for club action will swell as county finals are shown. But those numbers will still seem miniscule when set against the 966,600 (72.3 per cent) who tuned in for last year's All-Ireland football final replay.
How important a factor national coverage is in the GAA's decision-making remains to be seen.
There is broad acceptance now that the mass appeal of inter-county has come to the detriment of clubs.
And that two months of blanket coverage may be collateral damage in establishing a fairer fixtures calendar.
Meanwhile, engagement levels in new media platforms like DubMatchTracker provide hope that a regularised programme of games at a better time of year can expand public interest in club GAA competitions in much the same way as inter-county during the '90s.
But the question now for the GAA is how much are they prepared to sacrifice in terms of promotion and coverage in order to remedy their biggest problem?
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Post by sullyschoice on Sept 15, 2020 21:36:58 GMT
I see Paul Galvin has left the Wexford job. Relocated to West of Ireland during pandemic
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2020 22:30:18 GMT
Indeed, timing a bit odd to say the least
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Post by john4 on Sept 15, 2020 22:46:11 GMT
I see Paul Galvin has left the Wexford job. Relocated to West of Ireland during pandemic By his own admission he was getting close to zero commitment from the players. He couldn't figure out why it didn't mean the world to them to play with the county. It couldn't work out.
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Post by dc84 on Sept 16, 2020 10:15:13 GMT
I see Paul Galvin has left the Wexford job. Relocated to West of Ireland during pandemic By his own admission he was getting close to zero commitment from the players. He couldn't figure out why it didn't mean the world to them to play with the county. It couldn't work out. Sounds a bit like a Roy Keane situation. In fairness bit different coming from Kerry in comparison to wexford football not as if they have a hope of challenging for anything other than div 3/4. The days of Ciaran Lyng and Mattie Forde are long gone unfortunately.
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Sept 16, 2020 12:31:18 GMT
I have heard "Roy Keane" mentioned in this conversation also.
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Post by john4 on Sept 16, 2020 16:02:13 GMT
Paul Galvin says his "first real test" as Wexford football manager came early in the pre-season when he had to deal with a player who did not understand the need to continue his training programme while on a month-long holiday.
In December, it emerged that senior players had left the Wexford panel following disagreements with the four-time Kerry All-Ireland winner. Daithí Waters and Michael Furlong were those who initially departed with Kevin O'Grady and Tiernan Rossiter reportedly also leaving in solidarity with their teammates.
"The big eye-opener for me has been exposure to the type of mindset where when you push they don't want to know," Galvin said on his former Kerry teammate Tomás Ó Sé's 'Comhrá Le Tomás' podcast.
"I had a couple of conversations with some of the older, senior players, we'll say. When push came to shove, they weren't that comfortable with the push and pull.
"We lost some guys, they fell by the wayside either through a decision of mine or a decision of theirs. That happens and it had to happen. You create the energy that you want eventually, that's my take on it."
GAA Jul 13, 2020 By PJ Browne 5 shares 'First Real Test' Of Paul Galvin's Wexford Reign Led To Player Quitting
Paul Galvin says his "first real test" as Wexford football manager came early in the pre-season when he had to deal with a player who did not understand the need to continue his training programme while on a month-long holiday.
In December, it emerged that senior players had left the Wexford panel following disagreements with the four-time Kerry All-Ireland winner. Daithí Waters and Michael Furlong were those who initially departed with Kevin O'Grady and Tiernan Rossiter reportedly also leaving in solidarity with their teammates.
"The big eye-opener for me has been exposure to the type of mindset where when you push they don't want to know," Galvin said on his former Kerry teammate Tomás Ó Sé's 'Comhrá Le Tomás' podcast.
"I had a couple of conversations with some of the older, senior players, we'll say. When push came to shove, they weren't that comfortable with the push and pull.
"We lost some guys, they fell by the wayside either through a decision of mine or a decision of theirs. That happens and it had to happen. You create the energy that you want eventually, that's my take on it."
