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This site is making the over projection of a Derry v Armagh final. I rather literally take it one game at a time, this Saturday could see us out on our ass very handy,

100%
I've been saying all along, Donegal could knock us out in the first round.
I'd love to see us win another Ulster - but if we get beaten on Saturday it wouldn't be a huge shock.
Donegal were in the final 2 years ago and we just beat them.

Any early adopters for Fallout. I've read some big reviews for it. Need to finish Ripley tonight then straight into it.

Watched the first couple of episodes, not bad so far.

[The Derry county board is notoriously tight fisted, yet have managed to navigate a path to competitiveness.]

Paul 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.

Awful game.
Fermanagh had their chances of goals but either miskicked, took the wrong option or just messed it up.
Armagh deserved winners - but goals aside, they didn't look overly impressive.
Missed a lot of frees. Didnt look fluid, should have scored more points from play given the way Fermanagh just kind of stopped. If I was from Armagh I'd be worried enough.

Jarly Og lucky to stay on the pitch imo.

Goals aside...not impressive (they won by over 10 points)

If you were from Armagh what would you be worried about? Down...seriously? Do you think their "supporters " will stay on beyond half time.. unlike last year.

Derry...of course we'd be worried..they're a top 3 team standing between us and a first Ulster title in nearly 20 years...and they've improved since last year.

Was Jarly's the only bad tackle in the game?

The 2nd half was a draw. Yes the game was already won, but the better sides would just keep going and rack up a cricket score.
For what it's worth, Armagh should beat Down and I've no doubt they'll give who ever they play in Ulster Final a game of it. But for me, they're not yet playing at the level you'd expect of a team with ambitions to win Ulster. It still might come...but against a Fermanagh side that were beaten 20 mins in you'd have expected them to pull away in the 2nd half. That's the worrying bit for Armagh in my view.

[Jarly Og is one of the least aggressive players on the Armagh squad]

Awful game.
Fermanagh had their chances of goals but either miskicked, took the wrong option or just messed it up.
Armagh deserved winners - but goals aside, they didn't look overly impressive.
Missed a lot of frees. Didnt look fluid, should have scored more points from play given the way Fermanagh just kind of stopped. If I was from Armagh I'd be worried enough.

Jarly Og lucky to stay on the pitch imo.

Jarly Og is one of the least aggressive players on the Armagh squad so I'd be very surprised if there was any intent there. A yellow card was fair in that instance.

I'd agree - not a dirty player. But so far as I know a dangerous tackle is a red card offence, accidental or otherwise. He looked to catch the man head height with no effort to get the ball and his elbow looked high. That was dangerous. For me it was a red all day.

The real story here is that Aston Villa are on the verge of qualifying for Champions League football.
Some turn around for a club that were in the championship not that long ago and that almost headed back there under Steven Gerard.

Doesnt surprise me that Arsenal choked....seems to be expected of them in recent years.
Liverpool slide "post-Klopp" has started while he's still there.
Man City likely to win given the run in.

Awful game.
Fermanagh had their chances of goals but either miskicked, took the wrong option or just messed it up.
Armagh deserved winners - but goals aside, they didn't look overly impressive.
Missed a lot of frees. Didnt look fluid, should have scored more points from play given the way Fermanagh just kind of stopped. If I was from Armagh I'd be worried enough.

Jarly Og lucky to stay on the pitch imo.

It's a funny one when you get used to seeing names on forums only for them to disappear and you never see them again. Did they die? Have they just decided to stop posting and move on.? Who knows. We are all just names on a forum and no one has a clue about our real life outside of the internet.

Who were you getting use to seeing for one that just signed up on here in January or did your last account disappear?

Lar Naparka,5 Sams and most recently Farrandeelin have all died and this place is a poorer place without their knowledge,wit and humour

I was talking about forums in general obviously. There are more places out there than gaaboard.com

Out of interest - what other forums, sites, boards, pages do people use?
I'm not that big into social media and haven't really trawled to find anything else so would be interested to find out what's popular.

I think I deserve life long access to Derry v Donegal tickets. For the sole reason that I was in Clones in 2002 when Derry played Donegal during the World Cup.
It would be interesting to know if the people who call men like me "bandwagoners" where at that game? They complain yet they were probably sitting at home watching the ROI v Spain game that day.

