Quote from: onefineday on April 15, 2024, 12:52:58 AMQuote from: AustinPowers on April 14, 2024, 10:25:07 PMPaul Flynn says the likes of Meath and Kildare more or less need to get the finger out if they want to be competitive
Aye and a few million quid!
But nobody seemed to address that bit on TSG
The Derry county board is notoriously tight fisted, yet have managed to navigate a path to competitiveness.
Meath and Kildare have no excuses for failing to put up a fight to Dublin.
They have more than adequate playing populations, I imagine in the top 10 at worst?
They have facilities aplenty and aren't faced with the issues that many counties have trying to get players down from Dublin for training.
So even if that argument around funds being pumped into Dublin creating this situation had some validity (it doesn't in my experience), it still would not account for the inability of another Leinster team to field 15 players able to compete with 15 dubs at senior level every once in a while.....
That's not quite a fair comparison.
Derry are competitive now for about 3 seasons - for the previous 25 we were not.
It might just be a purple patch....it'll be 10 years before we know what the landscape of Derry football is really like. We've had a perfect storm of restructuring at CB level, 2/3 exceptional club teams in Slaughtneil, Glen and Magherafelt and a string of strong county minor teams - this didn't happen overnight. Realistically it'll take 10 years for any of the Leinster teams to hit the heights again if they are only starting today. In the noughties when Tyrone/Armagh were lording it in Ulster - Derry were one of the top spenders and it didn't bring success.
It requires the right underage structures and CB structures and funding - and proper governance of that funding so that it's spent on the right things.
It requires players at the top level (which I think Meath actually have - Kildare not so much) and a management team that can focus the players and devise a game plan that works for the players available.
Before Rory Gallagher came into Derry, we were not on the landscape - Meath/Kildare need a Rory Gallagher drive them.
For what it's worth, I thought Meath were decent in the first half until the goal went in, then heads dropped a bit.
They got plenty of turnovers, and frustrated Dublin. They struggled making the right decision in attack. But they looked better than the last time I watched them, so perhaps progress despite the result? Dublin just wore them down I think.
How do we make provinces competitive again - maybe put a spending cap on county boards to level the playing field?
Ulster works (unless you are Antrim/Fermanagh and to a lesser extent Cavan) - what do they do in Ulster that they don't in other provinces?
The complaint used to be it was unfair on teams that they only had one chance and the year could be over, so the back door came in. Then super 8s. Now another iteration with people saying if you want to win an AI it might be better to not contest the provincials and with uncompetitive nature of 3/4 of the provincials there's a call to scrap them. If the the old system was returned, with only provincial winners getting through to AISFs, it adds weight to the provincials, declutters the calendar and 9 times out of 10 the top teams win. The weaker teams are not progressing in the current setup anyway - so why bother with the seeding etc?
What I'm getting at is that there's no perfect solution. Keep messing with structures, the problems just move around. The real question is why are so many counties not progressing or improving? Improve individual counties and the quality of championships improve.
The question of footfall falling is a combination of issues on the inevitability of some games and the costs. With the increased number of games, the cost for a family to attend is pricing many out of it. It doesn't matter if its value for money or not, the cost is still the cost.