I fully endorse this appointment and wish Joe every success in the role.
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GAA Discussion / Liam Hayes article - Sunday Tribune
May 08, 2007, 04:25:52 PM
GAA
Time to face up to the (inconvenient) truth that the GAA is in meltdown
JUST a couple of weeks ago, the smartest and most influential GAA official of the last 100 years gave a spell-bindingly honest interview to the most articulate and influential GAA writer of this generation but, unfortunately, it appears their chin-wag failed to challenge the doziness of the vast multitude of Gaelic football and hurling people. Pity.
Because former president Peter Quinn told Martin Breheny of the Irish Independent that our great old association is being mismanaged and misdirected and, all told, is on the road to ruin if we're all not very careful.
Peter might as well have been standing in the shoes of former US presidential candidate Al Gore, who also had An Inconvenient Truth or two to disclose to the world in the last 12 months.
Hands on hearts, how many of us have bothered to watch that documentary which explains, I am expertly advised, how our planet is sweating and boiling to death?
Me? I didn't go to the cinema to catch it and, shamefully, any evening I have come across it amongst the list of possible purchases on my Sky Movies package I think, 'Naw, not tonight. . . next week. . .
maybe'. And I trot along to watch Gordon Ramsey's lovely wife Tana on Market Kitchen instead, to check her out and, also, to check out what fantastic food my planet is still able to grow for me.
The GAA is in meltdown too, and the last remaining item of any worth the association will have left on its books will probably be Croke Park, the world's largest open-air swimming pool.
Don't know whether it is true or not but I was told years and years ago, when Quinn was on active duty as GAA president, that he would walk to his car outside Croke Park at the end of a working day, with tears of frustration welling in his eyes. At that time he was the man with the vision for the magnificent HQ we have today but even back then, 15 years ago, he didn't like very much else he was viewing around him. Yeah, at that time Quinn was GAA president, and Liam Mulvihill was GAA Director General.
Liam is still there, and Peter is long gone out of office. Again, a pity.
If it had been the other way around, the GAA would not have a director general scared silly of people knowing exactly how much he is earning at the top of the world's greatest amateur organisation, and we would not have a championship season (in Gaelic football and hurling) stretched out in front of us which appears as hopelessly wide-eyed and legless as any year chosen from the 1940s and 50s.
I'll leave the hurling analysis on these pages to Liam Griffin, God help him.
Liam's a fantastically successful hotelier and businessman and, lucky for him, as a hurling philosopher he's got the imagination and fortitude of a Hollywood mogul.
Hurling, at county level in this country, is all but dead and buried. There are less than a handful of teams still alive and healthy and only another two or three, like Limerick, Galway and Wexford, who can work up to a pulse on a very good day.
But this is not my problem, is it? I've got a 2007 All Ireland football championship, also reeking of decay, to talk to you about this morning and God help us too.
When Nicky Brennan started bragging this week about how high and low the GAA might go looking for a new TV partner when their contract with RTE expires in the very near future it was clear that there were no Vincent Brownes at his latest press conference. 'Nicky. . .
Wakey, wakey man!'
Nicky Brennan is no Peter Quinn.
Nicky would have been an excellent GAA president . . . if he had been elected to office in the 1940s or 50s.
To have him suggest, in all seriousness, that 'his' games might give rise to an untidy queue of companies, of the quality of Setanta and Sky for instance, standing on the toes of RTE is the stuff of dreams.
Oh, he might get lucky, and some eejit in Setanta or Sky might pay twice as much for the GAA championships for the next three or five years. But in the process they will be purchasing the weakest product line the GAA has had to offer over the last 30 years. Gaelic football has more life left in it than hurling. However, its commercial appeal looks like taking a bumpy ride in the summer ahead.
I'm expecting lower attendances at games, smaller TV audiences, and less money at the end of the year for Nicky Brennan to shovel into the long string of 20,000-capacity grounds being rebuilt all over the country, but which never even fill up on one Sunday in the whole year.
In Gaelic football the problem is this, and it's quite simple really . . . Nicky Brennan and his buddies think they have a game which they can sell to TV companies for billions and gazillions of euro but, at the same time, they are investing just four or five million each year (in travelling and training expenses) in the 'stars' of the games.
The managers and the players are basically left to get on with things themselves. They're ignored for large chunks of the year, they're belittled, and they are expected to prepare and behave like professionals when they are being treated like the cheapest of hired help.
Admittedly, all of the greatest Gaelic footballers in the country might be getting half of an additional 4- 5m which Minister for Sport John O'Donoghue is now talking about with the GPA. That's better than a slap in the face with a wet fish . . . just about.
But the best Gaelic football managers . . . who have to build the teams which will attract the TV audiences which will be asked to pay the billions and gazillions of euro . . . just get told to shut up and shuffle along with whatever mileage allowance or whatever brown envelopes they can find under the table.
