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Bums on seats was, however, viewed by Ryan as the "best barometer for everything else".

His bottom line is bums on seats. Dublin have the biggest home support by miles but don't travel so getting Dublin to play in Croke Park as often as possible is going to ensure more bums on seats. Forget about fairness and equality all that matters is bums on seats. He's not off to a good start.

If i read it right, they are quotes from a few years back, when he was being interviewed as GAA head of finance, on GAA finances, for a book dealing solely on the topic of GAA finances.

So if he says that attendances are the biggest money spinner, then as head of finance (as he was then), thats a quite important thing to be aware of ! 
If the head of finance spent the whole interview chatting about irrelevant stuff to his portfolio like maybe whether the white coats of an umpire were the best thing for them to be wearing, and he had no opinion or clue about finances, then THAT would be something to worry about.

It'll be interesting to see all right how he takes off the finance hat and puts on the general management hat, but he hasn't started yet so its a little early to make judgements. Unless he makes an almighty mess of it he could be there for the next 20 years, so I'm inclined to wait and see how things pan out.

the business qualification requirement is now officially downgraded to a nice to have rather than a requirement.
Deadline extended to Friday the 19th

http://www.gaa.ie/news/deadline-extended-for-gaa-ard-stiurthoir-applications/

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I have heard for the difference in cost is that there is a very big difference in the insurance costs per player in the GAA compared to the LGFA and the Camogie Association.

wouldn't you think that this would be a reason for them to join the greater GAA ?

As for potential movement, hard to know.
At the moment the ladies and camogie can tap fund from government and TV contracts on one side and have cheap to free facilities provided by the GAA on the other.

One of the earlier posts mentioned that it would work well at a club level, and to be honest if all they did was harmonise registration systems for club players it'd be half the battle, even if they remained separate for all other purposes !

Did these comply with the rules Re flying the (Irish) Tricolour and playing Amhràn na bhFiann? ?

the rule is that both are optional, so not sure how you break it.

heres the rules. page 6, at the bottom
http://www.gaa.ie/mm/Document/TheGAA/Administration/12/85/12/gaa4001(1)_Neutral.pdf

I was thinking something the same the other night in bed AZ. Kind of like the FA cup in England, Div 3 and 4 enter the 1st round, 8 winners and Div 2 in second round 8 winners and Div 1 in 3rd round. It would be open draw first team home advantage etc. Gives all counties incentive to move up the leagues. I know the provincials would be rendered useless, but something would have to give.

i was thinking along the same lines, except that winning the province gives you a wild card to a later stage  if you havent already automatically qualified as a div1 team.
Similar to the way that winning the champions league might kick out a 4th place team in England or Germany.

it will NEVER pass congress without some sort of direct qualification or benefit from winning the province which is why something like that would be needed.
(now.... that the format of the championship requires congress approval to allow it to be written into the rule book  is another issue !)

sambostar , I presume you mean that the league becomes a defacto qualifier for the championship with wildcards for provincial winners

Its something I'd be in favour of, as you have 7 meaningful games against teams of your own standard, the provincial championship with all the local rivalries, lower teams still are in the championship. You could go one further and have a first (+ second ?) round with the best of the rest , essentially how the FA cup runs with the lower seeded teams playing off against each other first and the higher seeded teams coming in at a later stage .

It'd not get through congress any time soon , but is more of a runner than what the GPA proposed last year which was essentially a call to detach the provincials from the all ireland championship , which was plain daft (and they are still humped that it was rejected , but its their own fault for not suggesting something "passable" in the first place)

[Ciarán Murphy: 'Forgotten' hurling should take lead from football revamp]

Are you sure you posted the correct link? 

heres that article
http://www.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/brian-cody-slams-crazy-intercounty-calendar-and-throws-his-weight-behind-cpa-proposals-35399102.html

theres another interesting article today on the matter of championship structures
Ciarán Murphy: 'Forgotten' hurling should take lead from football revamp

