Should we have professional hurling and football?

jordainius · 06-03-2012 2:45pm

I very regularly pay between 5 and 15 euro to watch my local club play (hell it costs nothing to get into county league and some underage games). For a small price I get to watch people from my community play for my club.

For between 13 and 40 euro I get to watch my county a dozen or so times a year. I get to see 15 men put on the Limerick jersey, knowing that their doing it because they love doing it and they have so much pride in my county's jersey that they are willing to sacrifice so much to be able to do it, money well spent on my part.

I am not going to pay 50 euro about 20 times a year to watch players play for my local franchise just because it is their job. And while not everyone may see it the same way as myself, I would confidently feel that many people would.

Also, I've no interest in seeing my teams best players and young talents being signed by the Dublin Warriors or the Kilkenny Tigers. :rolleyes:

hisholinessnb · 06-03-2012 5:43pm

Good post Jordanius, what some people, while fantasizing about all the new fans this new fangled thing will attract, don't realise the volumes of people that would be put off the sport by this sort of stuff.

Aside from the fact that its totally unfeasible pie in the sky stuff.

The reason I got so much joy in watching Dublin lift the all Ireland this year, compared to teams in other sports was that these were OUR PEOPLE, Dublin folk, out there for the love of the game. The pride of OUR clubs.
I'd have no interest in watching a team of players from outside Dublin, bought it to dominate the sport, no matter how much they won.

Some people making all these fancy suggestions fail to grasp what is at the very core of the GAA, and what matters most to the majority of GAA people.

Pete_Cavan · 06-03-2012 9:15pm

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

Rugby is a very bad example to use when advocating GAA going pro.

Before pro rugby in Ireland the top level was the All Ireland league.
Then when the game whent pro it was all condensed into 3 and a half franchises.
Now no one gives a tupenny damn about the club game and all concentrate on how the franchises are getting in in the league and cup competitions.

If GAA went pro then there would only be 6 teams in the country playing at a pro level.
Kerry + one more in Munster
Dublin + one more in Leinster
One in Ulster
One in Connaught
That's about all the our market\economy could support.

Welch rugby is actually a very good example - before professionalism they had many small clubs which were deeply rooted in the heart of the community and with passionate local support. When they turned professional, clubs which were previously fierce rivals were amalgamated into one regional team (eg. Neath and Swansea being part of the Ospreys). The fans have not identified with these new regional teams and attendances at matches has been disappointing. The lesson for us is that people dont want to support some made up team consisting of smaller teams just lumped together for the sake of professionalism (and the poll here backs this up).

And Irish rugby was not "condensed into franchises" by professionalism, the provinces had been fielding rugby teams for almost 120 years before professionalism was introduced.

Its kind of irrelevant seeing as there are bigger holes in your idea, but in your detailed analysis of what "our market\economy could support" why is it that one county with a population of 145,000 (Kerry) gets a team of their own, while a province with 2,000,000 people (Ulster) only gets one team also? And thats before we bring geography into it (Wexford and Louth playing together as part of a Leinster minus Dublin team!).

Fr Tod Umptious · 07-03-2012 3:25pm

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

Welch rugby is actually a very good example - before professionalism they had many small clubs which were deeply rooted in the heart of the community and with passionate local support. When they turned professional, clubs which were previously fierce rivals were amalgamated into one regional team (eg. Neath and Swansea being part of the Ospreys). The fans have not identified with these new regional teams and attendances at matches has been disappointing. The lesson for us is that people dont want to support some made up team consisting of smaller teams just lumped together for the sake of professionalism (and the poll here backs this up).

And Irish rugby was not "condensed into franchises" by professionalism, the provinces had been fielding rugby teams for almost 120 years before professionalism was introduced.

Its kind of irrelevant seeing as there are bigger holes in your idea, but in your detailed analysis of what "our market\economy could support" why is it that one county with a population of 145,000 (Kerry) gets a team of their own, while a province with 2,000,000 people (Ulster) only gets one team also? And thats before we bring geography into it (Wexford and Louth playing together as part of a Leinster minus Dublin team!).

Call them what you want, clubs, franchises, teams, provinces, the the point is when rugby went pro the IRFU decided to base the professional entities around the them rather than amalgamating clubs or creating new ones.

The reason Kerry would have it's own team is because in a franchised pro football world a team in Kerry would be sustainable, based on the sheer interest there is in football down here.

Ulster does not have a population 2,000,000 when it comes to GAA by the way, not sure if you noticed but in two thirds of the province you would be luck to get 50% of the people interested.

I am not saying that the 4 teams that are not Kerry and Dublin would be strictly based on provincial lines either, my point is that Ireland does not have the critical mass to support more than 6 full time professional football teams, and that's why I don't think professionalism would be a good idea for the GAA

Should we have professional hurling and football?

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