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Hurling is supposed to be the best game in the world, yet only a small handful of counties take it seriously. Why is that never talked about in the Sunday Game?

The hyperbole the Galway v Tipp match got at the weekend was utterly ridicilous. A great winning point and a very exciting finish completely masked all the bad play and particularly all the bad misses. Both teams were doing their best to bottle it. Kilkenny at their peak a few years ago would have beat either of those teams playing like that by 8 or 10 points.

Maybe we have to wait for the Dubs to get good before anyone is allowed criticise hurling (and we'll be waiting a while so)

Maybe so, but I don't think either of these two teams are at their peak. Kilkenny, in 2000, with the fear of becoming the first team to lose three All Ireland finals in a row might have shown as many nerves in a tighter game than Offaly gave them that year.

Hurling is going well at the moment. There are possibly more teams with a chance of winning a hurling title, than a football one.

How to fix this? Money. Take "Dublin's" plan that Croke Park drew up for them and force CBs to start implementing it. It's clearly a plan that works and should be doable across the country. Stop the Financial Doping of Dublin now. Pull the plug and see how long Dublin stays at the top.

According to Costello, it seems to be Dublin's choice as to whether they continue receiving the money or not. Is that not the tail wagging the dog? It's galling to think that the most populous county in the country, with the greatest access to financial and personnel resources has been funded to this extent for so long.

Read these:

http://www.irishnews.com/sport/gaafootball/2016/12/06/news/gaa-needs-new-revenue-to-help-weaker-counties-costello-819899/

Map of funding:

https://www.balls.ie/gaa/gaa-investment-in-dublin-348120

Maybe Leitrim will never win an All Ireland, but ffs al least give them a chance to dream about it.

Agree 100%. Elitism is killing the game and the GAA is going to kill the golden goose, if they don't put a halt to what's going on. Look at the attendances at Leinster finals in the past while...over 81,000 were at the 2005 final, when Dublin won their first LSFC title in 7 years. Two years ago, they had 39,000!

https://www.sportsjoe.ie/gaa/lot-people-talking-colm-orourkes-idea-gaa-132993?utm_content=buffer67da9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Yes, this will turn into another Dublin-beating thread, but enough's enough.

Any Dublin GAA person with an ounce of real DNA in them should condemn what's going on with the financial doping of Dublin.  On top of the €15m+ that the Dubs have received from the GAA, they've been getting very substantial grants from the Sports Council of Ireland, y'know, just in case they run out.

Super8 is an absolute joke. This will do absolutely nothing for the GAA, apart from putting money in the pockets of Croke Park. There is not one reasonable argument that a Super8 format will supercede the normal QF format we have at the moment, which incidentally has just served up an cumulative total of 58pts for the 4 settled games this year.

They should call the new format simply 8, coz it certainly won't be super.

CP has planned this "Let's Make Dublin Great Again" and has funded it for the past decade and a half. Dublin is now winning All Irelands at a rate unseen by them before and the GAA is going to lose a lot of support if they keep it up - particularly in the weaker counties.

If the GAA really wanted to make the GAA great, they should have funded from the bottom up. A national ranking of counties, getting grants which are inversely proportional to their ranking - with accountability on how the counties are actually spending their money. It would work in the same way that large charities report on donor grants etc.

We have an ever-increasing number of intercounty players no longer working and using their spare time to train. Dublin, Wexford, Tyrone etc are all rumoured to be doing it. Isn't this semi-professionalism?

Numbers playing GAA are dropping. The drop-off of players entering their 20s is far higher than other major sports in the country. It's all driven by elitism and the lack of ambition is confers on the rest.

Enough. The GAA has to stop the direction in which it's going before the model is broken completely.

I honestly believe more funding has to go into Laois, Offaly, Westmeath and Carlow to maximise the development in those counties.

Carlow, Westmeath and Offaly, possibly even Antrim

Agreed. The problem is that those five counties have a max offering of about 1,000,000 people. If you take out the protestant element of Antrim, you're probably down to 700,000. Dublin, regardless of other pursuits, has a population of 1.3m or so. That's one hell of a captive audience for one county.

If Laois is successful, then the other 615,000 people in OY, WH, CW & Antrim lose interest. The GAA has spun this out now and won't stop until Dublin win 5/6/7 AI football titles in a row.

