The Leinster Championship is dead.

ArielAtom wrote: »

Before you start talking bull**** about clubs and their resources, get your facts right.

ArielAtom wrote: »

Get your facts right.

Dickie10 wrote: »

Leinster and Munster Rugby had zero identity Connacht still dosent. Its makey ,Uppey garbage, morketing people will sort it and you will have big ad campaigns

Hammer Archer wrote: »

And it's very difficult to motivate young players to train 5 times a week and put their lives on hold when they see the runaway behemoth that is Dublin at senior level. Most would rather play for their club, travel and have a life.

Uncle Pierre wrote: »

You're not the first to make this point, so I may as well weigh in now with my own take on it.

I'm pushing 50 years old now, but back when I was a young lad, I had a few years (1992 to '94) on the Wexford senior football panel, although I was never a regular starter.

We played Dublin in the 1992/'93 league and lost by just three points. Then we played them again in the championship in Wexford Park in '93 and genuinely thought we had a chance, but we missed a few scoring chances we should have taken, and lost by four points in the end.

By the way, I got a run myself in the League match, but not in the championship, in case anybody is wondering.

Point is, we normally trained three (or sometimes four) times a week for a team where even though we knew we'd be underdogs against "the big boys", we genuinely thought we'd still have a chance of an upset, and the result shows we weren't too far off it.

But now, I see lads from my own club training for Wexford five nights a week, and it's much tougher training than we had back then too, but for what? Realistically, the best they can hope for is "not to lose by too much" if they pack the defence enough and try to limit the scoring opportunities for Dublin or whoever else.

Even when Carlow played Dublin during that whole "Carlow Rising" thing of a few years ago, their "achievement" was to only be three or four points down for most of the first 45 or 50 minutes, before losing by 12 points in the end.

I've great admiration for the lads in the "weaker counties" who make the commitment to county training today, but I honestly don't know if I'd make that commitment now myself, considering how much things have changed since the days when I got my own chance.

StupidLikeAFox wrote: »

Leaving out other advantage like Croker, private sponsorship etc, I think its worth looking at the significant advantage handed to Dublin by the central organisation in terms of the development funding and the structure they put in place. The starting 15 on the Dublin team last week came from 10 different clubs. Each and every one of those clubs have a GAA subsidised, full-time officer employed by their club. Some of the bigger clubs have self-funded additional professional coaches and I think Ballyboden has a full time administrator to organise the logistics of training, matches etc for their huge membership.

It is no doubt required given the scale of these clubs, but these are the richest clubs, from the richest area in the country, and the GAA is handing out subsidies way over and above what other counties have available to them. For example, if my local club here somehow got the money together for half a GDOs salary (which would be impossible without the membership and sponsorship available to a club like Ballyboden) we still wouldn't be entitled to a semi-funded GDO as this is a Dublin only scheme, and part of the plan that central GAA put in place to save the GAA in Dublin

You end up in a scenario that the richest area is getting the most targeted support from the GAA HQ. Meanwhile smaller, less successful counties have 1 or 2 development officers per county. They are spreading their time between many clubs across a wide geographical area. So when you compare the 2 starting lineups from the Leinster final - which group of players do you think got the most contact time with full time, professional coaches?

Dublin and the GAA have no doubt created a great structure in the capital, but I think its about time they realised the same resources need to be expanded to counties that need it. Ive no idea how its even up for debate that the richest county should get the most targeted support in terms of both finance and coaching resources.

ArielAtom wrote: »

https://sportforbusiness.com/is-dublin-gaa-funding-fair-and-proportionate/

A good article.

5. Investment in People
........that is available to every county, operated in most but without yet the kind of impact which it has had in Dublin....

6. The Burning Impact of Competition
Dublin GAA’s strength lies in the depth of competition it provides.

7. 15 Vs 15
Sport is competitive...............teams come and go....

8. It’s unfair that Dublin gets so much commercial support
.........Dublin teams still have to fundraise in order to get the gear the players want. Sometimes that comes down to exactly the same kind of quiz night in a draughty hall in the dead of winter that everyone else does. ..............

9. Leadership
Talent on the pitch can only fulfil its full potential if it is led well. ....

10. Alternatives
How many players never get to wear the colours because the competition for places on a team of 15 is simply more intense in the city of 1,345,402.
If the long-mooted ‘split’ was to happen and Dublin became two, both still be more populous than any other county in the country so if that doesn’t work do you go to four? North, South, West and Coast has a geographic logic and that would make the four counties less in population than Cork and Down as well.
That won’t be enough so let’s double the number again and create eight units in Dublin. Then it would be 12, 13, 14 and 15 in terms of size. Still 20,000 more than Kerry and 40,000 more than.
Or maybe let’s let history do its work and see where the next rivals will come from. For come they will. So long as it is 15 vs 15 on the pitch.