And some of these men, in complete truth, don't get any brown envelopes.
Four of them who do not (and you can make up your own mind about the rest) are Mickey Harte, Joe Kernan, Pat O'Shea and John Caffrey. Let's stick with this quartet for a minute or two.
What's going on around these four men should be very worrying for us all.
For starters, Tyrone and Armagh, who together have formed an enthralling and at times quite mesmerising double act over the last four or five years, look like they might be about to disappear altogether. Or, at best, disappear back into the chorus line. Dublin have won nothing outside of Leinster in the last 10 years and, as the GAA's greatest illusion, the boys have disappeared in a puff of blue smoke once too often for their own good and for the good of the game.
Without Kerry, and the genius of the people and raw power of the place, Gaelic football fans would have an even more miserable look on their faces. Though it's not good that Kerry football teams only have to hit the mediocre-to-good bracket in order to win a couple of All Ireland titles every decade.
A few years ago, Peter Quinn and a group of men around him came up with the suggestion that Dublin should be divided into two football teams and, sure, that had the shock value and the smell of a Plan X about it, but at least someone was saying out loud 'Heuston, we have a problem'.
Gaelic football in Dublin has been experiencing problems for far too long and it's evident in the quality of senior club football (which is a deathly pale colour, and far less exciting than what most counties in Ireland offer up to locals) not to mention the inability of anybody in the county to group together six forwards who would have the ability to walk onto any other county team in the country.
With too few good club teams, and very few good forwards in any club, it should be no surprise to anybody that Paul Caffrey might end his three-year reign, a few months from now, with nothing more to show for his efforts than predecessor Tommy Lyons.
Dublin needs more than one good man to turn things around. However, given the fact that Kerry look like they are a little bit at sixes and sevens under their 'new man' and that Tyrone and Armagh might be saying adios to us all for a few years, the 2007 All-Ireland football championship is a wide open field. So the Dubs have the same chance as 10 other teams in the scramble to claim Sam.
A Dublin victory would be great for them and great for the game. But, if it happens, don't for one moment think that the game of Gaelic football is suddenly on an upward graph. Too few managers have achieved too little in the first four months of this year.
John Maughan did what we expected him to do but, after him, there was only Brian McIvor to thank for saving the National league from becoming a complete non-event.
McIvor had built a strong, thundering, inventive and disciplined football team in Donegal and, with two years of such good work behind him, there is a chance that the wheels will not fall off the wagon in the rocky Sundays ahead. Donegal have to beat Armagh and Tyrone to win their place in the Ulster final, which will be a tough feat but a smaller ask than it would have been in any of the last four or five years.
Armagh's great defence of old is over and done with (McGeeney should probably have retired last year, and Bellew might now be retired after suffering a devastating ligament injury), and Tyrone's scintillating forward line has O'Neill and McGuigan with serious question marks beside their names due to injuries.
Joe Kernan and Mickey Harte have run out of time, and good luck. The two most controversial and thrilling teams of this new millennium are in big trouble. Kernan and Harte might not be able to save them on their own, and looking at the make-up and attitude of their two county boards it's no sure thing that a cavalry is about to come over the hill to aid these two great men.
And, for one minute, do you think the GAA at large cares? Do you imagine, for one second, that one or two of the lads in Croke Park on the big bucks have sat down and considered the implications of 'losing' Tyrone and Armagh?
It has not happened, believe me, and as two of the GAA's greatest and most profitable of teams are about to disappear off the product line we're left hoping, fingers crossed, that John Maughan or Peter Ford or Billy Morgan or Liam Kearns, or someone of that quality or blood line, can work a little miracle or two in the months ahead.
On your knees, folks . . . looks like we'll all have to pray a little harder all through the summer of 2007.
**********************************************************************
I think it's a load of scutter myself lads, I think he is mixing up Maughan with John O'Mahony myself, or he is expecting big things from Roscommon, I'm not sure. I've aired my views on hayes before so i'll stop here now
Time to face up to the (inconvenient) truth that the GAA is in meltdown
JUST a couple of weeks ago, the smartest and most influential GAA official of the last 100 years gave a spell-bindingly honest interview to the most articulate and influential GAA writer of this generation but, unfortunately, it appears their chin-wag failed to challenge the doziness of the vast multitude of Gaelic football and hurling people. Pity.
Because former president Peter Quinn told Martin Breheny of the Irish Independent that our great old association is being mismanaged and misdirected and, all told, is on the road to ruin if we're all not very careful.
Peter might as well have been standing in the shoes of former US presidential candidate Al Gore, who also had An Inconvenient Truth or two to disclose to the world in the last 12 months.
