Messages

[Young players will be measured on whether or not they went to Oz for a trial and sadly the good ones mightn't come back.]

We are on the way to becoming a League of Ireland to the AFL's Premiership.

Young players will be measured on whether or not they went to Oz for a trial and sadly the good ones mightn't come back.

So far there is no formal set up and all we have is Nixon floating around but it could get worse which might leave us with a Hobson's choice.

While I understand your poiint, it's not as simple as that surely. The players who might be suited to the code switch aren't always the ones who are most talented at Gaelic football, although that certainly helps. Colm Cooper would never have got an AFL contract if he wanted to go for instance.

Only ones that have made it have been excellent gaelic players because the aussies only look for the best. Bar a genetic freak like SOH an average GAA players has no chance.

I didn't suggest otherwise. What does that have to do with what I said? Point is that the subset  of players who might be suited to the switch, while usually excellent Gaelic footballers, overlaps with but is not the same as the subset who are the best Gaelic footballers.  Martin Clarke for example was probably Down's best underage player at the time he went. Jamie O'Reilly on the other hand, who has recently taken up a contract, probably isn't. And Colm Cooper would never have got a contract had he tried to get into the AFL.

[Young players will be measured on whether or not they went to Oz for a trial and sadly the good ones mightn't come back.]

We are on the way to becoming a League of Ireland to the AFL's Premiership.

Young players will be measured on whether or not they went to Oz for a trial and sadly the good ones mightn't come back.

So far there is no formal set up and all we have is Nixon floating around but it could get worse which might leave us with a Hobson's choice.

While I understand your poiint, it's not as simple as that surely. The players who might be suited to the code switch aren't always the ones who are most talented at Gaelic football, although that certainly helps. Colm Cooper would never have got an AFL contract if he wanted to go for instance.

[In particular Galway/Mayo and Kerry/Cork would cruise through the league stage]

3)

Two leagues Connacht/Ulster & Leinster/Munster

Top 2 Ulster teams play Ulster Final
Top 2 Connacht teams play Connacht Final
Top 2 Leinster teams play Leinster Final
Top 2 Munster teams play Munster Final

Then 2 semi finals and the All-Ireland Final.

Advantages:

Each team guaranteed a minimum number of Championship games each year;
Provincial rivalries maintained to a large extent;
Traditional provincial finals retained;
Traditional knock-out system to find a winner;
Games could be run over a fixed period where each county would know the weekends required and thus could schedule club fixtures with better planning;
This would please sponsors, TV companies & the money men;

Disadvantages;

A team could finish a season not making the knock-out stages but still ahead of a team that makes say a Connacht Final;
Relegation & Promotion to a 2nd tier would be necessary;
This would please the sponsors, TV companies and the money men

There'd be little enough variety and certain problems of the current structure would be considerably worsened. In particular Galway/Mayo and Kerry/Cork would cruise through the league stage and meet for the provincial title and semi-final spot just about every year with the remaining counties of those provinces never getting a look in.

I'm not so sure. The likes of Sligo/Ros could be highly motivated against the Ulster teams (look at Wicklow this year) which would mean Galway/Mayo would have to match any good results they get. I wouldn't enjoy watching Mayo having to get a result against say away to Derry or Donegal away to make a Connacht Final.

Sorry, but the Sligos iof football get to their occasional Connacht finals by getting an easy draw or else by pulling off one or two surprise wins. Do you seriously believe there wouldn't be a reduction in the frequency of their reaching the Connacht final if they can only do so by outperforming Galway or Mayo over the course of around ten games (or however many they would play)?. No easy draws and a couple of surprise wins is unlikely to be be enough. This is why Sligo may occasionally finish in the top two Connach teams in the provincial championship but are unlikely to finish ahead of either Galway or Mayo in the NFL.  League formats are always more likely to end up with the best teams at the top than knock-out and the power imbalance with the big two going for the two final places in this case would make that a problem.

This is the problem.