Galvin explained the circumstances which led to one player departing. He did not identify the individual.
Galvin explained the circumstances which led to one player departing. He did not identify the individual.
"Some of the stories were funny," said Galvin.
"I had a chat with one guy about a week into pre-season. [He had] seven or eight years [with Wexford] under his belt.
"I probably had reservations about him from a championship game Wexford played against Carlow in 2017. He swerved a bit of work and his man got the goal. I'd watched that game closely and I did a load of research on video, club games and inter-county games. I had some reservations about him. My exposure to him through training confirmed my reservations a little bit.
"A week into pre-season, he told me he was going on holidays for a month. I said to him, 'That's fine, off you go but you need to continue your fitness programme'. His answer was, 'Well, I'll be renting a car and I'll be doing a lot of driving around'. Basically, [he said] there will be no training done, 'I'll be touring New Zealand or Australia'.
"That was a month where a senior player of seven or eight years was telling me a week into pre-season that he was going on holidays and that there would be no work done while he was away because he'd be doing a bit of driving. That was a massive moment for me. I was going, 'Wow. Surely be to God, you have your programme and you do a bit of running or a bit of gym work where you're in a place like New Zealand where you can get outdoors and do it'.
"It was my first real test as a manager. I said I'd have to find another way around this fella. He was leaving a week later and I left it till just before the day he was leaving. I pulled him aside and said, 'While you're away now, I want you to have a think about why you're doing this. What do you want to achieve when you come back? Where you think you can get in the game and how you think you can improve'.
Advertisement "He was looking at me and it wasn't really landing with him. I says, 'Listen, you know what you'll do now, take a football with you and work on your passing'. He started laughing. I said, 'Wow'.
"That same guy came back from his holiday and a couple of guys had left the panel [that] I had let go in the meantime. One was his housemate. He came home from his holiday and he walked off the panel. He told the local media first and told me by text message. That was that, he was gone.
"That was very challenging. You were dealing with a mindset that I couldn't understand. In the long-term, they will be good experiences for me."
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Post by buck02 on Sept 16, 2020 17:04:36 GMT
Wexford Hurling County championship is in full flow.
Lots of dual players in the county.
I imagine Galvin made the trip from Mayo to Wexford on Monday for training only to be met with players missing cos of their club Hurling commitments and that's why he walked.
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Sept 16, 2020 17:58:30 GMT
Wexford Hurling County championship is in full flow. Lots of dual players in the county. I imagine Galvin made the trip from Mayo to Wexford on Monday for training only to be met with players missing cos of their club Hurling commitments and that's why he walked. Famously the Wexford Hurling championship is not in full flow, but was wrapped up over three weeks ago.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 16, 2020 20:43:48 GMT
There is definitely more to this than travel commitments
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Post by buck02 on Sept 17, 2020 7:35:21 GMT
Wexford Hurling County championship is in full flow. Lots of dual players in the county. I imagine Galvin made the trip from Mayo to Wexford on Monday for training only to be met with players missing cos of their club Hurling commitments and that's why he walked. Famously the Wexford Hurling championship is not in full flow, but was wrapped up over three weeks ago. Of course, my bad. Davie made sure he had his players back in plenty time. Strange so if there was a lack of commitment if there was no Hurling distractions and with the footballs 2 wins away from promotion and a handy first round clash in Leinster.
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Post by Whosinmidfield on Sept 19, 2020 12:56:12 GMT
Great news that Tony Brosnan actually will be fit and available for selection for Kerry for both league games and championship. Strange how the wrong injury and time out was so widely reported. It turned out be a collapsed lung and not a punctured lung.
Also there’s new players called into the Kerry panel after club form. Anyone know who was called in?
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Sept 19, 2020 14:17:38 GMT
I thought collapsed and punctured lung were different names for the same thing.
