Cult of Stephen Kenny

People also ignore that the majority of GAA funding comes from the grassroots and local community.

For any capital investment in grounds for example a club will do it's own fundraising to supplement any government money.

Actually I believe government funding is often only supplied once a club can prove that they have raised or can raise a certain amount themselves.

But soccer can't do that, because their grassroots has all their money spent on EPL jerseys, trips to England and Sky subs.

Unfortunately, too many of them prefer to blame the GAA for their troubles.

Ignoring, of course, the shocking leadership, financial wastage and desperately poor competition structures of soccer. Or that the GAA games are native sports and part of the national identity, and will always have government investment simply on cultural grounds. Or that most of the funding the GAA gets is via fundraising.

Another aspect is exposure.

Take schools for example. The effort put in by the GAA to organise, support and run secondary schools competitions. I remember having games pretty much the entire year, hurling and football, all helped out by the county board in some way. When it came to soccer, bar the national competitions, the schools had to organise the local competitions themselves pretty much. The head of the schoolboys league in fairness to him when asked for help did organise the referee's rota, but in the main it was left to the schools themselves. I think it's improved since then, but the investment in time and effort at schools level is world's apart.

At primary school level, soccer competitions should have been a given, seeing as it's the sport most young lads played. Not once did we ever have a primary schools soccer match, except the odd friendly game between nearby schools. GAA competitions from 3rd class up, hurling and football, and regular appearances by coaches giving tips.

If you didn't know anything about sport and had to pick one that you thought was the professional sport, it wouldn't be soccer.

And that lack of exposure at a young age can leave an impression, that one sport is in order, and one doesn't know its arse from its elbows.

And that's the crux of it regarding funding. Soccer, in the main, doesn't have it's ducks in a row, structure wise or financially. Other sports do. And if I was a government minister, the money would go to the responsible sport, not the one that hasn't a clue and blows the money on nothing and then asks for more.

Sadly, Irish soccer seems bereft of actual leadership and joined up thinking. And I suspect, sadly, it always will.

Still though, lets blame the GAA. It won't solve anything, but it'll make us feel good, and less like failures.

PS - On the GAA. I'd wager that if the FAI and LOI disbanded and the District leagues packed it in due to financial pressures/mismanagement overnight, and in desperation to avoid the societal catastrophe of no soccer as an outlet and pastime for hundreds of thousands of people, the government asked the GAA to take control of soccer and run it as their own sport along their own structure, I reckon they'd make far more of a success of it than the FAI ever could.

There’s no point in blaming the GAA or government.

The FAI made a bollox of things and didn’t invest in developing the grass roots properly.

We can also point a finger at all of us (me included) who never attend LOI games.

I can never understand so many people supporting English clubs or the best one of supporting Celtic because they are Irish yet won’t actually support a real Irish club.

Gus Poyet seems to really want the job the way he talking in the media the last couple of days.

I see Kenny is in the running for the Lincoln City job who are mid table in league 1 which is probably about where his level of management really is.

It's time now for him to bow out of the Ireland Job in a fortnight let everyone including himself move on.

It’s the LOI’s fault that a Turkish man pays 3 million for a largely unsuccessful Irish club that doesn’t own its ground and then cedes the investment back to the original owners for nothing.

why?

Why are the events at shels this week proof of the LOI/FAI being unable to manage the development of football in this country?

At the time?? They got Mick at the same time as they promised Kenny the job. Stop talking nonsense.

What you are conveniently not mentioning is that the majority of the cost of those upgrades came from the club fundraising, membership fees, sponsorship etc, not from the government.

The idea that the government in anyway funds the GAA’s success is so so wrong.

both sports are leaned on for tax revenue as opposed to being invested in, especially GAA.

football at least got the 40 or 50 million bailout but that was partly a consequence of underinvestment

Lad, dont start a post with "mate". That's a tan phrase.

If I get banned for saying this then at least I educated

The money GAA get from the taxpayer would be absolutely dwarfed by the money GAA generate for the economy and the revenue.

you’re just thinking about the debit side while not considering the credit side.

He was paid 20K over what he was due as well apparently.

Maybe the reason the government doesn't give soccer as much money as other sports, other than massive bailouts, is because of how much they waste when they do have it.

Obviously though, it's the GAA's fault.

I didn't say mis-spent, I said wasted. I wouldn't see investment in infrastructure, coaching, necessary equipment and other such aspects around soccer as as a failure, it's a good use of public money because it would at least mean something useful is going towards people/an activity that needs it, and likely something useful will come of it.

But given they've been bailed out to the tune of €50m, overpaying a non-resident staff member who failed to secure a sponsor for the men's team for three years by €20k would seem to be some sort of wastage of that €50m.

I suspect a forensic examination of the FAI accounts would see similar wastage in other parts of the FAI spending.

And not for nothing, I suspect an awful lot of soccer clubs in this country could do with a fraction of the €20k to keep the show on the road and improve their lot. But it has been wasted.