Hands on hearts, how many of us have bothered to watch that documentary which explains, I am expertly advised, how our planet is sweating and boiling to death?
Me? I didn't go to the cinema to catch it and, shamefully, any evening I have come across it amongst the list of possible purchases on my Sky Movies package I think, 'Naw, not tonight. . . next week. . .
maybe'. And I trot along to watch Gordon Ramsey's lovely wife Tana on Market Kitchen instead, to check her out and, also, to check out what fantastic food my planet is still able to grow for me.
The GAA is in meltdown too, and the last remaining item of any worth the association will have left on its books will probably be Croke Park, the world's largest open-air swimming pool.
Don't know whether it is true or not but I was told years and years ago, when Quinn was on active duty as GAA president, that he would walk to his car outside Croke Park at the end of a working day, with tears of frustration welling in his eyes. At that time he was the man with the vision for the magnificent HQ we have today but even back then, 15 years ago, he didn't like very much else he was viewing around him. Yeah, at that time Quinn was GAA president, and Liam Mulvihill was GAA Director General.
Liam is still there, and Peter is long gone out of office. Again, a pity.
If it had been the other way around, the GAA would not have a director general scared silly of people knowing exactly how much he is earning at the top of the world's greatest amateur organisation, and we would not have a championship season (in Gaelic football and hurling) stretched out in front of us which appears as hopelessly wide-eyed and legless as any year chosen from the 1940s and 50s.
I'll leave the hurling analysis on these pages to Liam Griffin, God help him.
Liam's a fantastically successful hotelier and businessman and, lucky for him, as a hurling philosopher he's got the imagination and fortitude of a Hollywood mogul.
Hurling, at county level in this country, is all but dead and buried. There are less than a handful of teams still alive and healthy and only another two or three, like Limerick, Galway and Wexford, who can work up to a pulse on a very good day.
But this is not my problem, is it? I've got a 2007 All Ireland football championship, also reeking of decay, to talk to you about this morning and God help us too.
When Nicky Brennan started bragging this week about how high and low the GAA might go looking for a new TV partner when their contract with RTE expires in the very near future it was clear that there were no Vincent Brownes at his latest press conference. 'Nicky. . .
Wakey, wakey man!'
Nicky Brennan is no Peter Quinn.
Nicky would have been an excellent GAA president . . . if he had been elected to office in the 1940s or 50s.
To have him suggest, in all seriousness, that 'his' games might give rise to an untidy queue of companies, of the quality of Setanta and Sky for instance, standing on the toes of RTE is the stuff of dreams.
Oh, he might get lucky, and some eejit in Setanta or Sky might pay twice as much for the GAA championships for the next three or five years. But in the process they will be purchasing the weakest product line the GAA has had to offer over the last 30 years. Gaelic football has more life left in it than hurling. However, its commercial appeal looks like taking a bumpy ride in the summer ahead.
I'm expecting lower attendances at games, smaller TV audiences, and less money at the end of the year for Nicky Brennan to shovel into the long string of 20,000-capacity grounds being rebuilt all over the country, but which never even fill up on one Sunday in the whole year.
In Gaelic football the problem is this, and it's quite simple really . . . Nicky Brennan and his buddies think they have a game which they can sell to TV companies for billions and gazillions of euro but, at the same time, they are investing just four or five million each year (in travelling and training expenses) in the 'stars' of the games.
The managers and the players are basically left to get on with things themselves. They're ignored for large chunks of the year, they're belittled, and they are expected to prepare and behave like professionals when they are being treated like the cheapest of hired help.
Admittedly, all of the greatest Gaelic footballers in the country might be getting half of an additional 4- 5m which Minister for Sport John O'Donoghue is now talking about with the GPA. That's better than a slap in the face with a wet fish . . . just about.
But the best Gaelic football managers . . . who have to build the teams which will attract the TV audiences which will be asked to pay the billions and gazillions of euro . . . just get told to shut up and shuffle along with whatever mileage allowance or whatever brown envelopes they can find under the table.
And some of these men, in complete truth, don't get any brown envelopes.
Four of them who do not (and you can make up your own mind about the rest) are Mickey Harte, Joe Kernan, Pat O'Shea and John Caffrey. Let's stick with this quartet for a minute or two.
What's going on around these four men should be very worrying for us all.
For starters, Tyrone and Armagh, who together have formed an enthralling and at times quite mesmerising double act over the last four or five years, look like they might be about to disappear altogether. Or, at best, disappear back into the chorus line. Dublin have won nothing outside of Leinster in the last 10 years and, as the GAA's greatest illusion, the boys have disappeared in a puff of blue smoke once too often for their own good and for the good of the game.
