Amatuerism v Professionalism. Small budgets v Big budgets. Has the horse bolted?

Off topic but Kiely couldn't give a fiddlers about winning a Munster championship, would be just as happy to sneak in to the top 3 and get to an All Ireland semi under the radar. Lads getting carried away with the Munster Championship because there are tight games in it. Limerick can be caught in it because they are tapering their preparation for the business end of the season and know its not do or die. They would beat any of the teams in Munster pulling up in a knockout game in Croke Park at the moment. Cork and Tipp are far from vintage in recent years, Waterford are Waterford and Clare are all huff and puff untill it comes to do or die time in Croker. Your having a laugh if you think you could draw consistently big crowds for a professional game by these five plus two or three more playing against each other over and over again.

It's not about who trains harder. It's about who puts bums on seats and the women's game doesn't. Talk of it ever being professional is nonsense.

And in the pro game there would be no meath, meath would be aligned with 2 to 3 other counties and named something else. There's no possibility of a pro Dublin vs a pro Louth. It won't happen. Professionalism will happen but probably not for another decade.

OK I think we both agree that the pro game cant work for the womens game. Nobody is arguing for that.

My point here - which you have not addressed - is how a pro game could work in the mens game.

Seriously - you think they'll get rid of the county structures, so that a handful of players can get a few hundred euros a week.....?

Maybe while we are at it, if they made the pitch smaller, got rid of points, only had goals, no more handling of the ball (except for the goalkeeper), introduce offside and corner kicks....

Well this is admittedly a problem, do we have a relegation system or a system like the rugby system where there’s no relegation.

Personally i think relegation wouldn’t work as it gets very complicated then & you’ll need a similar lower league system that won’t generate the money and sustain the team’s.

So maybe 10 or 12 pro teams based all over the country.

If roscommon had a David Clifford type player he can go wherever he want’s. But the system i have in mind would be all pro clubs will have an academy system and clubs in the regions to produce player’s.

I would hate to see a system like soccer where the likes of Man City & Saudi Arabia can buy whoever they want.

We had over 100 year’s of that already

Surely nobody wants another 100 of it.

Football & rugby have some shocking games a lot of time but still get the crowd’s & money.

....

All sports are built on volunteerism.

Soccer and rugby are full of volunteers.

Some people in the GAA need to stop pulling themselves off to this idea that only the GAA has volunteers.

Not in Ireland they don't.

The problem we have will always be the problem we'll have.

We are too small a market for decent size professional GAA.

There are just not enough people and thus not enough money to make it feasible.

If you want to compensate players better then look at what college football did.

For years there was conflict over players not being able to earn anything from their efforts.

Players got suspended for as minor an infraction as getting discounts at a tattoo shop.

So they came up with a compromise called Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) .

Now players can do endorsement deals with companies and brands to earn money from their popularity as players.

I know GAA players are seen going around in a new Volvo from their local Volvo dealer with some branding on it, but it could be extended to them actually signing contract to endorse something and get paid for it.

In college football the big high profile players get the big NIL deals but there are also lower profile local ones for les well known players.

The same could happen here, yes David Clifford will be the face of nationally recognized brands, but Ben O' Carroll could also be the face of such and such brand in Roscommon and get some income for his efforts.

The population argument is a bit of a fallacy. The average salary in the Danish league is 52k per year. A country with a similar population and not as invested in the sport as Ireland is in GAA. I know many Danes and 50% have little to no interest in soccer or the Danish league. Portugal sustains a very high waged league, averaging over €300,000 with a population of only €10million. The Austrian league where football is probably the 5th most interesting sport after Skiing, Biking etc. is over €40k per annum. There's absolutely no doubt that there is sufficient population and money here to support a pro league but not in the current configuration of 32 completely imbalanced teams.

And in a Pro league you'd be retaining all the guys that went to Australia, went to Rugby or just left the game and so the standards would improve generating more interest and more revenue. It would raise players profiles as they could dedicate time to visiting schools, charities, hospitals which would increase their brand and their ability to earn additional money on top of their base salary. More kids would stay playing the game if they thought they could potentially make a living from it.

Colm O'Rourke summed it up perfectly a few years back when he said "Ask not what i can do for the GAA, but what the GAA can do for me"

If there’s 15 fixtures that means there isn’t equal home & away fixtures?

I think the problem with anymore than 10 or 12 teams is the resources. And levels & competitiveness between team 1st & team 16th would be probably be so vast it wouldn’t generate public interest.

32 teams on an island of 6 million people isn't sustainable in any guise. It worked when we moved around in Ass carts and Bikes. Now you can get to 90% of the country inside 3hours. 16 teams, 15 league games and 4-5 championship scattered throughout the league would work well, giving a max of 21 games.

Sort of 6 Nations type arrangement or system? I love the idea of it, definitely worth trying.

i think the problem is

If team A had to go away to a Kerry or Dublin during the season, and was expecting too host Dublin or A Kerry next season & ends up getting relegated. They would lose out on serious money & Income for next year making the whole system unbalanced.

Thats the now.

There could be 10 or 15 million people living here in 20 years time.

And it isn’t a niche sport anymore. It’s got clubs all over the world playing it & bases in some of the Wealthiest city’s in the world.

And Connections, revenue & infrastructure alot of sports envy.