The split season

Just do a Roy Keane and get a strain for every game you don't want to play.

How Long before some people want the all Ireland seni finals and final played off over the same weekend?

You may laugh and say that'll never happen but everyone would have said the same about all Ireland finals in July 15 years ago as well.

GPA motion 8 was passed. The intercounty season is locked into 30 weekends from start to finish. Just a matter of agreeing the start and finish. The club timescale is protected.

its basically gaslighting. There are some issues with how the season operates, not a problem with the concept of split season.

Hurling

Too big a gap between end of league and start of championship.

Too short a gap between AI semi and final

Ideally a final later in season by a few weeks would be ideal, but first two points are higher priority for me. The league is too long with too many one sided games. Smaller divisions (5) would be preferrable.

Joe Mc/Ring/Meagher end too early in year.

Football

The championship lacks jeopardy until very end. The league looks decent to be fair.

Club

We still have a split season as most counties are running club leagues now. Club players still start training in January for a season ending in Oct/Nov. We could start county leagues later in year to build upto club championship in August. What works with split season is the clear run at county championship, but for many counties it could start a little earlier.

The debate is about how to structure split season better, but you’d swear it was to kill it the way some people are going on.

if I had my way I would have very few club and no county game before March, and prioritise schools and third level up to end of Feb.

I dont envy club and county secretaries, but half our issue is not tye split season but this seeking to fill 30 weeks. About 24-26 county season would be better for county and therefor the club also.

The change in hurling dropping the preliminary 1/4 finals will give the championship a little more time to "breathe".

It also will allow for the Joe McDonagh Cup to be a bit more spread out as there is no longer a need to get it finished in time for the preliminary 1/4 finals

July All-Ireland finals and no inter-county activity in August and September are soooo depressing.

The magic of the championship has been killed. It's now a rationalised, utilitarian rush job, no time to to think, no time to breathe, all mystery and character removed, All-Ireland finals now merely another optional summer entertainment event to be "consumed", the traditional September dates now filled with round robin club double headers on TG4 attended by a few dozen people.

How to ruin your showpiece competition 101.

It's a valid point about the Minor finals, though.

Clare & Waterford last year had more than 16,000 for their All-Ireland Final on what was a great occasion in Thurles.

If that had been a curtain-raiser for the senior final in Croke Park, chances are that the counties would have had no more than 6,000 to 8,000 tickets between them. At least half of those who went to the match wouldn't have been able to go at all. And instead of lining out in a cracking atmosphere in Thurles, the players would be hurling in a Croke Park that would be 80% to 90% empty at throw-in time.

Also consider how if there were 8,000 people there to support the Minor finalists, there'd haven been a corresponding 8,000 Cork & Tipperary people who wouldn't have been able to go to see their county play a senior final.

The problem isn’t the split season.

The problem is the demands of the inter-county season. They want more games, more time off between games. Where is this time going to come from? Why, the club scene of course. That the attitude you’re dealing with.

The split season isn’t perfect, but it’s by far and away the least worst option available to deal with the increasing demands of the inter-county scene which increasingly sees the club scene as a nuisance to its ambitions, a notion primarily driven by those in media circles such as journalists, pundits, podcasters and commentators who’s money is made on the county scene.

And the best argument I have in favour of the split season, outside of the obvious that it secures time for the clubs, is that for all the moaning and whinging and bitching from those complaining about the split season, I have yet to see one of them over the last few years put forward one proposal to sort it out without doing damage to the club scene.

Arguing against the split season with offering anything relating to a workable solution is simply GAA elitism in action.

Have you any actual evidence that earlier AI finals are limiting the GAA in terms of promotion or marketing? It's something we hear a lot from the media but it's never quantified in any way.

This year will be the 10th season with no AI finals in September but we've yet to see these apocalyptic predictions of GAA irrelevance come true.

The last September All-Ireland was less than four and a half years ago, not ten.

How is having the All-Ireland hurling final on the same day as the World Cup final helping the promotion of the sport? If you were sitting down at the start of the year and thought to yourself "what's the worst possible date I could have an All-Ireland final?" it would be that one.

The relentless obsession with quantifying everything leads to an ignoring of real things which are qualititative. July All-Irelands, along with football group stages, the abolition of replays, the Tommy Talty Cup and the two point arc and its relentless basketball and Tonight's Gonna Be A Good Night by the Black Eyed Peas being played as captains get All-Ireland trophies are an integral part of the cheapening, crassification and general enshiltification we see across sport.

If the quants had their way, we'd have abolished the provincial championships too, yet the provincial football finals were the best thing about last year by far.

September All-Irelands were the centrepiece of this country's sporting tradition for a century. The championships were the summer, with September the crescendo. And we just threw them out and decided to finish off the summer before the Galway Races have even started.

These were things of real value to a nation, whith their defined place in the calendar. Now are they are of less value. They are cheapened, corporatised, sanitised. They are much inferior occasions to what they were.

"Oh but the All-Ireland finals still get big ratings…" Well like duh, they're the All-Ireland finals, of course they're going to get big ratings, the All-Ireland finals played in December got big ratings. Is that an argument All-Irelands should be played in December every year?

Decline doesn't happen overnight. It comes slowly because of decisions taken which are cheerled by a pliant corporate media dependent on access.

The start of the national leagues until the end of the intercounty season is 27 weekends.

A football league finalist, provincial finalist and All Ireland finalist will on average 16 or 17 games over 27 weekends.

A hurling league finalist, provincial finalist and All Ireland finalist will on average 15 or 16 games over 26 weekends.

Seems reasonable enough. Success obviously brings more games. Previously the moaning was that the training to games ratio was too high!!

Ah yes, how could I forget the covid final when the championship only started in the last week of June.

You clearly don't represent the opinion of the wider GAA public. It's all well and good to talk about magic, mystery, motherhood and apple pie, but 90% of those involved in governing the game from the clubs up are happy with the new system.

When it comes to "fuzzy feeling in your stomach from knowing the AI final is in September" Vs. "Defined calendar that lets 99% of GAA players actually play in the summer" it's pretty clear that the GAA public are going with the latter.

You've actually just betrayed how little you actually know and understand about GAA operations and the crossover of inter-county and club competitions, if you think having the All-Ireland Finals in September worked "superbly".

If it had indeed worked "superbly", there'd never have been change in the first place. Instead, it was actually the cause of one of the biggest problems in the Association - the fact that in any county likely to have an extended run in the provincial or All-Ireland championships, nobody could ever tell when exactly that county's club championships could be played.

It worked for over a century because All Irelands were straight knockout. The calendar has been a disaster since the full backdoor came in. Something had to give and it wasn't going to be the much needed expanded All Ireland season.