August Bank Holiday weekend

[GalwayBayBoy]

So is it Kerry v Clare and Galway Tipp

Could very well be in the unusual situation of Galway bringing the most fans to a double header at Croke Park. Clare and Tipp football support is fairly small. Kerry will be saving their euros for the semi-final. It's race week in Galway which might affect the numbers a bit but they will probably bring the most overall as the latent support for the footballers is quite large although of the fair weather variety.

[Hound]

Not sure about quarter finals having to be played in Croker, given Kerry v Dublin took place in Thurles a few years back. Provincial champions should be able to choose which of the big stadiums they'd like to play their QF in, and I'd be fairly certain Kerry, Galway and Tyrone would choose Croke Park

[manfromdelmonte]

Ridiculous that Kerry have been sitting waiting for 3/4 weeks and Clare have to play for a 3rd? weekend in a row?

[omagh_gael]

Even more ridiculous that Kerry play their QF this weekend and have a four week break to semi whereas Tyrone play their QF a week after Kerry and if they were to win they then play their semi a week before Kerry!!

[Maroon Manc]

Even more ridiculous that Kerry play their QF this weekend and have a four week break to semi whereas Tyrone play their QF a week after Kerry and if they were to win they then play their semi a week before Kerry!!

Heading for trouble if Tyrone & Mayo draw.

[joemamas]

Was in Croker park today totally void of atmosphere. 27k
My guess is tomorrow will be worse.
Met a guy in bar in Shelbourne who was at Barcelona v Celtic almost sold out
Wait for it , tickets for soccer match were either 60e or 100e
Gaa should be embarrassed
Read an article which quoted some guy from GAA I think it was mac gill not sure but he was making excuses about not having any control about teams and supporters
If I were running gaa I would fire head of marketing/promoting games on Monday. Full stop.
And also put provincial heads on notice to fix their act
It is piss poor especially given what happened five miles away in an exhibition game

[Canalman]

Keep keep saying it, but capacity of CP should have been around the 70k mark.  Too big a stadium now imo and only really filled at a max 4 times a year and that will be  halved if Dublin falls back in the doldrums again.

[Redhand Santa]

I actually thought 27k was respectable for the qualifier games. Though I would agree the gaa could do a lot more to promote some of these games. But I'm not sure soccer is the right thing to compare it to. These one off exhibition games with big teams over are easy to market, they have a bit of novelty factor. If you compared the number of people attending gaa games in Ireland in a year to soccer you'd find the gaa wasn't doing that bad a job.

I've been at club finals in croke park were there has been a few thousand and still a great atmosphere. Problem with the double headers is the crowd is spread out and coming in and out.

Don't think there'll be any problems selling next weeks games.

[Rossfan]

27,000 was pretty good especially when Cork were one of the participants.
They'll hardly get that today.
I for one miss the 4 Quarter Finals over the Bank holiday weekend and hope they go back to it.
This A and B thing doesn't really work and has been illogical in many instances.
E.g Wexford knocked out 21 May in the B while Louth knocked out 11 June in the A having a six day turnaround.
Wexford got 5 weeks. Leitrim/ London also arseways and of course the whole A side got fecked up.
I'd say there won't be many empty spaces next Saturday though.

[BennyCake]

How do you expect big crowds when some fans have been on the road for maybe 3 or 4 weekends on the trot? Not only that but they're given 3 or 4 days to arrange another trip, and gather up the money to head off again.

Not only is this qualifier crap disrespectful to players, it gives absolutely no thought for the ordinary fan.

[David McKeown]

Did Dublin play Kerry on the Monday a few years back. What round was that in and what was the reason for it?  Great Kerry performance from what I can remember.

[BennyCake]

Did Dublin play Kerry on the Monday a few years back. What round was that in and what was the reason for it?  Great Kerry performance from what I can remember.

2009. Dublin hammered.

[Conallach]

The 2015 adjustments weren't a positive contribution. This solution doesn't really solve the problem of the six day turnaround for losing provincial finalists at all either, it just pushes it back. To take my own county as an example, instead of having a week to prepare for games against Galway last year, or Cork this year, they have a week to prepare for matches against tougher quarter final opponents. I suppose that technically they did solve the issue, but only in the shallowest way possible.

Today's quarter finals mighn't be ideal match ups if you're looking to sell some tickets, but packaged with next weeks as a 'festival of football', as it was before last year, which is a much easier sell as a set of quarter finals. The quarter finals are usually strong-to-strongish match ups, with perhaps one tough sell mixed amongst them. They're ideal to bunch together. And with that, we can take the last round of qualifiers out of Croke Park and spread them around the country as appropriate.

It doesn't seem too difficult to arrange that round 4 of the qualifiers takes place two weeks before this, so that every county comes in with a week off. Even leaving footballing reasons to one side for a moment, that means that fans of the provinicial winners know where and when they'll next play from the moment they lift their cup, and fans of the teams coming through the qualifiers get a little bit of time to build up a bit of hype, and savings!

Obviously I'm not claiming that this is the ideal Championship structure, and this board alone is full of better ideas but really, it's not very hard to implement. Jesus sure it was basically in place two years ago.

[Beantown]

Why did the Gaa put these 2 matches today as a double header.  Why not put Dublin v Donegal on with Kerry & Clare and Tyrone v Mayo with Galway & tipp and have 2 big crowds instead of 1 sell out and 1 1/4 full Croker.... I am sure a better system could be worked out and not a draw that is set in stone...

[Jinxy]

Why do the quarter-finals need to be in Croke Park full-stop?