Football and Hurling to become separate bodies? Discuss

KevIRL

This has been raised by various members of the Hurling Development Committe - most recently Liam Griffin on the sports review of the year last Friday night on de telly.

Basically they feel that this year is a key one for the further development of hurling amoungst weaker counties with the introduction of tier 2 and tier 3. The competitions will only be a success if the county boards of the weaker hurling counties take them seriously and assist their teams in every way possible. If this does not happen then the HDC feels hurling may have to break away from football completely or risk dying off in all about 10 or 12 counties.

Any thoughts?

Danno

Would hurling suffer more - with less financial assistance?

KevIRL

Hurling would be a separate entity to football. Therefore the money would have to be shared between the two.

Flukey

I would not go that far, but I certainly think that every county board should be making an effort to promote both games. They could have a sub-committee in each county board to look after each sport. The two sports would not necessarily have to have the same level of promotion, but every county should be able to field a competitive team in all competitions. IF necessary this should be made mandatory.

In relation to dual players there should be enough co-ordination done to make players available as much as possible for both. IT will be hard to remove all the overlaps, but better efforts should be made and co-operation should be increased. Doing things like we had in Kilkenny last weekend, bringing hurling players away when they were needed for football duties could be minimised. It would be hard to satisfy both, but each county should be made to promote both. That might not necessarily need separate county boards, or separate promotion at a higher level. Other initiatives should be tried first.

To help weaker counties a number of things could be done. Weak county teams could play club teams from stronger counties. This would be similar to the way college teams have been entered in some of the current inter-county competitions. Coaching co-operations could be done between counties. For example on occasions Kerry football coaches could work with Kilkenny footballers and Kilkenny coaches could work with Kerry hurlers. Coach the coaches co-operations could be done too.

Waylander

KevIRL wrote:

Hurling would be a separate entity to football. Therefore the money would have to be shared between the two.

If this were the case I would imagine hurling would have to live off its own incoime, and football would retain its income. This could only spell trouble for hurling as I would say there is alot more money in football. I would not agree with splitting them into seperate bodies.

The Rooster

Every county needs someone in a high level posiiton who cares about the minority sport.

In Dublin we certainly have nobody who gives a damn about hurling in a position of any power. If we did we'd have

Conal Keaney
Shane Ryan
David Henry
David O'Callaghan
Liam Ryan
Kevin Ryan
Stephen Perkins
Kevin Flynn

all playing hurling with the Dubs this year and we'd have a proper manager instead of a harmless gombeen. We'd be better than Offaly and Wexford and would give anybody a game. Instead Laois are going to beat us well in the championship this year, and we'll be reaching the levels of Meath, Wicklow, Westmeath etc.

Imposter

The Rooster wrote:

all playing hurling with the Dubs this year and we'd have a proper manager instead of a harmless gombeen. We'd be better than Offaly and Wexford and would give anybody a game. Instead Laois are going to beat us well in the championship this year, and we'll be reaching the levels of Meath, Wicklow, Westmeath etc.

Less of it! Westmeath are actually improving and using the little bit of underage success they've had. So again watch it!

Is that Kevin Ryan, Liam's brother? If it is how long has he been with the Dublin setup?

Danno

The Rooster wrote:

Every county needs someone in a high level posiiton who cares about the minority sport.

In Dublin we certainly have nobody who gives a damn about hurling in a position of any power. If we did we'd have

Conal Keaney
Shane Ryan
David Henry
David O'Callaghan
Liam Ryan
Kevin Ryan
Stephen Perkins
Kevin Flynn

all playing hurling with the Dubs this year and we'd have a proper manager instead of a harmless gombeen. We'd be better than Offaly and Wexford and would give anybody a game. Instead Laois are going to beat us well in the championship this year, and we'll be reaching the levels of Meath, Wicklow, Westmeath etc.

Laois Hurling! LOL! We are going backwards in that department. County Board here has alot to answer for about it too.

Flukey

Laois and Westmeath are examples of what can be done. Their recent senior success is more down to what they were doing 10 years ago, than what they have done in the past couple of years. The same can be said of Tyrone. That is the model to apply. Start from the ground, the younger players, and work up. Most successful counties do well at underage levels. Look at any one, hurling or football, and you'll usually find that is the case. You certainly need someone in the county to champion the cause of the weaker game, but there should also be help from on high, to ensure that county boards have to provide a proper level of support to those people. County boards not doing so should be penalised, if that is what it takes.

thirdmantackle

Well, its time the GAA started to realise there are THREE Sports in its organisation -

in order of the documented oldest...

Hurling (pretty old)
Handball (Played by the Romans)
Football (19th Century)


The first two sports should be higher on the agenda than the football as they are truely Irish games. Football is basketball/rugby/soccer combined

Waylander

I'm not sure I agree with your logic there TMT. For starters individual sports are never as popular or appealing to the public as team sports, so handball could never be developed to the level of hurling or football. Also I would consider football just as much an Irish sport as the other too.

Yavvy

thirdmantackle wrote:

Well, its time the GAA started to realise there are THREE Sports in its organisation -

Hurling (pretty old)
Handball (Played by the Romans)
Football (19th Century)

The first two sports should be higher on the agenda than the football as they are truely Irish games. Football is basketball/rugby/soccer combined

We should leave handball to the romans and concentrate on interesting sports :eek:

Danno

thirdmantackle wrote:

Well, its time the GAA started to realise there are THREE Sports in its organisation -

in order of the documented oldest...

Hurling (pretty old)
Handball (Played by the Romans)
Football (19th Century)


The first two sports should be higher on the agenda than the football as they are truely Irish games. Football is basketball/rugby/soccer combined

What match was the photo in your signature taken?