I too was there - rarely missed a championship game with derry in 30 years.
I'm probably not going to get to the Derry v Donegal game as I'd need about 6 tickets.

Finished 'the ones who live'

Enjoyed it.

Stuck for some night viewing now!

Yeah I liked it too.
Started watching Shogun....not sure about it yet.

Fair play Cavan, deserved the win to be fair.
First half was brutal though from both teams.
I think this is 2 teams heading in opposite directions passing each other, Monaghan are on the slide with their better players aging whereas Cavan are improving.
I think Cavan will give Tyrone a real game of it. Tyrone nothing to be afraid of at the minute. They've had 1 decent half of football all year against a depleted Mayo team, so it's even hard to read much into that.

Cavan could well edge it playing the way the did in the final quarter of that game.

Sure the lucks been hanging out of the penalty Kick Champs (X2), why change anything? just go full of the bull until it goes pear shaped and then think about it.

Any examples of when other Ulster teams didn't go all out to win Ulster and as a direct result they won an AI?

In the second year if the current competition?

Tyrone had a fair degree of ambivalence to the USFC in noughties. But I'm sure that's the response you were waiting for to refute it.

Harte and the players?

"A couple of years we were of the mindset that we were going to win the All-Ireland and were beaten in the first round. It didn't do us any harm. We went on to win it from there twice."

https://www.belfastlive.co.uk/sport/gaa/gaelic-football/tyrone-legend-sean-cavanagh-issues-28938977#google_vignette


A quote from Sean Cavanagh today funny enough.

Cavanagh is becoming the new Joe Brolly.

Cavanagh hasn't an original thought it his head.
You'd think they went out to lose first round games.
If he's on RTE, or Cora Staunton, I switch over. I'd rather watch cardboard commentating.

Well dunno where that came from but up Cavan. Beggan mom, what are they smoking in BBC?

Ridiculous decision, they were dying to give it to Beggan simply due to the fact that he got an NFL trial.

Personally thought Beggan should have done better for that first goal in injury time.

[An NI business in Finance/Captial Markets and IT has access to GB and EU markets]

Having read through the 11 pages of the actual report,it would be handed back to an Economics Undergraduate and He/She would be told to consider another career route

The Authors base their case for starters on an assumption that they know the amount of UK subvention into NI every Year,which is news to anyone versed in these matters as the UK government has never stated an exact total or given an exact breakdown

They then assume that a UI would need to match the current NI contribution to a UK defence Budget,(no thanks Lads,We wont be paying for Trident or Aircraft Carriers)or continue to pay a pro rata portion of UK Debt AFTER NI had left the UK or that the UK would reneage on pension contributions by NI workers paid into the UK pension pot when NI was part of the Uk.

Those 3 areas alone come to anywhere between £5 and £7 bn per annum.

it also assumes that growth rates and productivity are stuck to the floor over the next 20 years, takes no account of the savings or synergy brought about by an All Island Economy and takes no account of inputs from the likes of the EU or FDI going into the 6 counties at 26 counties levels.

This is the type of scrutiny that should be published in the media, but it doesn't make a good headline.
I know for a fact, there are quite a few large multi-national's investing in setting up offices and expanding existing operations in NI as a direct result of Brexit and the finalising of the Windsor agreement. An NI business in Finance/Captial Markets and IT has access to GB and EU markets whilst taking advantage of generally lower salaries and operating costs than in GB and ROI. We're talking high value jobs being created here and the impact of those jobs on the NI economy remain to be seen.
But I don't hear anyone in the media talking about that.

Doesn't the Framework/Protocol, dual access thingy, only apply to goods, not services??

I wouldn't even pretend to know the intricacies of the framework. But, I know 2 multinationals expanding in NI for this exact reason (I've got it first hand from senior people in both).

Is a piece of software classed as goods?
Company I work for provides services both sides of the border, across Europe, GB and the US.
I'm not clever enough to understand how that all hangs together though.

Sure the lucks been hanging out of the penalty Kick Champs (X2), why change anything? just go full of the bull until it goes pear shaped and then think about it.

Any examples of when other Ulster teams didn't go all out to win Ulster and as a direct result they won an AI?