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Ok so why are Dublins hurlers not doing what Limerick are doing with their money and less numbers that Dublin?

Because they were coming from a far lower base to start with.

If you look at where Dublin hurling was historically compared to where it is now, there is literally no comparison.

Galway hanging on by their finger-tips - will be delighted to be only down by 2 points at the half.
Mayo doing their trick of managing to make a game much closer than it should be.
Neither side making much of a case to be considered serious All-Ireland challengers based on that performance.

Make Dublin a Province with 4 County Boards and 4 County teams.

I mean that's what the Dublin county board wanted a few years back - to treat Dublin as a separate province.

The GAA just messed it up by giving them more money than any of the other provinces.

I take it both go forward into AI QFs anyway - what is the QF draw?

No Derry are out now.

No quarterfinals at U20 level - straight to the semis.

Awful run of penalties there from Derry, All poor.

My first thought was to wonder how much practice they've done recently.
Surprising to see such a number of poor penalty attempts at intercounty level.

The last rr - pre qf- qf
 is the killer

I wonder how many first seeds will win their qf . Will it be 3/4 like last year ?

You would have to assume 4/4 would be the standard every year for the group winners making it the the semis.
This would have been the case last year only for Monaghan's penalty win over Armagh.

I wouldn't be surprised if 3/4 would be the usual most years for the first seeds in as regards making the semis. I think most years you've a very decent chance of one of the Ulster teams turning over one of the other provincial winners.

As you said the the preliminary quarter-finals route with 3 games in 3 weekends looks like an absolute death-trap of a route towards Sam. It's very hard to see a team winning Sam through that route.

Yes would expect that to be the case until such time that all Quarter finalists are given at least two weeks prep time.  If we get another 3 Quarter final mis-matches this year as we did last year then HQ need to tweak it.

I don't think there is any chance that all the quarter-finalists are going to be given two weeks prep time for a fair while yet (think 10 years or so).

If you give the four preliminary quarter-finalists two weeks, you would need to give the group winners three weeks (assuming you did't stagger the groups) which would tilt the advantage of winning the group a fair bit away from the group winners. I don't think the powers that be want to reduce the benefit of winning the group/increase the odds for the teams coming 2nd and 3rd in the group.

Even if you were to play around with the timing and stagger the group stages to give all four quarter-finalist two weeks, it would lead to a situation whereby you gave some sides three weeks and some two at a later stage which I think the powers-that be would consider a worse option.

Long story short I think the GAA is going to keep the status quo in place for a good few years yet and that winning your group is going to be key if you want to win Sam.

The last rr - pre qf- qf
 is the killer

I wonder how many first seeds will win their qf . Will it be 3/4 like last year ?

You would have to assume 4/4 would be the standard every year for the group winners making it the the semis.
This would have been the case last year only for Monaghan's penalty win over Armagh.

I wouldn't be surprised if 3/4 would be the usual most years for the first seeds in as regards making the semis. I think most years you've a very decent chance of one of the Ulster teams turning over one of the other provincial winners.

As you said the the preliminary quarter-finals route with 3 games in 3 weekends looks like an absolute death-trap of a route towards Sam. It's very hard to see a team winning Sam through that route.

Anyone asked the folk in the Ulster Council driving the Casement project how they feel about the  current proposed capacity for Casement given the crowd numbers for the various provincials this year and the talk about possibly shifting the provincials to before the league?

The GAA gets how much €s off RTÉ in broadcasting rights?

The figure in last year's annual accounts for media coverage income was €12,845,678.

I couldn't find a breakdown of that figure anywhere so I assume that's the total for all rights for everyone RTE, TG4, BBC, and I presume the likes of GAAGo. I would guess that some money from the likes of Clubber is included in that as well.

Overall revenue for the year was €112 million so all the media rights(not just RTE's contribution was around just 10% of all revenue.

I had hopes that GAAGo might encourage/force RTE to up its game.

However given the fact that GAAgo is essentially run by RTE, it's clear that there's little to no chance of this happening.

I think the GAA have given RTE far too much leeway over the years and basically put up with whatever RTE was willing to do. The RTE sports department gets way more out of the GAA that what the GAA get out of RTE. 

Carlton recruiters around the place at the moment.

Normally it's later in the year when they come over but Carlton are hoping to gain an advantage on the opposition by travelling now. Sound very committed to recruiting more Irish players.

The Category B international rookies aren't counted as part of the salary cap (clubs have a limit on what they can spend on salaries) and also don't count towards the number of players a club can have on their books so are less of a risk compared to other rookie signings.

Also the fact that they are willing to move Monahan from Kerry to Category A make room in their Category B space means they view his chances of making is as very positively given he's only been over there 6 months at his stage.

https://wwos.nine.com.au/afl/news-2024-carlton-blues-executives-travel-to-ireland-attempt-to-recruit-talent-for-academy/fee43fbc-e776-4a2a-b492-456001233115

"And as much as the academy is a multi-pronged strategy to strengthen the men's and women's playing lists, Ireland is by far the most bold component of the plan."