People think you can create a system which makes it harder for the strong teams to come through. You can't. The strong teams will in all probability, almost always come through.

If you accept that you can move on and create a new fair system for all, otherwise you start off looking for a system that handicaps strong teams, which will never happen.

Yes, this is exactly my point. Playing a league with the top two Connacht teams and top too Munster teams into the respective finals won't work because it is "too fair" and yet at the same time also not fair enough overall. The sides outside the big two are not good enough to challenge them over the course of a league most of the time, and it would be boring - wth knock-out the weaker sides can get an easy draw or a couple of surprises.

Your system suffers from trying to accommodate the unbalanced provincial championships, which is just making life difficult for yourself if you want to create a league which is "a new fair system for all" in your words. I don't object to incorporating a round-robin element to the championship, but trying to do that within the provincial championship framework makes it very hard to create a competitive and interesting structure.

The problem is creating a realistic proposal that:

* keeps the provincial councils happy by having provincial elements to it and more particularly provincial finals, otherwise it would be sunk straight away;
* maintains some level of local rivalry otherwise a run of poor attendances in say a pure open draw would put any reform back on the shelf for decades;
* increases the number of games for all teams;

I know it is not a thing of beauty but while say a 32 county open draw looks great in theory, I think it would flop after a couple of years of weak attendances.

Well I can understand your points there and it sounds appealing in many ways. But I just suspect the Munster and Connacht games  (apart from the finals) would become little more interesting or well-supported than the NFL, while the sides outside the big two in those provinces would be left with nothing much that they could realistically aim for and you could easily see football declining in those counties..

[In particular Galway/Mayo and Kerry/Cork would cruise through the league stage]

3)

Two leagues Connacht/Ulster & Leinster/Munster

Top 2 Ulster teams play Ulster Final
Top 2 Connacht teams play Connacht Final
Top 2 Leinster teams play Leinster Final
Top 2 Munster teams play Munster Final

Then 2 semi finals and the All-Ireland Final.

Advantages:

Each team guaranteed a minimum number of Championship games each year;
Provincial rivalries maintained to a large extent;
Traditional provincial finals retained;
Traditional knock-out system to find a winner;
Games could be run over a fixed period where each county would know the weekends required and thus could schedule club fixtures with better planning;
This would please sponsors, TV companies & the money men;

Disadvantages;

A team could finish a season not making the knock-out stages but still ahead of a team that makes say a Connacht Final;
Relegation & Promotion to a 2nd tier would be necessary;
This would please the sponsors, TV companies and the money men

There'd be little enough variety and certain problems of the current structure would be considerably worsened. In particular Galway/Mayo and Kerry/Cork would cruise through the league stage and meet for the provincial title and semi-final spot just about every year with the remaining counties of those provinces never getting a look in.

I'm not so sure. The likes of Sligo/Ros could be highly motivated against the Ulster teams (look at Wicklow this year) which would mean Galway/Mayo would have to match any good results they get. I wouldn't enjoy watching Mayo having to get a result against say away to Derry or Donegal away to make a Connacht Final.

Sorry, but the Sligos iof football get to their occasional Connacht finals by getting an easy draw or else by pulling off one or two surprise wins. Do you seriously believe there wouldn't be a reduction in the frequency of their reaching the Connacht final if they can only do so by outperforming Galway or Mayo over the course of around ten games (or however many they would play)?. No easy draws and a couple of surprise wins is unlikely to be be enough. This is why Sligo may occasionally finish in the top two Connach teams in the provincial championship but are unlikely to finish ahead of either Galway or Mayo in the NFL.  League formats are always more likely to end up with the best teams at the top than knock-out and the power imbalance with the big two going for the two final places in this case would make that a problem.

This is the problem.

People think you can create a system which makes it harder for the strong teams to come through. You can't. The strong teams will in all probability, almost always come through.

If you accept that you can move on and create a new fair system for all, otherwise you start off looking for a system that handicaps strong teams, which will never happen.