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 21, 2020 10:08:20 GMT
Irish Times Logo User Menu NEWS SPORT LATEST MOST READ LISTEN IRELAND WORLD BUSINESS OPINION LIFE & STYLE CULTURE GAELIC GAMES MY SPORTS Tipping point: GAA facing a second earthquake, the cost of a split season Finding a way to fund sport will be much trickier than getting it up and running was
Malachy Clerkin Follow about 6 hours ago 0 Due to the success of Dublin GAA, the notion of pooled sponsorship has been mooted throughout the past decade. Could it now really be on the table? File photograph: Inpho Due to the success of Dublin GAA, the notion of pooled sponsorship has been mooted throughout the past decade. Could it now really be on the table? File photograph: Inpho The weekend almost felt normal. You could sit down at lunchtime on Saturday and wrap a sports bubble around you for the rest of it.
There was 10 hours of Premier League football, nine hours of US Open golf. There was Germany v Ireland, there was Leinster v Saracens, there was the Limerick hurling final.
There was an unbelievable time trial in the Tour De France and later, much later, the NBA play-offs were there for you long into the night. In the dog days of April and May, that sort of Saturday was a pipe dream.
There’s a reason they add in the crowd noise on TV. It is there, at a very basic level, to make us forget the reality of the situation Thing is, we know there almost nothing normal about any of it. The virus is ramping up for its second wave virtually everywhere you look. But for sport, this is really the first wave. It’s a period of re-establishing sport as a thing that happens. Big-time sport is back on television, games are being played at levels further down the scale. It’s a vital step along the road but one that is deliberately - and necessarily - unreal.
The old saying about seeing a dog walking on its hind legs feels about right here - sport is not being done well but you are surprised to see it done at all. Surprised and delighted and grateful just to have it. But there’s a reason they add in the crowd noise on TV. It is there, at a very basic level, to make us forget the reality of the situation.
Anyone tuning into the Oireachtas Covid Committee on Friday morning got all the reality they could handle. The heads of the three big sports bodies came in front of the politicians to lay out just how bad things are out there. This wasn’t ochón-ochón stuff. They weren’t bellyaching or simpering. They communicated, with a grim and solemn calm, just how much trouble lies ahead.
There was nothing normal about an empty Aviva Stadium on Saturday afternoon. Photograph: Inpho There was nothing normal about an empty Aviva Stadium on Saturday afternoon. Photograph: Inpho Tom Ryan said the GAA’s losses in 2020 will run to €50m, with another €20m hole projected for 2021. Philip Browne put the IRFU’s losses at €30m, with the same coming next year. Gary Owens said the figure for the FAI comes in at just below €20m. He couldn’t offer any guarantee that the League of Ireland would happen in 2021. Though it would only take around €3.5m to see it through a season, that’s €3.5m they don’t have. And won’t have, unless it comes from government.
Sport needs crowds to survive. Sport without crowds can happen at the minute because it’s our instinct and inclination as a society to make sure it does. But just as getting society opened up is more difficult than locking it down, finding a way to fund sport in 2021 and beyond is going to be much trickier than getting it up and running was in 2020.
The three big sports bodies are the three big sports bodies because on certain days in any given year, they can corral a lot of paying guests into stadiums. They can’t do that now and nobody is able to guess when it might be possible again. Each of them has to find their own way forward.
For the GAA, there are actually two earthquakes happening. The pandemic is the big bang, the biggest that has ever hit. But there’s another one starting to rumble, one with the potential to have a much longer life to it. It’s that of split club and county seasons, a previously unthinkable proposition that now looks inevitable, on an experimental basis at least.
It is a classic case of an idea whose time has come. Even though we’re only four years since a motion proposing to move the All-Ireland hurling final to August - with the football final shifting back to the first Sunday in September - was defeated at Congress. To go from that to all inter-county hurling and football being finished for the year at the end of July is a gargantuan shift in thinking.
The rights and wrongs of it are an argument for another column. The reality is that the 2020 club championships have worked better than anyone could have hoped and there isn’t a club player in the country - whether he plays for his county or not - who wouldn’t like it to be this way all the time. The split season will happen. Mark it down.
