The 2025 All Ireland Senior Football Championship (Sam Maguire Cup)

I’d expect a decent crowd travelling from Dublin. There was a good bunch at the Galway game and the Derry game is more important. Sure there was easily 2-1 plus dubs at meath game and probably 1-1 at Wicklow away game.

Dubs fans enjoy away matches. I’ve been at them all but don’t get as excited about early champo games at HQ. What alot of non Dublin fans don’t seem to understand is that croke park can be a double edged sword. It’s not always the advantage some think, especially when Dublin aren’t as good as their opponents or are there or thereabouts.

Dublin won 1 AI between 1983 and 2011. How come croke park games weren’t an advantage during that period ?

Momentum shifts in games for Dublin can be catastrophic. Expectations and pressure on them, particularly when things aren’t going to plan, can be difference between winning and losing. Many times in 90s and 00s, Dublin folded under pressure and looked like they were playing some games with lead in their boots.

The lack of pressure/expectations in salthill (I know I thought we’d lose) arguably helped less experienced players and I’m not sure Galway aren’t more focused (as playing away does create a different mindset) for the challange if it’s in the capital.

I prefer seeing Dublin playing more out of Dublin. I really don’t see it doing them or fans any favours playing at HQ all the time, especially when Dublin aren’t favourites anymore.

In the year of our lord 2025 it's remarkable to still see adults with fully developed brains predending home advantage means you always win home games or always lose away games.

It's a marginal, measurable, well understood phenomenon worth a point or two on average over the long run (came out to about 1.5 points when I last calculated it admittedly a bunch of years ago).

Oh but we lost to some crowd at home in 1988 when we were ****, oh what you think we wouldn't beat Fermanagh in Brewster Park rabble rabble rabble.

Is your man still around who used to claim Dublin were at a huge disadvantage because they played every game at a neutral venue?

You would to use the all time stats alright because Limerick beating XYZ at home and Waterford losing to ABC at home in a given year aren't exactly the same thing. Bringing it to something like the Dublin argument the fact is their record over the ten years would have been really similar if they played all their games away because they were vastly superior to almost everyone they played, but it's in the occasional game of inches where the difference would be seen.

By the by, when this is studied it seems to be the influence of the crowd on refs that usually accounts for the difference in other sports although the wild idiosyncrasies of the physical infrastructure across different GAA grounds would seem to be potentially impactful as well.

The way you calculate the impact in a way that's useful is to get a big database of scores, tally up the points scored by the home team and the points scored by the away team, control a bit for batterings (e.g. you might only count a half point for every point scored above an 8 point win - there's a bit of an art to this) and see what the difference is. As I mentioned over a large sample it would come out to a couple of points extra for the home teams.

The fact that they had several championship draws in that period would seem to put a question mark on the first statement. The method I mentioned accounts for any top/bottom skew as the top/bottom teams typically play the same amount of games at home and away over a long stretch.