Yes, this is exactly my point. Playing a league with the top two Connacht teams and top too Munster teams into the respective finals won't work because it is "too fair" and yet at the same time also not fair enough overall. The sides outside the big two are not good enough to challenge them over the course of a league most of the time, and it would be boring - wth knock-out the weaker sides can get an easy draw or a couple of surprises.

Your system suffers from trying to accommodate the unbalanced provincial championships, which is just making life difficult for yourself if you want to create a league which is "a new fair system for all" in your words. I don't object to incorporating a round-robin element to the championship, but trying to do that within the provincial championship framework makes it very hard to create a competitive and interesting structure.

[In particular Galway/Mayo and Kerry/Cork would cruise through the league stage]

3)

Two leagues Connacht/Ulster & Leinster/Munster

Top 2 Ulster teams play Ulster Final
Top 2 Connacht teams play Connacht Final
Top 2 Leinster teams play Leinster Final
Top 2 Munster teams play Munster Final

Then 2 semi finals and the All-Ireland Final.

Advantages:

Each team guaranteed a minimum number of Championship games each year;
Provincial rivalries maintained to a large extent;
Traditional provincial finals retained;
Traditional knock-out system to find a winner;
Games could be run over a fixed period where each county would know the weekends required and thus could schedule club fixtures with better planning;
This would please sponsors, TV companies & the money men;

Disadvantages;

A team could finish a season not making the knock-out stages but still ahead of a team that makes say a Connacht Final;
Relegation & Promotion to a 2nd tier would be necessary;
This would please the sponsors, TV companies and the money men

There'd be little enough variety and certain problems of the current structure would be considerably worsened. In particular Galway/Mayo and Kerry/Cork would cruise through the league stage and meet for the provincial title and semi-final spot just about every year with the remaining counties of those provinces never getting a look in.

I'm not so sure. The likes of Sligo/Ros could be highly motivated against the Ulster teams (look at Wicklow this year) which would mean Galway/Mayo would have to match any good results they get. I wouldn't enjoy watching Mayo having to get a result against say away to Derry or Donegal away to make a Connacht Final.

Sorry, but the Sligos iof football get to their occasional Connacht finals by getting an easy draw or else by pulling off one or two surprise wins. Do you seriously believe there wouldn't be a reduction in the frequency of their reaching the Connacht final if they can only do so by outperforming Galway or Mayo over the course of around ten games (or however many they would play)?. No easy draws and a couple of surprise wins is unlikely to be be enough. This is why Sligo may occasionally finish in the top two Connach teams in the provincial championship but are unlikely to finish ahead of either Galway or Mayo in the NFL.  League formats are always more likely to end up with the best teams at the top than knock-out and the power imbalance with the big two going for the two final places in this case would make that a problem.

And as for the irish commentary, they really should get rid of it.

erm..ithe whole point of its existence is that it's supposed  to be an Irish station, it carrries quite enough English programmes as it is without making them too. 

3)

Two leagues Connacht/Ulster & Leinster/Munster

Top 2 Ulster teams play Ulster Final
Top 2 Connacht teams play Connacht Final
Top 2 Leinster teams play Leinster Final
Top 2 Munster teams play Munster Final

Then 2 semi finals and the All-Ireland Final.

Advantages:

Each team guaranteed a minimum number of Championship games each year;
Provincial rivalries maintained to a large extent;
Traditional provincial finals retained;
Traditional knock-out system to find a winner;
Games could be run over a fixed period where each county would know the weekends required and thus could schedule club fixtures with better planning;
This would please sponsors, TV companies & the money men;

Disadvantages;

A team could finish a season not making the knock-out stages but still ahead of a team that makes say a Connacht Final;
Relegation & Promotion to a 2nd tier would be necessary;
This would please the sponsors, TV companies and the money men

There'd be little enough variety and certain problems of the current structure would be considerably worsened. In particular Galway/Mayo and Kerry/Cork would cruise through the league stage and meet for the provincial title and semi-final spot just about every year with the remaining counties of those provinces never getting a look in.

