GAA Infastructure

What sports are "sh@t upon"?

Or do you just mean unpopular?

So the less popular sports get less money. Seems logical.

Lot of money in boxing so it has plenty of money.

Betting sports are profitable with bookies so bookies sponsor the sport. Thats just bookies making money what are they going to do sponsor sports people don't bet on.

The big 3 team sports get money cause they are wildly popular.

Sponsorship is advertisement. Where there is a good return on investment is where the money goes.

And government funding is limited so should go to where it benefits the most amount of people so popular sports not niche sports

I don't see how they are sh@t upon though. 90% of athletics in Ireland is long distance running on roads and parks; the interest in track based events is minimal but we've a lot of running tracks funded by the state. We don't have a huge population of athletics participants starved of facilities.

Similar with cycling. Nearly all cycling in Ireland is just road racing. A single velodrome would probably fulfil our national needs.

If they can't send teams to events abroad, that just speaks to just how unpopular the sport is. Between state funding, sponsorships, fundraising etc. they still can't get the money together?

The context here is sporting infrastructure. You said cycling and athletics are hard done by in that context.

I'm asking how? What infrastructure do they need that they don't have?

And would this infrastructure you want for cycling and athletics be wildly out of proportion to their popularity?

Seems to have been protests against Casement last night at Windsor. Some fans seem stupid enough to believe Winsor is an option and fans groups saying the money would be better spent on grassroots which is fair enough except Casement need sto get built regardless.

Such a stupid petty little provence.

We've had years and years of insistence that the NI fanbase has changed and is now one big non-sectarian happy family where catholics and protestants put politics and religion behind them to join arms to sing GSTQ in Windsor Park and cheer on the GAWA.

But now that there's a chance of NI games being held in Casement Park the NI Supporters trust say NI fans won't be safe in West Belfast.

Seems a bit of a contradiction there.

I still believe Clones is were the Ulster Finals should be kept and it would not take to much to give it an upgrade but the anount od anti casement park articles i am seeing is starting to make me cheer for casement and have it redeveloped

So which is the juicier red herring;

The GAA one where the Casement money should be spent on Clones instead?

Or the Unionist one that it should be spent on grassroots?

It's amazing how Nowlan Park doesn't have floodlights esp with it hosting concerts

Same situation different residents.

The residents around the Gaelic Grounds tried their best to stop the floodlights which is why they are inside the stands.

It does seem very odd for county grounds to not have floodlights these days.

Casement Park is in a really Nationalist/Republican area. Crime is rife there and its not a nice place to visit. No offence to any of the locals,there are some fine people there. Then there is the militant Ulster GAA to deal with. The same GAA who name grounds after dead IRA bombers.. Id say most Unionists think they ll arrive at Casement for the football and there ll be a big tri colour snuck up somewhere ,'diddly eye dell do' music and probably public announcements in English and a mangled Irish. That'll be the welcome with open arms the Unionists might expect.

If you don't want lumped in with us then why do you even consider yourself an Ulsterman?

Anyway assuming you are from Cavan that region wasn't historically in Ulster until Queen Elizabeth I added it to the province so Cavan isn't really connected much to us anyway. The fact that they have near enough southern accents shows this.

Any self respecting Catholic wouldn't go to sports games where an Ulster banner is flown. If there are Catholics who attend Windsor Park then they are the posh type of Catholics who live in mixed towns. Rory McIlroy is a good example, he isn't the typical Catholic. Northern Ireland probably have some Catholic fans from middle class towns outside Belfast.

Joe Brolly commented about that situation. He said his first wife was a Catholic from Ballymena which was a different sort of Catholic than somewhere like Dungiven.