Hurling is being forgotten about. In all the talk of a radical revamp of the football championship, hurling is being treated as the poor relation. And this is not an isolated incident. There is a belief among hurling folk that Croke Park is run by football men, with the beautiful game being treated as an after-thought.
There will be 15 games left in the football championship once the provincial and qualifier series are finished, if the round-robin system replaces the quarter-finals as proposed. There will be just five in hurling. That seems pretty lopsided, and it is.
<snip>
The reality is that there are a finite number of teams competing in the hurling championship. It took seven weeks to run off the Munster championship (a knockout tournament) with five teams competing in it last year. It might be nice to ensure a spread of hurling games across the summer, but you can't really spread your games any thinner than that.
The GAA have seen that the top teams in football don't play each other enough at the business end of the championship. The system that goes before congress next month seeks to redress that balance.
In 2007, the hurling development committee lobbied for a proposal at congress that effectively meant teams often only need to win just four games to win the hurling All-Ireland, as has happened in four of the nine championships since.
The decision to reduce by half the number of quarter-finals was not one foisted on hurling people by a football-centric Croke Park. It was recommended by a committee made up of hurling men of unimpeachable standard, and chaired by Ned Quinn, the godfather of Kilkenny hurling. That decision was made in good faith, but it was the wrong decision.

http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/ciar%C3%A1n-murphy-forgotten-hurling-should-take-lead-from-football-revamp-1.2951158

this is all a bit mad.

A club would normally churn through thousands, maybe 10s of thousands in a year in various expenses. I know my club at home in Cavan were paying expenses to one lad flying home from England every weekend and to lads travelling up from Dublin and even Kerry (despite the fact that they'd be coming home at least every other weekend anyhow). There was physio expenses, outside trainers and I dont know what.

And if clubs are churning through such sums of cash, I'm stumped as to why they wouldn't cover €200 odd for a coaching course.
An outlay of 200 in order to get hundreds if not thousands of hours of volunteer coaching of your future members seems like a reasonably solid investment. 

excuse my ignorance, but what would the costs actually be ?
I mean, are these basic courses not provided by the county board for free or minimal charge, or is it an issue of getting some € per km in travel expenses to go to a course thats the issue.

I would have thought it'd be a basic requirement of the county board to provide referee and coaching training, at least at the basic levels in order to have juvenile refs and coaches in place for the future of GAA in the county. 

I am surprised that any insurance company would even take this business on. <snip>

as per the title, its not insurance, its a self financing fund. Its no more than a glorified pot of cash, which takes in €1000 per team and as is mentioned here pays some teams many multiples of that.
If too many look for help from the pot of cash then the viability of the scheme comes into question. 

The Injury Fund is a benefit cover funded entirely from Club and Central Council contributions. The Injury Benefit Fund is not an Insurance Scheme and is therefore not regulated by the Central Bank.
<snip >
The Injury Fund does not seek to fully compensate but to supplement other covers such as Private Health Insurance, National Health Insurance, Personal Accident Cover, Employment benefit covers, Income Payment protection covers

http://learning.gaa.ie/sites/default/files/Club%20Manual%20Insurance%20%26%20GAA%20Injury%20Benefit%20Fund%20(1).pdf

Just seeing that last line, you'd wonder if people cutting their VHI cover to a more basic plan (or altogether) might be another factor causing more players to claim off this fund, seeing as work otherwise done by the VHI might now have to be paid for by the fund.

The agenda lies in not securing the rights.

RTE TV and TG4 is available now in every corner of northern ireland, either from Saorview overspill or directly via freeview so the need for BBC to show anything beyond the ulster championship is not there.

Their coverage of the national league wouldnt be great, but you still have a raft of southern local radio stations online which cover the games so its not like the old days that someone in the back of Antrim relied completely on BBC for their GAA coverage.

if youre in Sligo then you can get RTE and TG4 online for free PLUS gaa go only works abroad as RTE and TG4 are blocked to non irish viewers

had it last year with relatively few problems, just more gripes that a paused live stream (when a child unexpectedly does something that has to be cleaned up immediately!) might restart live rather than back 10mins before when you re-start it- but thats arguably an ipad / Apple tv issue than anything

I might just give it a skip this year though as I just havent the time, and when I or the wife do, then we'd often enough just hit the pub to get away from the kids when watching it live !

BTW, I see clubs have a scheme where they get a donation of 10% of the fee so maybe be aware of that when signing up that your local club gets a small kickback

There was thing there on the news about Michael D visiting some GAA thing in South Africa. Some team called "Mayo" won, this indicates just how unlike Ireland abroad is!

heres the clip from the news.
http://www.rte.ie/sport/player/809/659905/