Joe Brolly’s sweet member berries leading “true gaels” down the garden path

Dots1982

Wrote a blog the other day, just my feelings on the GAA these days and especially the caustic media coverage it receives, feedback of content or writing style appreciated :

https://veryintobloggingveryintonewmedia.wordpress.com/

Gaelic Football at intercounty level seems to exist currently on a warped

planet. With a logic that is driven by an idea that if you wish to see the GAA

continue to modernise then you are not a real GAA person/true gael. This

ideology I would define as being one where the GAA being intent on

maximizing its revenue is ruining the association, that club players are being

disrespected within the current GAA calendar, that county players should be

available to play for their clubs much more, that the GPA are getting too

greedy and that the volunteers of the association are the ones that will lose

out in the GPA/GAA deal. This ideology has a spokesperson in Joe Brolly

whose weekly articles make a point of celebrating traditional GAA values. To

an extent they celebrate those values but they also put GAA from past

decades on a pedestal that is undeserved. To explain with a comparison; the

current series of South Park has introduced a character called member

berries. These are berries popular with middle aged residents of South Park

because they are sweet in their taste and also in their ability to spark

memories and nostalgia of a glorious comforting bygone age of Star Wars

and Ghostbusters. The berries have an agenda though; they are trying to

attack modern liberal thinking around issues such as gay marriage and racial

integration:

. Likewise

Brolly’s articles do not encourage their readers to engage in nostalgia for the

sake of it but rather it is weaponised by Brolly to attack almost everything

about modern GAA. From motivational speaking/positive thinking to player

endorsements and their social media presence, from outreach on the GAA’s

president’s part to the unionist community in Northern Ireland to the

grandiose commemoration of the 1916 rising in Croke Park. Let’s not even

get started on his attacks on the sky deal shall we? Basically everything

about the modern GAA age is compared unfavorably to the sweet member

berries of Joe’s playing era.



The gushing reactions of ‘true gaels’ every week online to Brolly’s pieces

shows he has massive support in his views. However the truth about Joe’s

writing is that it holds no insight into how the modern GAA works. It is fine

complaining about and lamenting the state of the current GAA but it is not

going to change anything. The GAA are not going to stop maximizing their

revenue. They aren’t going to revert to being De Valera loving gombeens like

they were in the 80s. Likewise there is nothing to suggest that in the current

competition format that County players are going to be available to play with

their clubs more in the future. The truth is from a sports science point of

view intercounty players shouldn’t be playing for their clubs at all. The

demands in terms of the physical rigour of inter county competitions are far

too great for amateur sportsmen to also compete for clubs, colleges and

underage intercounty teams. You don’t see Raheem Sterling playing for his

local club team, the Man City under 23s in the EFL cup and England’s under

21s as well as the England and Manchester City senior sides. The number of

operations especially on the hip area that intercounty players have to go

through tells you that the current situation of young elite GAA players playing

for five different teams (club/county senior, club/county under 21, college) at

least 10 competitions over the course of a year is completely unsustainable.

If you want an insight into modern elite GAA you would be better off

speaking to a surgeon in Santry sports clinic than ever wasting your time

reading or listening to Brolly.



It is a strange situation when the the foremost columnist of a sport tells you

effectively nothing about the present or the future of the sport. But it is just

another part of the warped universe that GAA seems to exist in. For instance

the most maligned team in the country; Mayo, are the only reason we have

any good matches in Croke Park in a football championship season. Without

them we would barely have seen a crack in Dublin’s imperiousness for the

past two seasons. Speaking of Dublin and without getting into the issue too

deeply it still continues to amaze me that no journalist has done deep-dive

research into the inherent disparity in development grants awarded to Dublin

for the past ten plus years that is leading to interest in the intercounty game

coming under huge pressure in counties left to make up the numbers like

Kildare and Meath.