And then what about the clubs some may ask? Good idea in theory though muppet, but how would you get relegation and it wouldn't be fair on those who are relegated then would it?

The clubs would be pretty happy under muppet's system with the two conferences replacing the NFL and all but  3 rounds of knockout. Much better situation from a fixtures point of view.

As for relegation, the reality is there are some teams at the bottom of the pile who would be better off if put together to form a second tier. The Carlow manager for instance was saying that it was a problem for his team this year that they had nothing they could realistically aim to win.

http://www.rte.ie/sport/gaa/championship/

Currently 71% on RTÉ's poll are in favour after 6128 votes, seems a pretty emphatic margin though of course it doesn't prove that percentage of the population / of supporters want it. What would the views be like here?

[Organisation Structure]

Here it is folks - The only way Professional GAA will take off in this country. Forget about the GPA - Its time to bring a professional business approach to it. I've done my maths. What do youse think?


Organisation Structure
A Gaelic Football Franchise with 12 franchises spread across Ireland & UK. The 12 separate franchises will be sold for £1 million and profits will be divided evenly between the GFF and the franchise owners


League Structure
12 Teams
1. Dublin Capitals (based in RDS)
2. Drumcondra Massives
3 Cork Rebels
4. Galway Tribes
5. Omagh Gaels
6. Midland Nomadics (Play 2 matches in Navan, Tullamore, Kildare, Portlaoise)
7. The Borders (Based around South Armagh/Dundalk/Newry)
8. Tralee Kingdom
9. London Patriots
10. Glasgow Irish
11. Birmingham Wolfhounds
12. North West Shamrocks (Based around Manchester/Liverpool)

1 Professional League
Home and Away - 22 games. (11 Home, 11 away)
To be played from April to September
One overall winner

Also a Cup Competition

Financials
I've calculated that for these 12 teams to operate they need a collective Financial budget of £71.5 million p/a

All Figures below are based on a yearly turnover

TV rights
Sky/Setanta - £15 million
Associate TV Partner – TV3 / UTV - £5 million

League Sponsor - £5 Million
Associate League sponsors *4 - £4 million
Cup Sponsor - £2 million

Shirt / Club sponsors - £1.2 per team (based on Ice Hockey with numerious Sponsors)

Gate Receipts - £30,250,000 (Calculated at an average of 5k a gate with average £25 a ticket across Corporate / Adult / Children)

Jersey sales / Club Shop - £5,000,000 (based on magic that figure – but if you have 12 franchises selling a jersey at £45 and associate items – I would need 8333 people for every club to spend £50 a year


Image Rights / Player Endorsements - £5,000,000 (The GFL franchise would own the players rights – so if Locusade wanted to endorse its product through a player they would need it to be managed by the GFL franchise)

Associate Money – Any money coming from the Cup competition and associate marketing at Team level may be retained by the franchise.



Overall Figure collected - £71,500,000
Which will give £6 million for the franchise to be operated on


Structure of Players within Franchise
30 players with an average wage bill of £80,000 a year – Total £2.4 million
I'd see a salary cap of £100k. No transfer fees. Maximum 3 year contract. If a player wants out – Let him walk. If a franchise wants to end a contract let them pay the player his full contract.

Management & Organisation wages £500,000

Transportation and management costs - £1m

Relationship with the GAA
None – Maybe a match in October with the professionals playing the Amateurs

If a Players is offered a Professional contract he has the choice of walking away from the Amatuer game and becoming a professional.
Its up to the GAA to decide what they want to do with the Player if he decides to go back to the Amateur code. I don't see a problem with this as the GAA have allowed the Professional footballers of the AFL return without question, while a similar situation arose in the 80's with Rugby league/Union and eventually the RFU allowed its players return to the Union code

Problems
Getting Suitable pitches
Patenting this idea before some edjit takes it off me

The need for venues is surely going to add a pretty significant cost to your accounts there. As for four teams in Britain all drawing average attendances of 5000 throughout the season...

