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[in Gort ( FFS !! Gort !)]

Late Ros point makes it a 1-10 to 0-13 draw in the battle of the great powers in Gort ( FFS !! Gort !)

Locals were probably wondering did both sides forget their hurls....

McGrath Cup (Preliminary Round): Cork v MIC Limerick.

Sunday 4th. January 2015, at Mallow 2.00 p.m.

Team:

1.  Ken O'Halloran (Bishopstown)

2.  Liam Jennings (Ballincollig)

3.  Stephen O'Donoghue (Ballincollig)

4.  Noel Galvin (Ballincollig)

5.  Daniel Hazel (O'Donovan Rossa)

6.  Padraigh Hodnett (Carbery Rangers)

7.  Jamie O'Sullivan (Bishopstown)

8.  Fintan Goold (Macroom)

9.  Michael Cussen (Glanmire)

10. Kevin O'Driscoll (Tadgh MacCarthaigh)

11. John O'Rourke (Carbery Rangers)

12. George Durrant (Ballincollig)

13. Fiachra Ó Deasuinaigh (Bishopstown)

14. John Hayes (Carbery Rangers)

15. Brian Hurley ( Castlehaven)

Subs:

16. Ryan Price (O'Donovan Rossa)                                                                                         

17. Eoin Cadogan (Douglas)                                                                                                   

18. Michael Shields (St. Finbarrs)                                                                                           

19. James Loughrey (Mallow)                                                                                                 

20. Tom Clancy (Clonakilty)                                                                                                     

21. Mark Collins (Castlehaven)                                                                                               

22. Colm O'Driscoll (Tadgh MacCarthaigh)                                                                             

23. Donncha O'Connor (Ballydesmond)                                                                                 

24. Colm O'Neill (Ballyclough)

Lots of unfamiliar names in the Cork starting 15 lineup ; however the big talking point is surely Michael Cussen at midfield.

Will surely have too much for Mary I

Also Waterford take on UL in Fraher Field Dungarvan @ 2:00pm

I did see a stat previously that a serious chunk of eligible lads in Kerry played with the Kerry Junior team at some stage.

Along with the divisional teams this would also help in developing young lads from small clubs where the coaching might not be at the very top level.

Haha it seems at least a few of you remember the green ones I was on about! The Mikasa ones surely everyone has had a pair!

Is there anyone who didnt have a pair of the Mikasa ones?

Seems like they had a massive share of the lucrative GAA gloves market for a good while.

Never had the green ones.

Is there a case for the manager having to be a memebr of the club he is managing the same as a player would be?
do away with 'outside' managers completly unless they are willing to transfer from their own club.

100% agree. I proposed this in my own club. I think a manager should be the same as a player in that you have to transfer club/county to manage them.

As for the comment above about lads going on training courses, we have a club full of lads who have been on courses but the bottom line is that they are not the right men in the players eyes. They don't carry the respect unfortunately.

Well if the players are demanding managers who are paid, tell them they can either pay for it themselves or organise their own fundraising/sponsorship to pay for the cost of it.

Tell them that the priority for the club will be the juvenile section and that will be the first priority for any additional funds.
Too many clubs have the senior team as the be all and end all of everything the club does and they gobble up an unfair amount of the available finances in the club. Tell them the club has decided on a longer-term approach and is reducing the cost of juvenile members and offering subsidised training gear for them. Tell them that the club is going to get a far better return on what cash it does have to spend by focusing on the juvenile side of things and providing decent coaching to youngsters, as opposed to spending it on the senior team.

Really does sound like a few lads with notions - out of interest how much have the lads "demanding" this contributed to the club off the field?

Are there any or many examples of lads refusing to join county panels or taking part in trials due to the perceived level of commitment required to be county footballer ?.

The talk of 5/6 sessions a week you'd imagine is putting some lads off.

I was talking to someone from Kerry about this and they said there was more than one individual in Kerry this year who opted out/couldn't commit of the panel. Would have been fringe panel members but still.

It's not something that lads announce or is likely to get much publicity but I reckon that there is a substantial number who've opted out of the intercounty game.

The GAA should be doing far more in terms of helping/putting pressure on clubs to develop coaches/managers internally.

There has been some efforts at this but I think they are fairly limited and can vary from county to county.

If the GAA offered decent courses for managers/trainers to complete for free or at subsidised prices to improve the standards it would make clubs far less likely to go for outsiders.