The most starling thing that never gets discussed or put forward by the

media is that football & hurling even as amateur sports can far outstrip any

other field sport for entertainment and excitement. Soccer, rugby union and

league and cricket are all great sports at the top professional level but leave

the top elite rung and watch lower league stuff and I don’t think the average

Irish sports fan would compare it favorably to the local club GAA game. Yet

we are barracked with all manner of pundits and journos telling us that the

games are gone too defensive (despite the games being more high scoring

than ever and the quality of the scoring being to a higher standard than ever)

and are stained by having “blanket defenses”. Yet apparently us Irish love

rugby union as a nation where the “blanket defence” is de rigueur. The fans I

believe are to a large extent simply brainwashed by what they read and

listen to. Of course there are problems with Football but the main one (again

one that barely gets discussed) is that it is too predictable, has too few

shocks and 70% of teams are simply making up the numbers. For instance

everyone outside Dublin in Leinster have effectively no chance of

championship trophies. This is what is truly harming the GAA’s appeal at

intercounty level. The standard of play and player is not the problem however the county format is.

There are numerous other issues that confound me by never been discussed.

Everything from how bad most GAA stadia are from a comfort point of view

to how matches that go to extra time are always 15 vs 15 regardless of how

a team conducted themselves in normal time. Instead GAA columns largely

consists of a glut of unimaginative suggestions about championship

restructures that don’t address the underlying problem of the population

imbalance between counties, relentlessness condemnation of referees from

people who have never refereed in their life and the disposable stories that

mean nothing and are forgotten a week later like the fleeting outrage over

Aidan O’Shea’s “dive” vs Fermanagh.



The GAA media have failed over the past ten years to recognize the huge

changes happening in Football that for me means we are going to see even

bigger changes in the next ten years. Joe Brolly is an extreme example but

almost all of the media are failing to adopt intelligently to the new GAA world

where the fundamentals (county borders and amateurism) of the association

are likely to be threatened. These changes are likely to be done with the co-

operation of the GAA hierarchy as they have shown themselves to be far

more adaptable to change than they are given credit for. How Joe Brolly and

his band of “true gaels” will come round to the modernization is not so

certain.

Twiceasnice97

This is a really really poor article.

The sheer weight of condescension and pomposity on display is ironically only available in a joe brolly or martin breheny article.

it is also all over the place in its subject matter.

I

Dots1982

Twiceasnice97 wrote: »

This is a really really poor article.

The sheer weight of condescension and pomposity on display is ironically only available in a joe brolly or martin breheny article.

it is also all over the place in its subject matter.

I

OK, i take that on board that I could word it less forcefully, it is all over the place in subject matter, I get this. I guess I'm writing it as I see it. Spitting it out there.

From looking at your other posts though, you do a fair share of pomposity & condescension yourself .

Twiceasnice97

Dots1982 wrote: »

OK, i take that on board that I could word it less forcefully, it is all over the place in subject matter, I get this. I guess I'm writing it as I see it. Spitting it out there.

From looking at your other posts though, you do a fair share of pomposity & condescension yourself .

read the article back with this in mind

The intercounty game is not the cornerstone of the gaa.

The clubs are the core bedrock the gaa is built on. The constant push towards maximizing revenue and removing games from free to air is geared towards professional sport.
the league of Ireland and the pro 12 give clear messages that the island is too small to sustain any serious level of professionalism

if you step back from your pre determined conclusions and consider this.

the number of games intercounty players play is not the real elephant in the room, its the training to game ratio that murders gaa players.
If training was strictly controlled then we wouldn't have half as many issues but equally the people collecting money for every training session all over the country have built an industry of 3 and 4 training sessions a week in the sh1t and rain so they have the few bob collected long before the championship takes place at all levels.

also a lot of players are having operations now that they would have played through in the past I feel. That is absolutely the correct policy but it is as a result of better medical care being available as well as heavier workloads causing injurys.

the intercounty game is becoming a behemoth and at some point we need to draw a line and say this far and no further I feel

Maybe the stadiums are not state of the art but it is far more important for the gaa to improve pitchs in small clubs and to subsidise coachs and equipment than it is to put bucket seats into county grounds.

I suspect you have no idea what things were like in the 80`s incidentally

Dots1982

Twiceasnice97 wrote: »

read the article back with this in mind

The intercounty game is not the cornerstone of the gaa.