Scoundrel wrote: »

Indeed the sign of a good healthy championship where the various amateur teams play each other and underdogs can get results it'd be great stuff if you took the multi million euro professional Dubs out of it. Isn't it wonderful that despite population advantage that Meath and Kildare don't just steamroll over all the other counties I wonder what advantage other than population that Dublin have which is responsible for the farcical nature of the Leinster championship? €€€€

Did you smash it wrote: »

People don’t support Leinster or munster because they share enormous identity as leinstarians or munsterians.

They support it because Leinster and Munster are sexy, winning teams.

Same with GAA, if you put out a region team, whether people get behind it or not will not depend on “identity”, it will depend on whether the region team has good players, wins matches and has a nice stadium.

gilberto_eire wrote: »

We should start a new movement, when your team is out of the race for Sam, we all back the Dubs.

Another issue is that the big population counties after Dublin are either split between hurling and football or predominantly hurling - Cork, Galway, Waterford, Limerick.
Funnily enough Mayo probably have the biggest population for a football only county after Dublin.

The Lost Sheep wrote: »

They do though. There is clear identity with where people are from or people who represent them. When Munster were very successful and Leinster were far in their shadow there were plenty from leinster counties bordering Munster who supported Munster simply because they saw Leinster as a side of dubs/fee schools but Leinster changed that hugely with the work theyve put in with the clubs and primary and secondary schools all over the province..

Rock77 wrote: »

It’s really quite simple though, as another Dub has already said, Dublin were underachieving until the GAA decided to pump money into them....

Uncle Pierre wrote: »

Sorry, that wasn't meant as a go at you! You just happened to be the most recent one with a post that included a bit about Dublin were "underachieving", even if you were only referring to what somebody else had said. That just meant that your bit was the easiest one to quote.

For what it's worth, I agree with you overall. I'd like to see fair and proportionate funding across the board too. I'm well aware that Dublin would still get most money in absolute terms because of greater playing numbers, but so be it, so long as every county got an equal proportionate share.

It's for this reason that I'm actually uneasy too with the East Leinster Project that's been mentioned here a few times. It was set up to concentrate on four counties only (Louth, Meath, Kildare and Wicklow). That's not fair on other counties like Laois, Offaly, Westmeath, or even ourselves here in Wexford.

I'd disagree too with something another poster said (several pages back) about how GAA now "needs to concentrate on other urban areas like Sligo, Drogheda and Belfast". Why should Sligo get more than Roscommon, for instance, just because there's a larger town there? Or if Drogheda clubs started getting extra money for coaching structures, just because they're in a large town, how is that fair on every other club in the county?

ALL such money should be available to every county and every club on a proportionate basis, rather than just being concentrated in certain areas.

Hammer Archer wrote: »

I think the idea that the GAA in Dublin was under threat in the early 2000s was utterly ridiculous. As I mentioned, Dublin were within the width of a post away from an All Ireland final in 2002 and would consistently sell out Croke Park in the latter stages of the championship. Even early rounds involving Dublin drew 60000 attendances.
I think what happened was the GAA panicked after Dublin were knocked out early by Laois and Westmeath in 03 & 04 respectively. 2004 hit the GAA's coffers especially hard as they were denied a big crowd in the Leinster semi finals and final (the 2004 Leinster final replay had only 38000 or so at it).
Instead of seeing this as a blip that can happen to any county, the GAA ploughed the millions into Dublin. Since then, they've lost one game in the Leinster championship and, ironically, ensured that they are likely to never see a Leinster championship game fill Croke Park again.

Compare the celebrations from players and fans when Dublin won Leinster in 2005 to those when they won it last year.

Hammer Archer wrote: »

I think the idea that the GAA in Dublin was under threat in the early 2000s was utterly ridiculous. As I mentioned, Dublin were within the width of a post away from an All Ireland final in 2002 and would consistently sell out Croke Park in the latter stages of the championship. Even early rounds involving Dublin drew 60000 attendances.
I think what happened was the GAA panicked after Dublin were knocked out early by Laois and Westmeath in 03 & 04 respectively. 2004 hit the GAA's coffers especially hard as they were denied a big crowd in the Leinster semi finals and final (the 2004 Leinster final replay had only 38000 or so at it).
Instead of seeing this as a blip that can happen to any county, the GAA ploughed the millions into Dublin. Since then, they've lost one game in the Leinster championship and, ironically, ensured that they are likely to never see a Leinster championship game fill Croke Park again.

Compare the celebrations from players and fans when Dublin won Leinster in 2005 to those when they won it last year.

Did you smash it wrote: »

So you accuse another poster of lying and only downgrading to talking “ total bollocks “ and you come out with this massive lie yourself.

You’re quite a piece of work.