[""It's not about the other actors on the stage being better; we didn't do it. As good as Kerry and Tyrone were, we lost to weaker teams"]

Fairly embarrassing comments from McNulty - maybe he phrased his comments badly but they really come across as serious deluded stuff

""It's not about the other actors on the stage being better; we didn't do it. As good as Kerry and Tyrone were, we lost to weaker teams"

Maybe he's trying to court publicity or controversy but if he genuinely believes that I'd have serious doubts about his ability to judge a player.

As to why Armagh didn't win more, I think it would be interesting to look back and have a detailed look at the squad depth Armagh had in terms of their players. They had a number of outstanding players but I always felt that beyond the big names there was a serious drop-off in terms of the quality of footballers as you went further up through the squad, especially when compared to Kerry and Tyrone. Basically I'd guess if you looked at the quality of the various players making up numbers 16-30 in the squad, the Armagh lads wouldn't stack up too favourably against Kerry and Tyrone. Over a stretch of 8 or 9 years that's bound to have an effect on winning matches. As further evidence for this I'd point out to the fact that while Armagh fell off to a large extent, Kerry managed to evolve/transition into further generations of success and even Tyrone have kept that bit nearer to the top table.

Government i.e. taxpayers underwriting this for up to €120 million apparently.

I'm also very skeptical about all those claims about events like World Cups and Olympics being worth huge massive amounts of money to host countries.

In terms of tourists visiting from overseas I can definitely see a decent number of folk travelling to Ireland for a rugby World Cup. However I would be shocked if a lot of these folk didn't end up causing a serious amount of cannibalisation of the 6Nations in the years before and after with folk from France, England, Scotland,Italy and Wales skipping visiting Dublin around for Ireland home games in those years for a trip to the World Cup. I'd also be wary of other tourists staying away from Ireland during the course of the world cup for fear of increased prices and crowds.

The English are paying the IRB/World Rugby £80m for the "privilege" of hosting the 2015 RWC and as a result the ticket prices are seriously tasty. Cheapest category ticket for pool games New Zealand was under €5 while the cost for the same category in England 2015 is €19.

Also the only place that can hold the semi-finals and finals are the Croke Park as the stadium needs to have a capacity for 60,000 which will be a bit weird.

I'd really like to see pretty detailed work on the financial estimates that are underlying the whole thing - if I had to guess right now I would guess that a lot of taxpayers money will end up getting spent on making stadiums fancier and that the benefit to the economy will be a lot less than the optimistic consultant's reports..

Thanks for the feedback guys. Yeah, we're actually based in Oz. Not sure if any clubs add a few quid/euro/dollars on to their fees as a bit of badly needed fundraising but we have not done this to make things more affordable and the club more accessible.

What I'm trying to get at is that a large chunk of the fees we have to pay seem to "disappear". I have spoken to a friend who works for one of the Provincial councils who has advised that funding does get sent to our Association via the Regional GAA Rep. No idea who this cash gets passed on to by our National Rep but from speaking to other clubs in our city, they don't see a $ of it, same with clubs I'd know in other cities.

At our AGM, our Treasurer came up with what our bottom line was, which shocked a few members. To be honest, I was satisfied with what it was, knowing what our situation had been the last number of years. And Liam O'Neill had the audacity to stand up in front of a group at a function before the Rules and say that Croke Park were proud of what was happening here and was great to see all their funding and investment being put to good use. Nearly bloody choked on the ice in my Magners when a mate told me. Unless a few of us on this side are missing something or someone is pulling the wool over his eyes, he was chatting completely out of his ass.

Anyway, just thought I'd ask. To be fair, compared to other sports here, the fees are ridiculously good value but I don't give a crap about them.....I just want justification for why our fees are what they are.

I'd definitely say to keep asking questions and encourage others in the other Aussie clubs to ask questions about where the money is going (and what you're getting for it).

A situation like this where money is being transferred between countries is the sort of bottleneck where financial controls could easily fall down. The fact is that in the vast majority of cases the people involved in dealing with money in the GAA are overwhelmingly honest decent people. However just because this is the case, people can't assume that 100% of all people will be as honest.