The clubs are the core bedrock the gaa is built on. The constant push towards maximizing revenue and removing games from free to air is geared towards professional sport.
the league of Ireland and the pro 12 give clear messages that the island is too small to sustain any serious level of professionalism

if you step back from your pre determined conclusions and consider this.

the number of games intercounty players play is not the real elephant in the room, its the training to game ratio that murders gaa players.
If training was strictly controlled then we wouldn't have half as many issues but equally the people collecting money for every training session all over the country have built an industry of 3 and 4 training sessions a week in the sh1t and rain so they have the few bob collected long before the championship takes place at all levels.

also a lot of players are having operations now that they would have played through in the past I feel. That is absolutely the correct policy but it is as a result of better medical care being available as well as heavier workloads causing injurys.

the intercounty game is becoming a behemoth and at some point we need to draw a line and say this far and no further I feel

Maybe the stadiums are not state of the art but it is far more important for the gaa to improve pitchs in small clubs and to subsidise coachs and equipment than it is to put bucket seats into county grounds.

I suspect you have no idea what things were like in the 80`s incidentally

Some fair points but you're also saying making a predetermined opinion that ireland is too small for professional sport.

This makes Ireland unique amongst first world countries as the only one that cannot sustain professional sport. For a sports-mad country that would be very strange.

I'd see your point on the other things but i think Ireland could definitely sustain professional Gaelic Football. It's just a matter of how it would be done.

Dirty Dingus McGee

The problem could be fixed if the GAA accepted that the county game needs to be organised into a league format with a fixed schedule of fixtures that clubs can work around and that counties must then stick to the schedule of club fixtures they have set up and not change it.

The club game should be organised like it is in soccer with league matches every single week for every club player.Players play club football and hurling for enjoyment and the most enjoyable thing about the club game is playing matches.We have an obsession with knockout competitions in the GAA despite them not providing what the players want at club level and what fans want at county level.

Start county championships in September and October (after about 20 league matches are played) and they should take no more than 5 or 6 weeks to run off if organised properly and players will have been playing matches all summer in the league and won't have been left idle.Or maybe just abandon the idea of the championship and play 20 rounds of league matches and then have playoffs at the end to decide the championship winners.

Also a big problem is that we need to get rid of winter training at club and county level and accept both sports are summer sports and should be played between from April to October inclusive with training only allowed to start no earlier than St Patricks day.

Looking into the past like Brolly always does is not a good idea the inter-county game has moved forward it is not going to regress so you need to move with it and come up with changes that reflect the GAA today.

The Lost Sheep

Twiceasnice97 wrote: »

read the article back with this in mind

The intercounty game is not the cornerstone of the gaa.

The clubs are the core bedrock the gaa is built on. The constant push towards maximizing revenue and removing games from free to air is geared towards professional sport.
the league of Ireland and the pro 12 give clear messages that the island is too small to sustain any serious level of professionalism

if you step back from your pre determined conclusions and consider this.

the number of games intercounty players play is not the real elephant in the room, its the training to game ratio that murders gaa players.
If training was strictly controlled then we wouldn't have half as many issues but equally the people collecting money for every training session all over the country have built an industry of 3 and 4 training sessions a week in the sh1t and rain so they have the few bob collected long before the championship takes place at all levels.

also a lot of players are having operations now that they would have played through in the past I feel. That is absolutely the correct policy but it is as a result of better medical care being available as well as heavier workloads causing injurys.

the intercounty game is becoming a behemoth and at some point we need to draw a line and say this far and no further I feel

Maybe the stadiums are not state of the art but it is far more important for the gaa to improve pitchs in small clubs and to subsidise coachs and equipment than it is to put bucket seats into county grounds.

I suspect you have no idea what things were like in the 80`s incidentally

Inter county game is becoming a behometh but no reason for it not to especially now that there is so many other challenges to GAA than ever before and how exactly do you propose to draw a line with it?
Not maximising revenue is foolish in that regard.
You are correct in that the training to games ratio is the major problem but what do you want done to fix that?