One of the unintended consequences will be a loss of income to the GAA. This is inevitable. The inter-county season feeds the association, plain and simple. Constricting it, even with the best intentions, comes at a cost. When the Valhalla of normality returns and the stadiums can be filled again, the schedule will be compacted and aggregate attendances will fall. Money, the great unmentionable in the GAA, will assume an even greater relevance than before.
In this regard, Chapter 17 of Bernard Brogan’s recent autobiography is well worth anyone’s time. In it, he gives a fascinating account of how Pat Gilroy, John Costello and Brogan himself went about turning Dublin into the association’s commercial behemoth. In early 2010, Gilroy showed Brogan figures that laid out how Kerry were spending twice as much on their football team as Dublin were and it became their stated aim to match and pass that number by exploiting “the power and potential of the Dublin brand”. Their success in doing so is one of the great triumphs of any GAA project in history.
In the same chapter, Brogan details how Gilroy insisted that any sponsorship money he and his brother Alan were able to garner had to go into the communal pot. The logic was obvious and inarguable - the Brogans got all the gigs because they were the high-profile scoring forwards in the team but it’s a team game and they wouldn’t get the scores without the work everyone else was doing. And so it came to pass. The Brogans threw into the pot, more players stepped forward for gigs, everybody got well.
The parallel for the GAA’s commercial future is equally clear. Dublin’s gold-plated ability to attract sponsorship that is multiples of other counties and provinces is an accident of birth. Their ability to exploit it is a tribute to their acumen but it wouldn’t exist without the framework, structure and competition provided by the other 31 counties. The notion of pooled sponsorship has been mooted on occasion through the past decade without ever looking like a serious prospect. But the prospect of losing €70m across two years will surely mean nothing is off the table.
We might find that the split season isn’t the only idea whose time has come.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2020 12:30:23 GMT
It is unbelievable that it takes the devastating effect of Covid to talk about the pooling of commercial income. Kerry would likely lose out in such a scenario.
As for Kerry spending double what Dublin did back in 2010, how much of this is travel related?
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Post by Ballyfireside on Sept 22, 2020 0:12:15 GMT
It is unbelievable that it takes the devastating effect of Covid to talk about the pooling of commercial income. Kerry would likely lose out in such a scenario. As for Kerry spending double what Dublin did back in 2010, how much of this is travel related? Sponsors only spend money on their brands, and by the time this is 'corrected' Dublin may be on the bottom of a cycle so pooling might take on a different meaning. The way Dublin has embraced Gaelic football as a community sport, I am worried for the game, well on the basis that AI winners disproportionately project what they game is all about, what with media, etc. I am not so much fearful for say Kerry as we will pull a few out of the hat - not getting carried away but that's how I see it. The problem is there is no solution - you cannot split them, i.e. Senior footballers are but one of very many teams that are dominant but you can't split one without splitting them all. Not good good for the GAA and ironically not good for Dublin GAA - victims of their own success!
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Post by hurlingman on Sept 24, 2020 8:13:28 GMT
See Gene O Driscoll from Annascaul, father of Johnny and Bingo passed away, played with Kerry, Galway, London and New York in his day.
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Post by sullyschoice on Sept 24, 2020 21:34:14 GMT
See Gene O Driscoll from Annascaul, father of Johnny and Bingo passed away, played with Kerry, Galway, London and New York in his day. I just saw the death notice on RIP and was wondering if it was the same family. RIP.
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diego
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Post by diego on Sept 25, 2020 7:32:13 GMT
Great news that Tony Brosnan actually will be fit and available for selection for Kerry for both league games and championship. Strange how the wrong injury and time out was so widely reported. It turned out be a collapsed lung and not a punctured lung. Also there’s new players called into the Kerry panel after club form. Anyone know who was called in? Kerry's Eye had reported that new additions to panel are Mike Breen (Beaufort), Joe O'Connor ((Austin Stacks) and Kevin O'Sullivan (Kenmare). Examiner have a bit on it now as well.. www.irishexaminer.com/sport/gaa/arid-40054487.html
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