"Carlton's view is Ireland is a largely untapped market, full of incredible athletes and highly competitive performers. "

Outside of occasionally Armagh and Dublin, no football teams fans can really hold a candle to Munster hurling teams at the moment

Not really fair comparing with the completely different setup in hurling.

The football provincials are not much more than a warm-up before the serious business starts with the group stages.

The Munster hurling round-robin has real jeopardy with every single game being critical given 40% of the teams taking part will be finished for the summer in a few weeks (and possibly even sooner depending on how results go).

What I just can't get my head around re this Galway team are the things that we have been poor at/areas we have been weak in for a long time now seem to not even have been worked on.

Kickouts firstly. The "plan" if you can call it that goes like this...
If the opposition don't have a full press and leave one of our full back line free - Gleeson will tap it to them. If the opposition don't leave said corner back free  he literally boots it as far down the field as possible and hopes for the best.
I was watching it very closely today and there was absolutely no deviation from this for the whole game.
Nothing innovative that you would see from other teams who seem able to manufacture space to retain their own kick outs.
And the length of time he takes to actually get the ball on the tee and get the kick away is junior C stuff.

Secondly - the speed of our transition from defence to attack off turnover ball is ridiculously slow.
We slow it down, go backwards and sideways etc. instead of getting bodies bombing forward at pace to take advantage of a disorganised defence. Instead we give them all the time in the world to get organised and start our slow ponderous build up play again.

It's shocking that we're still struggling in these areas of our game.

The fact that these two issues have been ongoing through Joyce's time in charge is a damming indictment.

[losing]

But we were worryingly outmanoeuvred today.
Donegal had done their homework and exploited the opportunities, we failed to react and adapt.

The bit about "failing to react and adapt" in a game just leapt out at me as I'm sure a lot of Tyrone and Louth folk would agree on it being a common theme in games lost under Harte.

I'd disagree with screen on our attacking play, imo we lacked any cutting edge today, our speed and incisiveness was non-existent, very few line breaks, we didn't/couldn't carry the ball at pace. Our normal game plan just wasn't there. Barely won a breaking ball either.

I would put a lot of this down to Donegal's defensive approach - I haven't watched the game back but I'd be willing to put money that Donegal's setup and tactics were all about denying Derry goal chances. This is a Derry team that have built so many of their victories off scoring goals and denying them chances would be a key platform of Donegal's approach - I think the stuff mentioned "lacked any cutting edge today, our speed and incisiveness was non-existent, very few line breaks, we didn't/couldn't carry the ball at pace. Our normal game plan just wasn't there." was most likely as a result of Donegal's defensive setup. No better man than McGuinness to look at what worked for this Derry team previously in terms of creating goal chances and setting up his side to counter-act this.

The rest should do us good and the seeding is largely irrelevant as has been discussed ad nauseum. Better to have 4 weeks off than 2 more games where you could still end up as a losing provincial finalist, meaning you cannot draw the Munster or Leinster finalists, who will be the weakest teams in the competition.

Just to clarify the losing Ulster provincial finalist can't draw any of the the losing provincial finalists, they will also be in a group with the one of the other winning provincial finalists

On point 2, I would make it compulsory everyone who receives a red card will not be eligible to play until they sit a rule test and get at least 80%.

I would make the standard referee test compulsory for every member registering via Foireann. With Referees having to get 80+%, Players should have to get 70%, normal members 60%. At the very least, it may force spectators to actually read the rule book in some sort of depth. I too have players querying the rules after games. Currently, the most common is the 4 step rule after an unclaimed mark.

Players 70% and ref's 80%...are you serious? Surely people know the rules of their games, never mind refs? At most there's a tweak here and there, it's not hard to keep up, surely?

On point 2, I would make it compulsory everyone who receives a red card will not be eligible to play until they sit a rule test and get at least 80%.

I would make the standard referee test compulsory for every member registering via Foireann. With Referees having to get 80+%, Players should have to get 70%, normal members 60%. At the very least, it may force spectators to actually read the rule book in some sort of depth. I too have players querying the rules after games. Currently, the most common is the 4 step rule after an unclaimed mark.

Players 70% and ref's 80%...are you serious? Surely people know the rules of their games, never mind refs? At most there's a tweak here and there, it's not hard to keep up, surely?

It's clear that a vast percentage of people including players/mamagers/pundits/spectators have a very poor knowledge of the rules. I've been at multiple matches where people shouting at the ref clearly don't know the rules. Most of the time I stay schtum but on occasion I've shut a few up by shouting the actual rule at them and why the ref made the correct decision.
 
If you ask GAA people (outside referees) how many of them have ever read the GAA rulebook (I've done this a fair bit over the years) chances are you will only find a tiny fraction of a percentage who have ever read it. Then of those who have ever read it, the amount who have read the most up-to-date version is close to zero.

I never read it myself until after I stopped playing and I would say that it the case for the overwhelming majority of players. The GAA could help out massively if they put a proper system in place to educate people (especially players) on the rules as they currently stand.