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

The problem could be fixed if the GAA accepted that the county game needs to be organised into a league format with a fixed schedule of fixtures that clubs can work around and that counties must then stick to the schedule of club fixtures they have set up and not change it.

The club game should be organised like it is in soccer with league matches every single week for every club player.Players play club football and hurling for enjoyment and the most enjoyable thing about the club game is playing matches.We have an obsession with knockout competitions in the GAA despite them not providing what the players want at club level and what fans want at county level.

Start county championships in September and October (after about 20 league matches are played) and they should take no more than 5 or 6 weeks to run off if organised properly and players will have been playing matches all summer in the league and won't have been left idle.Or maybe just abandon the idea of the championship and play 20 rounds of league matches and then have playoffs at the end to decide the championship winners.

Also a big problem is that we need to get rid of winter training at club and county level and accept both sports are summer sports and should be played between from April to October inclusive with training only allowed to start no earlier than St Patricks day.

Looking into the past like Brolly always does is not a good idea the inter-county game has moved forward it is not going to regress so you need to move with it and come up with changes that reflect the GAA today.

County game does need a main competition with a league focus but will people accept that?
Why would you have to start county championships so late even with an inter county competition mainly league based? If done properly with counties playing regularly every 2/3 weeks you could have club games in between..
Games only played between April and October leaves things very tight and you would have to extend that by at least 2 months

Twiceasnice97

Dots1982 wrote: »

Some fair points but you're also saying making a predetermined opinion that ireland is too small for professional sport.

This makes Ireland unique amongst first world countries as the only one that cannot sustain professional sport. For a sports-mad country that would be very strange.

I'd see your point on the other things but i think Ireland could definitely sustain professional Gaelic Football. It's just a matter of how it would be done.

this is totally delusional.

so your proposal is that we have about 8 gaelic football teams spread around the major population centres is it?

rugby has shown that small populations cant sustain professional squads and that's with an international outlet.
Scotland with 5m people couldn't even support 3 Rugby teams. the welsh are down to 4 teams I think it is and we can just about keep 4 teams goping

make gaelic football professional and you would have about 8 teams maybe and its goodbye hurling.
why would anyone play it if you can get paid to play football.

Dots1982

Twiceasnice97 wrote: »

this is totally delusional.

so your proposal is that we have about 8 gaelic football teams spread around the major population centres is it?

rugby has shown that small populations cant sustain professional squads and that's with an international outlet.
Scotland with 5m people couldn't even support 3 Rugby teams. the welsh are down to 4 teams I think it is and we can just about keep 4 teams goping

make gaelic football professional and you would have about 8 teams maybe and its goodbye hurling.
why would anyone play it if you can get paid to play football.

Not sure rugby has much thato relevance. It's still a bit too small of a sport in ireland to compare with GAA as I'd see it.

The way I'd see it there would be room for ten professional football teams in Ireland. If you wanted to include rugby in the discussion i think wales would be the best country to compare to. It has, i think, 5 pro teams with a much smaller population than the entire island of ireland.

Completely fair point on the hurling. One that I've considered myself and don't have an easy answer for. My entire hypothesis is dependent on interest in 70% of counties dying out because the gap is getting increasingly unbridgeable to the best teams. If that happens and attendances drop off starkly the GAA will consider anything to revatilise football even possibly at the expense of hurling.

But frankly the point of the thing i wrote was that i think the media don't even discuss these issues and seem inspired to write about other things that matter little. I might be proven to be delusion as you say but the stuff i read in papers has so little revelance to where the sport is and where it is going.

I think i had fair points about the constant media harping about blanket defenses and the apparent boring football. I think that whole movement is nonsense and deserves calling out.

The Lost Sheep

Twiceasnice97 wrote: »

this is totally delusional.

so your proposal is that we have about 8 gaelic football teams spread around the major population centres is it?

rugby has shown that small populations cant sustain professional squads and that's with an international outlet.
Scotland with 5m people couldn't even support 3 Rugby teams. the welsh are down to 4 teams I think it is and we can just about keep 4 teams goping

make gaelic football professional and you would have about 8 teams maybe and its goodbye hurling.
why would anyone play it if you can get paid to play football.