Without Kerry, and the genius of the people and raw power of the place, Gaelic football fans would have an even more miserable look on their faces. Though it's not good that Kerry football teams only have to hit the mediocre-to-good bracket in order to win a couple of All Ireland titles every decade.
A few years ago, Peter Quinn and a group of men around him came up with the suggestion that Dublin should be divided into two football teams and, sure, that had the shock value and the smell of a Plan X about it, but at least someone was saying out loud 'Heuston, we have a problem'.
Gaelic football in Dublin has been experiencing problems for far too long and it's evident in the quality of senior club football (which is a deathly pale colour, and far less exciting than what most counties in Ireland offer up to locals) not to mention the inability of anybody in the county to group together six forwards who would have the ability to walk onto any other county team in the country.
With too few good club teams, and very few good forwards in any club, it should be no surprise to anybody that Paul Caffrey might end his three-year reign, a few months from now, with nothing more to show for his efforts than predecessor Tommy Lyons.
Dublin needs more than one good man to turn things around. However, given the fact that Kerry look like they are a little bit at sixes and sevens under their 'new man' and that Tyrone and Armagh might be saying adios to us all for a few years, the 2007 All-Ireland football championship is a wide open field. So the Dubs have the same chance as 10 other teams in the scramble to claim Sam.
A Dublin victory would be great for them and great for the game. But, if it happens, don't for one moment think that the game of Gaelic football is suddenly on an upward graph. Too few managers have achieved too little in the first four months of this year.
John Maughan did what we expected him to do but, after him, there was only Brian McIvor to thank for saving the National league from becoming a complete non-event.
McIvor had built a strong, thundering, inventive and disciplined football team in Donegal and, with two years of such good work behind him, there is a chance that the wheels will not fall off the wagon in the rocky Sundays ahead. Donegal have to beat Armagh and Tyrone to win their place in the Ulster final, which will be a tough feat but a smaller ask than it would have been in any of the last four or five years.
Armagh's great defence of old is over and done with (McGeeney should probably have retired last year, and Bellew might now be retired after suffering a devastating ligament injury), and Tyrone's scintillating forward line has O'Neill and McGuigan with serious question marks beside their names due to injuries.
Joe Kernan and Mickey Harte have run out of time, and good luck. The two most controversial and thrilling teams of this new millennium are in big trouble. Kernan and Harte might not be able to save them on their own, and looking at the make-up and attitude of their two county boards it's no sure thing that a cavalry is about to come over the hill to aid these two great men.
And, for one minute, do you think the GAA at large cares? Do you imagine, for one second, that one or two of the lads in Croke Park on the big bucks have sat down and considered the implications of 'losing' Tyrone and Armagh?
It has not happened, believe me, and as two of the GAA's greatest and most profitable of teams are about to disappear off the product line we're left hoping, fingers crossed, that John Maughan or Peter Ford or Billy Morgan or Liam Kearns, or someone of that quality or blood line, can work a little miracle or two in the months ahead.
On your knees, folks . . . looks like we'll all have to pray a little harder all through the summer of 2007.
**********************************************************************
I think it's a load of scutter myself lads, I think he is mixing up Maughan with John O'Mahony myself, or he is expecting big things from Roscommon, I'm not sure. I've aired my views on hayes before so i'll stop here now
#3
GAA Discussion / Darragh Ryan retires
December 03, 2006, 11:11:25 AM
I see where Darragh Ryan has retired. I had a lot of time for him, there was no horseshite about him. Probably the right time to go though.
My all time Darragh Ryan memory was when Cork were hammering Wexford in the semi final replay in 2003 - Setanta O'Hailpín caught a great ball near the end and was being hassled by Ryan and another lad and did well to hold them both off to win the free. When the free was awarded, Setanta held up the sliothar into Darragh Ryan's face gesturing. Ryan flicked his hurl and gave him a belt on the paw. Not a pleasant stroke! And got booked while Setanta was lying down crying - like i said no horseshite about him
My all time Darragh Ryan memory was when Cork were hammering Wexford in the semi final replay in 2003 - Setanta O'Hailpín caught a great ball near the end and was being hassled by Ryan and another lad and did well to hold them both off to win the free. When the free was awarded, Setanta held up the sliothar into Darragh Ryan's face gesturing. Ryan flicked his hurl and gave him a belt on the paw. Not a pleasant stroke! And got booked while Setanta was lying down crying - like i said no horseshite about him
#4
General discussion / Fantasy NHL - idiot squad 57 on tour
November 15, 2006, 10:32:53 AM
Hi folks,
I'm going to a real life NHL match on sunday. It's New york v tampa. Brendan Shanahan will be playing (he's irish).
Anyone been to one of these?
I'm going to a real life NHL match on sunday. It's New york v tampa. Brendan Shanahan will be playing (he's irish).
Anyone been to one of these?
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