Well, there is probably more that could be done to make it more attractive for talented young players to stick with the GAA. But realistically as long as the GAA does not offer players the opportunity to make a living playing sport, there will always be some who arre attracted by the idea of trying the cross-sport switch, no matter what is done.

[They looked into the feasability of a professional GAA and concluded that it wasn't a runner, yet you think that Donal, Dessie and 'the rest of them' (whoever the hell they are) want a professional GAA?]

They looked into the feasability of a professional GAA and concluded that it wasn't a runner, yet you think that Donal, Dessie and 'the rest of them' (whoever the hell they are) want a professional GAA? I guess it doesn't matter what the GPA say at this stage as some of you have your minds made up and your ears covered. Funnily enough, if anyone connected with the GPA even suggests a professional GAA might be a runner, the same people who dismiss their claims to not want professionalism as lies will use it that as proof positive of their 'real' agenda.

So what conclusion should we have come to? What the feck was the feasibility study for? What is wrong with your head Zulu?

I imagine he means that they did the feasibility study and concluded that it wasn't a good  idea. Therefore it is not now an aim of theirs..

Would have doubts about champions league type structures, when you look at the European soccer and rugby competitions many of the groups could end up being dull and largely predictable. Wouldk incorporating the league as a more meaningful round-robin stage to determine seeding for straight knock-out be better? it would be quite simple, something like this

First play provincial championships. [For instance, one option would be to play them off in a month with no replays etc with the finals under lights over the May bank holiday long weekend.]  Either leave them as stand-alone competitions or else if preferred increase their importance by making the lround-robin Division One consist of the eight finalists with champions home in games against runner-ups.

The league as a round-robin stage. It determines seeding for the knock-out rounds, which should ensure the round-robin stage is much meaningful and interesting than the current national league even if not quite knock-out intensity.

Finally straight knock-out with the 32 counties plus London with no back-doors etc.[ Possibly reward seed number 1 with a bye to the last 16 and choice of venue up to the quarter-finals, leaving the bottom 4 in winnable preliminary round games and avoiding too many first-round mismatches.  Home advantage going to the higher seed with an exception for the weakest counties if facing division 1 / 2 sides. To avoid seeds working too much against weaker teams getting good runs, maybe if you beat a higher seed you could be given their seeding for the rest of the competition. ]

Of the team selected Kennelly and Shields would have been the ones I would pick out that I disagree with.

Jesus man it was a generalisation, the point being that the vast majority of games would involve counties that aren't that far away.

OK, I know it was only a generalisation, just that not that long ago I had to do a signficantly longer trip than that on a fairly regular basis for a while!

How and why would you do that?

By that I was just referring to something along the lines of the McKenna, O'Byrne, etc, which would serve as a chance to try out players etc with the old National League gone.

TWhy play a league and then give the second placed teams after all the games have been played the opportunity to actually win it, likewise for the bottom two? This is again a nonsense GAA solution to a non-existant problem. You play a league and the top team at the end of all the games wins it and the bottom one or two get relegated, nice and simple.

I didn't suggest that! By "top teams" I mean the winners of each of the division's 2 groups. Not the top two teams in each group.

While I would agree with the idea of only the top teams playing for the championship, that hasn't a hope of being passed in any Congress, and though I know this is only a bit of winter internet chit chat, any proposal worth talking about has to have some chance sometime in the future of being passed. Cutting half the teams in Ireland out of a chance to win Sam just wouldn't work, sure some of the hurling lads are trying to get more of the weaker counties back into the AI where their only role will be to provide more rounds.

But they do all get a chance to win Sam. They only have to do well enough in the round-robin phase of the championship. and it's that which decides who qualifies for the last 16. I think you're right to say that it would be unlikely to get consensus in the near future, but let's be realistic, are the champions league, and other structures that lads are suggesting likely either? I feel this would be a good structure if not as politically palatable as it could be.