How has rugby shown you cant sustain pro squads?
Scotland has 5m people and couldn't sustain a 3rd squad because they were in debt(and still are in debt). There has been proposals and talks about private funding creating another side but its hard to say if itll happen
Wales is a very small country and even with it being rugby mad the population can only keep 4 pro sides that are viable.
We can more than keep 4 sides going.
Hurling wouldn't be "goodbye" if it went pro and Gaelic wouldn't necessarily only have 8 teams but wages would be minuscule and how many players would play pro for that?

Dots1982 wrote: »

Not sure rugby has much thato relevance. It's still a bit too small of a sport in ireland to compare with GAA as I'd see it.

The way I'd see it there would be room for ten professional football teams in Ireland. If you wanted to include rugby in the discussion i think wales would be the best country to compare to. It has, i think, 5 pro teams with a much smaller population than the entire island of ireland.

Completely fair point on the hurling. One that I've considered myself and don't have an easy answer for. My entire hypothesis is dependent on interest in 70% of counties dying out because the gap is getting increasingly unbridgeable to the best teams. If that happens and attendances drop off starkly the GAA will consider anything to revatilise football even possibly at the expense of hurling.

But frankly the point of the thing i wrote was that i think the media don't even discuss these issues and seem inspired to write about other things that matter little. I might be proven to be delusion as you say but the stuff i read in papers has so little revelance to where the sport is and where it is going.

I think i had fair points about the constant media harping about blanket defenses and the apparent boring football. I think that whole movement is nonsense and deserves calling out.

Rugby is very relevant if talking about professionalism considering its the leading team sport that's pro in the country.
Wales doesn't have 5 pro teams. It has 4.
How do you see 10 teams being pro in gaelic being feasible? Where do you base them? Who funds them?

tastyt

On the competitive side of things there is one solution staring everyone in the face but the traditionalists and money men wont have it.

Dublin has far too much investment, marketing power and huge population to compete on a level playing field with the likes of meath, laois, kildare. Leinster is a farce and is only getting worse, and this is filtering into the all Ireland series.

Dublin needs to be split north/south and they would probably still be the 2 best teams in Leinster but at least it gives the other counties a glimmer of hope.

The money making machine that is " the dubs " doesn't want to be lost by the GAA though and thats why with the economy becoming ever more dublin centric wel continue to see about 2 or 3 decent games a year.

Dots1982

tastyt wrote: »

On the competitive side of things there is one solution staring everyone in the face but the traditionalists and money men wont have it.

Dublin has far too much investment, marketing power and huge population to compete on a level playing field with the likes of meath, laois, kildare. Leinster is a farce and is only getting worse, and this is filtering into the all Ireland series.

Dublin needs to be split north/south and they would probably still be the 2 best teams in Leinster but at least it gives the other counties a glimmer of hope.

The money making machine that is " the dubs " doesn't want to be lost by the GAA though and thats why with the economy becoming ever more dublin centric wel continue to see about 2 or 3 decent games a year.

I used to think Dublin would be spilt in future and maybe it will but really Dublin being spilt will only help Kildare and Meath. The rest would still be too small in a population basis to compete with a spilt Dublin.

Also Dublin is now the strongest brand in the game. A sport does not serve itself by spilting its biggest brands. It should instead work to create more dublins by amalgamating counties.

tritium

Dots1982 wrote: »

I used to think Dublin would be spilt in future and maybe it will but really Dublin being spilt will only help Kildare and Meath. The rest would still be too small in a population basis to compete with a spilt Dublin.

Also Dublin is now the strongest brand in the game. A sport does not serve itself by spilting its biggest brands. It should instead work to create more dublins by amalgamating counties.

This. Splitting Dublin would do nothing for the smaller counties, all it does is hand a few more all irelands to other very well resourced counties like Kerry. Pretty much all the problems taised here around football predate Dublins recent success.

