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it looks like quite an impressive site. The GAA certainly has got its act together on this. It's great to see the organisation that runs hurling and football promoting such a positive image. 

Only gripe would be the note on all of the historic results that says "these may be dodgy" in so many words.

Also the "run the crap out of them" mentality of trainers at some levels is really shocking. There is an unbelievable emphasis on size, phisicality, speed and stamina...in fact a lot of people overlook far better hurlers because they lack in one of these 4 area's which is a real shame. Its coming to a point, certainly at club level, players (in my own club and ive heard it from others) are opting out of senior level at an earlier age, many at 26 / 27 because they have family commitments etc and i think more needs to be done to bring the game back from the brink of proffesionalism.

Very interesting post. I know a few soccer trainers here in Switz and there is no running around the pitch 15 times. The focus is more on passing the ball around quickly, accuracy and short bursts of speed. I wonder if the GAA couldn't learn from other sports like icehockey or even cricket regarding the best use of a training session. I think that English is often a prison whereby ideas from outside the English language zone are never  given a hearing.

Don't people run on to the pitch after rubby matches ?

http://www.gaa.ie/gaa-news-and-videos/daily-news/1/committee-established-to-end-pitch-invasions/

Good luck to them. The pitch invasion is no less part of our national heritage than the chicken schnackbox or the churchgate collection for Fianna Fail. Who will ever forget the Jimmy Cooney watch pitch invasion of 1998 ? 

A national league would be a great boosht for Mayo and Kerry are out of it
so you would have to fancy their chances.  When is the last time a connacht team won the football league? 

Kilkenny 82 83 92 93 00 02 03 06 07 08 09

Enda McEvoy on JC

http://www.tribune.ie/sport/hurling/article/2010/mar/21/the-greater-hunger/

It was not the first time that Joe Canning has hurled better on a losing team than he has on winning teams. It will not be the last. How much more would Portumna have lost by without him? How much more would Ballyhale have won by with him? Five points from play, two of them rifle shots off his left with the barest caress of the trigger, another killed on the bas and belted over without the need to take it to hand. Neither Ring nor Shefflin had compiled the body of work by the age of 21 that Canning has. Not remotely.

but is he ever going to get a break? 

Who is responsible for the classifications  on this board- junior member, senior member, hero member etc? It's all very dry.

Over on http://www.ballinasloe.com/forum/ posters are divided into junior shams, drs of shamology and profs of shamology.

Couldn't we do something similar here?

Eg

Junior C corner forward
Intermediate bainisteoir
Maor lifetime achievement award winner

any other suggestions ?

Reillers is actually from Kilkenny and uses the board as therapy to deal with some of his personal issues revolving around what some Ballyhale lads must have said to him as a teenager outside Dunnes in Kilkenny town.   

is that the first time a team from antrim has won an all ireland? 

Thon is a great word

If we felt that way, can you imagine how the players on the pitch felt, faced with 50,000 people blubbing like babies over their actions? No wonder they got massacred. It's going to be very hard to overcome that sense of inferiority.

Kilkenny hurlers are fine stickmen and very much at home in Croke Park and used to winning but apart from d'accent dey are de same as people from Waterford.  It sounds like Waterford urgently needs to set up a programme of house swaps with Kilkenny so that the young hurlers of the county are exposed to the cats from a young age and thus unfazable when they meet them in big matches in Croke Park. 

Amhran na bhfiann is no St Bernadette of a song. Never mind the singing at matches- why it is sung at the end of every night out on the piss ? Is there any other country in the world where the nation's drinkers feel compelled to express their "love" for the nation  every Friday and Saturday night at the business end of 10 pints ? Some Irish traditions are insane and singing Amhran na bhfiann in every nightclub at 2am is one of them. It isn't even the best song. Mo ghile mear has far more class.     

And the folk memory is strong enough that if/when we assemble a team capable of challenging for honours, it will still be a powerful factor in Croke Park in a big game, even between two sets of players who will only have read about the eighties and nineties.
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It's preserved somewhere in the county mortas cine and once the players come along as they always do, eventually, and the county is once again in Croke Park with 5 minutes left in a tight match it comes back. Down have the same thing. Even Kerry don't faze them when they get their mojo right.   

. In 2005 we had a misfiring Tierney in midfield and Niall Healy at FF, neither of whom could string 2 good games in a row ever.

Match practice was another thing Galway hurlers never got much of. Maybe being in Leinster will change that.

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Players themselves will know if they are good enough and will gain confidence from it. Imagine being in a dressing room with Hayes, Linnane, Finnerty, Keady, Malone, McInerney, Coleman, Malone, Cooney, Naughton, Lane, McGrath or Ryan  or similarly with McNamara, Mannion, Fahy, Meehan, De Paor, Walsh, Fallon, Donnellan, Clancy,  Joyce, Savage, Finnegan. Defeat or negativity would scarecely enter the head. I guess the trick is to make the players believe they're good enough. [/quote]

They didn't all fire on the same day. They got plenty of matches. They didn't get dropped after one bad day like many hurlers did. Mannion and Ja would have heard a lot of negative stuff about the footballers pre 95 too. I remember talking to Mannion's sister about it once. She was complaining about all the abuse she would hear at matches. Of course the same people were very proud to be up in the stands when Meath were put to the sword.