Even if something untoward isn't taking place, the idea that the Aussie clubs are having to pay a serious chunk of change and seeing little to nothing in return is definitely not right. I'm not a massive fan of Liam O'Neil but I really really doubt he was spinning one story if he knew the truth was entirely different. You could easily send him an email raising your concerns - at the very least you could explain to him that the situation on the ground was a fair bit different for the clubs to what he seemed to think was the case. In fairness being president of organisation and being responsible for what's happening at the other side of the world it's not exactly surprising that he's somewhat out-of-touch with the reality of the nuts and bolts. I know one person who had concerns about some stuff and seemed to be getting stonewalled who happened to run into Nickey Brennan when he was president and Brennan was only delighted to resolve the issue.

You would be doing the Association a great service.

[(even though non All-Stars seem to go every year)]

It just rubs me up the wrong way this farce, I'm all for the All-Stars getting a trip (even though non All-Stars seem to go every year) but these types of games are an embarrasment and no way reflect the intensity in our game.

Anyone have any idea how the non All-Stars get selected for this gig?

Is it a case of who you know or is there an actual proper system in place?

Chairmen and committees need their heads looked at. They sanction the bullshit.
If clubs would spend the money developing their own people as coaches and investing in youth it would be more their line.
Educate the coaches/mentors, provide higher standard of coaching and development, produce better players and teams.

The thing is that when you hear about clubs paying lads hundreds of Euro to manage/coach/train teams, lads doing it for free feel foolish.

You see countless lads who put in countless hours in clubs and never getting a penny and then you see parasites getting paid ridiculous amounts because they have a a reputation or have some certificate in coaching to their name.

I'd be very interested to know have the revenue ever compiled a list of club and county managers and had a bit of a look at how tax compliant they all were. The reason I ask is that I always remember Mick O'Dwyer's defence when anyone mentioned payments to managers was that he had been audited by the Revenue a number of times and they had no problem with him. Of course this was a very slick defence because when people heard him say he was in good standing with the Revenue they assumed all was kosher even though being square with the Revenue  would only mean he had paid taxes on his earnings, not that he hadn't received any earnings or was complying with the GAA's rules on payments. Any reasonable accountant would have no problem making sure that any extra payments on top of mileage allowance were fully tax compliant no matter how large they were.

I'd love to see a rule that said the same rules apply to managers and coaches as apply to players - you have to be a member of a club and if you want to transfer between clubs the same rules as for players apply. Rather than lining these expensive managers/coaches, think about how much more money clubs would have on spending on improving facilities/providing gear for underage teams.

I wonder how far the GAA are from the idea of their own TV channel.

When you see something like IrishTV and consider the number of hours of content the GAA would have on a weekly basis, it seems a no-brainer to me.

From what I've seen of the plans and the proposed cost, it really looks like someone will be making a pretty penny for this.

I know stadiums are expensive yokes but this just seems mad stuff altogether.

There appears to be qute a lot of people on here talking a seriuous load of horse. On every [of the numerous] threads there has been on here about burnout I have asked for any evidence to show that players are leaving rthe game earlier than they did in the past. No one has as yet been ebale to furnish me with this evidence. I suspect that this is because it doesn't exist. Benny Coulter retiring at age 34??? after a 16 or 17 year career at senior county level is not evidence of 'burnout', I would argue that its quite the reverse.

Looking at the teams in this years AI SFC final as an example it doesnt strike me they were composed of a much younger age group than any previous group of players, and some of teir better performers have huge numbers in terms of championship appearences.

The only one talking out of their arse thus far is you.

This professional training is only in vogue a few years. The likes of Benny would only have seen maybe 5-6 years of it and he's in a better position then any of us to gauge what constitutes too much. As he played at this level.

Inter county commitments has been a 6 day a week event since the late 90s however the key factor is the load factor which is the volume and intensity of training you are doing.

That now is at breaking point. Because it is several higher in terms of intensity these days. You will see more inter county retirements in the next ten years of lads ranging from 25-28 then ever before. The evidence isn't there because the current group are the Test subjects.

Well there's no point in arguing with you then, as not only are you a S&C guru, but you can also tell the future!

Would the fact that so many Down lads have opted not to join the panel this year not be a case of burnout?? Marty Clarke has been working & living as a professional athlete for the last 5 odd years and even he won't commit to it. . . it's gone too far!!

On Marty Clarke - I did hear he has some sort of health condition (can't remember what it was - but it's something that would require managing)

However I agree with the overall point that things have gone too far and SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE !!!!!

I do agree that the ones pushing this are the professional getting paid on a per session basis. I know it would have close to zero chance of getting through Congress, but I'd love to see a rule that all county boards had to provide a detailed list of all payments to any individuals involved in the coaching/management of county teams.