The Lost Sheep

tastyt wrote: »

On the competitive side of things there is one solution staring everyone in the face but the traditionalists and money men wont have it.

Dublin has far too much investment, marketing power and huge population to compete on a level playing field with the likes of meath, laois, kildare. Leinster is a farce and is only getting worse, and this is filtering into the all Ireland series.

Dublin needs to be split north/south and they would probably still be the 2 best teams in Leinster but at least it gives the other counties a glimmer of hope.

The money making machine that is " the dubs " doesn't want to be lost by the GAA though and thats why with the economy becoming ever more dublin centric wel continue to see about 2 or 3 decent games a year.

But what does Dublin being split up actually achieve? 1 or the other will nearly always win Leinster and in many years both are likely to be in the leinster final so how does that help other counties?
Meath, Kildare have huge population bases....

ammc

The Lost Sheep wrote: »

But what does Dublin being split up actually achieve? 1 or the other will nearly always win Leinster and in many years both are likely to be in the leinster final so how does that help other counties?
Meath, Kildare have huge population bases....

It would create the biggest rivalry in GAA history. What with Northside v's Southside, for those concerned with marketing it would be 'manna from heaven' and generate huge publicity for the GAA.

Dublin seem to have really got their act together organisationally and not just with their senior team but at underage club level. Dublin seniors are presently ahead of the pack and this gap will only get bigger

The Lost Sheep

ammc wrote: »

It would create the biggest rivalry in GAA history. What with Northside v's Southside, for those concerned with marketing it would be 'manna from heaven' and generate huge publicity for the GAA.

Dublin seem to have really got their act together organisationally and not just with their senior team but at underage club level. Dublin seniors are presently ahead of the pack and this gap will only get bigger

Would it though? Dublin are ahead of the pack for now but splitting Dublin doesn't help anyone else.

ammc

The Lost Sheep wrote: »

Would it though? Dublin are ahead of the pack for now but splitting Dublin doesn't help anyone else.

I might be wrong, but I feel, left as it is Dublin are only going to get stronger with only the odd occasional blip to their reign. Kerry and Mayo are the only 2 teams that can possibly get close to Dublin on a consistent basis and an argument could be made to split these counties as well.

Splitting Dublin will obviously make them weaker which in Leinster at least, will put an end to the annual 20+pts annihilation they give every team they meet. Not being demoralised like this every year has to be a help to any team.

I take it when you say it 'doesn't help anyone else' you are talking about that by splitting Dublin it is merely reducing standards and not improving others and I would agree with you in that. The onus is on the GAA to help all other counties to get their act together in this regard.

All that said, I can't see Dublin splitting any time soon but in my opinion Dublin have raised the bar so high that it's almost impossible for nearly every county to get near

The Lost Sheep

ammc wrote: »

I might be wrong, but I feel, left as it is Dublin are only going to get stronger with only the odd occasional blip to their reign. Kerry and Mayo are the only 2 teams that can possibly get close to Dublin on a consistent basis and an argument could be made to split these counties as well.

Splitting Dublin will obviously make them weaker which in Leinster at least, will put an end to the annual 20+pts annihilation they give every team they meet. Not being demoralised like this every year has to be a help to any team.

I take it when you say it 'doesn't help anyone else' you are talking about that by splitting Dublin it is merely reducing standards and not improving others and I would agree with you in that. The onus is on the GAA to help all other counties to get their act together in this regard.

All that said, I can't see Dublin splitting any time soon but in my opinion Dublin have raised the bar so high that it's almost impossible for nearly every county to get near

That doesn't make sense though. So teams are winning we should split them? Why? Why reduce standards of the best to help the overall? We're talking about elite level of the game not under 12s where results don't count and every kid gets a medal for participating.
Dublin have raised the bar but its up to other counties to look at ways and work on the means to catch them and not for the GAA to trip Dublin up and penalise them for having the right systems in place

Dirty Dingus McGee

The Lost Sheep wrote: »

That doesn't make sense though. So teams are winning we should split them? Why? Why reduce standards of the best to help the overall? We're talking about elite level of the game not under 12s where results don't count and every kid gets a medal for participating.
Dublin have raised the bar but its up to other counties to look at ways and work on the means to catch them and not for the GAA to trip Dublin up and penalise them for having the right systems in place

That's actually a great way to organise any sport and it adds to entertainment.

Difficult to implement something like that in GAA.

Imagine how much better the GAA championships would be if the stronger counties were taken down a few notches and you had 10-12 genuine contenders each year for both all ireland championships.More close games more open championship equals more entertainment.

The Lost Sheep

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

That's actually a great way to organise any sport and it adds to entertainment.

Difficult to implement something like that in GAA.

Imagine how much better the GAA championships would be if the stronger counties were taken down a few notches and you had 10-12 genuine contenders each year for both all ireland championships.More close games more open championship equals more entertainment.

Does reducing standards of play help things though?
It isn't at all a great way to organise things. GAA championships would be much better if changes were made to structures to help all counties as current format doesn't help weaker counties and only allows gap between top and rest widen

dirtyden

Dots1982 wrote: »

I used to think Dublin would be spilt in future and maybe it will but really Dublin being spilt will only help Kildare and Meath. The rest would still be too small in a population basis to compete with a spilt Dublin.

Also Dublin is now the strongest brand in the game. A sport does not serve itself by spilting its biggest brands. It should instead work to create more dublins by amalgamating counties.

Do you watch or follow GAA at all?

This post is so contradictory to the nature of what GAA is it suggests that you don't.

ProudDUB

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

That's actually a great way to organise any sport and it adds to entertainment.

Difficult to implement something like that in GAA.

Imagine how much better the GAA championships would be if the stronger counties were taken down a few notches and you had 10-12 genuine contenders each year for both all ireland championships.More close games more open championship equals more entertainment.

How do you propose taking the likes of Kilkenny, Tipp, Galway & Waterford "down a few notches" ? How do you break the news to the people in those counties, they they owe the rest of the country a barren spell for the good of the game? What about all the people who break their bollocks at grass roots level, to keep the games thriving in those counties? Tell them to take up knitting, or tiddleywinks? How do you stop a few ambitious, well run counties rising to the top again, while others are content to remain mediocre? Won't that just bring us back to square one all over again?

Dirty Dingus McGee

ProudDUB wrote: »

How do you propose taking the likes of Kilkenny, Tipp, Galway & Waterford "down a few notches" ? How do you break the news to the people in those counties, they they owe the rest of the country a barren spell for the good of the game? What about all the people who break their bollocks at grass roots level, to keep the games alive? Tell them to take up knitting, or tiddleywinks? And how do you stop a few ambitious, well run counties rising to the top again, while others are content to remain mediocre, which only brings us back to square one again?

It's not going to happen but just imagine how much more competitive the championships would be if the perennially strong counties like Tipp,Kilkenny and Cork were split in 2.If the same happened to Dublin and Kerry in football.

You'd have a lot more competitiveness.

It's impossible for most counties to get up to that level as a reasonable target reduce the top end quality and more teams would be able to compete and would be encourage by this and get better.

flatty

ProudDUB wrote: »

How do you propose taking the likes of Kilkenny, Tipp, Galway & Waterford "down a few notches" ? How do you break the news to the people in those counties, they they owe the rest of the country a barren spell for the good of the game? What about all the people who break their bollocks at grass roots level, to keep the games thriving in those counties? Tell them to take up knitting, or tiddleywinks? How do you stop a few ambitious, well run counties rising to the top again, while others are content to remain mediocre? Won't that just bring us back to square one all over again?

Jays us. Galway don't owe anyone a barren spell.

ProudDUB

Galway are a successful county, relatively speaking. They may not be winning All Irelands recently, but they've been in several finals and semi finals this decade. Compared to Laois, or Antrim, or even Dublin, in the hurling, that is pretty successful

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

It's not going to happen but just imagine how much more competitive the championships would be if the perennially strong counties like Tipp,Kilkenny and Cork were split in 2.If the same happened to Dublin and Kerry in football.

You'd have a lot more competitiveness.

It's impossible for most counties to get up to that level as a reasonable target reduce the top end quality and more teams would be able to compete and would be encourage by this and get better.

Grand so. Punish the sucessful counties for being successful. Split the top 10 counties in two. Then what? When Roscommon, Carlow, Leitrim and Fermanagh start hoovering up All Irelands, do we split them up too? What happens when we run out of counties to split?

Dirty Dingus McGee

ProudDUB wrote: »

Galway are a successful county, relatively speaking. They may not be winning All Irelands recently, but they've been in several finals and semi finals this decade. Compared to Laois, or Antrim, or even Dublin, in the hurling, that is pretty successful




Grand so. Punish the sucessful counties for being successful. Split the top 10 counties in two. Then what? When Roscommon, Carlow, Leitrim and Fermanagh start hoovering up All Irelands, do we split them up too? What happens when we run out of counties to split?

Ideally all the counties would have a more equal split of population which would make everything fairer.The county system is not very fair but that's just the way it is.

No need to get so huffy about it, it's merely a hypothetical scenario I suggested which has no chance of happening.

ProudDUB

If you are going to propose radical ideas on how to improve the AI championships, questions as to how they could realistically be put into practice, should be expected. That's not huffiness. Splitting counties in two, or taking deliberate steps to make successful counties less competitive, seem pretty radical to me.

Dirty Dingus McGee

ProudDUB wrote: »

If you are going to propose radical ideas on how to improve the AI championships, questions as to how they could realistically be put into practice, should be expected. That's not huffiness. Splitting counties in two, or taking deliberate steps to make successful counties less competitive, seem pretty radical to me.

The game has gone so professional now that it is only worthwhile to put the effort into the game if you are a contending team, smaller counties are falling off because of this as numerous players turn down the chance to play as it's pointless however at the same time these teams don't want to be excluded from the all ireland championship and play in a secondary competition.

The inter-county game may well be in serious trouble in the future because of this and maybe radical steps really do have to be taken.

You can't get teams to not try as hard and it's very difficult to get the less successful counties up to any serious competitive level.

In an ideal world the whole county system would be abandoned and you'd have regional teams in the championship where you could engineer more competitiveness.

The all ireland is really just for entertainment and maybe we need to think about it more in this way and radically change the whole structure of the top level of the games.

ammc

ProudDUB wrote: »

If you are going to propose radical ideas on how to improve the AI championships, questions as to how they could realistically be put into practice, should be expected. That's not huffiness. Splitting counties in two, or taking deliberate steps to make successful counties less competitive, seem pretty radical to me.

Splitting the likes of Dublin or Kerry for that matter, will weaken them in the short term but they have such resources that they would recover in time. This might also give the weaker counties a bit of breathing space and an incentive to improve with the support of the GAA.

Turkey's don't vote for xmas so I wouldn't expect any support for such a move from either Dublin or Kerry supporters who rightly feel that their respective counties have put considerable work into getting them to where they are. However, both these counties are professional in all but name and that goes from their team to their county administrators. The majority of other counties have no chance of getting near these levels and while this isn't the fault of Dublin/Kerry it's just the reality as things stand.

As an aside, counties like Galway, Cork and Tipperary as well as many of the weaker counties are effectively split in two what with football and hurling.

Dots1982

dirtyden wrote: »

Do you watch or follow GAA at all?

This post is so contradictory to the nature of what GAA is it suggests that you don't.

I watch it a lot. Well at least I used to. I follow the club game more now. Intercounty GAA is just a bunch of teams making up the numbers and six or so left to actually compete with winning trophies.

dxhound2005

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

The game has gone so professional now that it is only worthwhile to put the effort into the game if you are a contending team

If the game has gone professional and there are so called elite teams now, then it is time for the GAA to bring out the big stick and make these professionals back into amateurs. Like they had to do back in the 1950's when teams were going into training camps, and the players loss of wages was being compensated by the counties involved.

I know nothing will be done but what is going on now makes a mockery of the Rulebook, and the so called amateur status.

http://www.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/donegals-camp-stay-takes-unity-to-another-level-30575136.html