Thank God the sanctity of hurling has been preserved from the financial doping that has been going on in favour of our capital.

Dublin = Manchester City.

Crap before all the money flowed in. All Dublin's titles from 2011-onwards should have an asterisk beside them.....ie * sponsored by Croke Park.

Rosenallis were the surprise of the round. Timahoe in the back door will be bad news for Annanough. Barrowhouse & The Rock will be delighted to get each other.

Yeah. This.

Discuss.

like i said interview all parties see who has that extra factor,if its higgins,malachy,conway,billy,clancy  you ring the clubs they have been
with see what they brought to there area the club the players get a feel for the guy your employing to do this very important job,this man has to have charisma a tactical brain but most of all this is the important bit lads COMMAND the respect of the players be no fool be strong be passionate about wanting to win and let that feed to the laois people to the backers of laois gaa that put money into this county set up,i for one think its an attractive job i would like players input into the whole thing,i dont want a bluffer i want to see a fit laois team playing with passion but playing to a plan and not the stuff we have all seen last couple of years

Christ, James Joyce has nothing on you.

They're all on one side of the draw there. Laois, Offaly, Kildare & Dublin.

Meath champs do nothing in the club championship.

Can see wins for Emo, Rock, Timahoe and Portlaoise in the first round.

Nearly agree with you - The Rock had a poor league. Emo, Courtwood, Timahoe, Portlaoise.

Losers: Annanough, The Rock, Rosenallis, Barrowhouse.

He will be remembered as one of the greats, without a doubt. Quiet, unassuming etc etc. Had to overcome early-career f**k-ups too, but put them behind him to lead his team to numerous titles.

John O'Leary was the best keeper I saw live, but Cluxton has surpassed his now.

Used to love his articles. He had one or two on Howard Wilkinson in Leeds, calling Tomas Brolin a "poofta", or some such sobriquet.

Now, he's a paedo. The beard was a dead giveaway though. Like Jimmy Saville, it was as plain to see really (in hindsight).

[Well they know how the rest of us feel]

Have any of the Dubs blamed Pat Spillane yet? Or Lee Keegan?

The Gaa's pet project complaining about how they are being treated. Well they know how the rest of us feel with financial doping, home games etc etc.

So you're speaking for the rest of the country?

Pretty much, yeah. The Man City of the GAA are a marketing ploy, created by Croke Park. Now, I'm not so sure that they have an exit plan. They've created a monster that could win 6, 7 in a row. Whoopdeedoo. You've bought every single one of them, with central funds.

The Dubs are light years ahead of the rest of the country and it's all sponsored by Croker.

Get rid of AIG from your jerseys. Next year, you'll have GAA on them. Financial doping of the orcs and we have to listen to youse, as if you'd done it all on your own?

Watching Gaelic football must be a living hell for you since the return of the Dubs in 2011. Just relax, sit back and enjoy the spectacle.

Gaelic football, in general, is hard to watch nowadays. The Dublin playing style goes against the grain. The pretence that this is something created by the Dubs is a joke. It's a gaa marketing wet dream that was created & funded in CP. Why would CP worry about the 28,000 (or so) people in Leitrim, when they have 1,500,000 to love them in Dublin?

After reading that article and the other transfer tales in the past 10/15 years here in Laois

Let's call a spade a spade

If you want to transfer,you will get one.

Nevermind the rule book and the various refusals you might get from the various committees.

Plough on

You will eventually get your wish.

Now I'm off to tap up a few promising underage prospects in neighboring clubs.

You don't even have to be living in a parish to play underage hurling with another parish team at this stage (and no,I'm not talking about isolated players)

Until a lad was refused a transfer to my club, on the basis of an address. He is genuinely living there (and has been for a good while), but it's all in his sister's name.

Sure, an esb bill for a cowshed was accepted in a case I know about. Apparently, a family of five living in a field.

Genuine case - turned down.
Fake esb bills - accepted.

Because....#countyboard.

I don't recall any of the Sunday Game pundits calling for Brian Cody to be banned from all GAA activity for at least 12 weeks for assaulting a linesman during Saturday night's match against Waterford.

Double standards, actually it's worse than double standards given that it was a far more serious incident than the incident which Diarmuid Connolly was banned for.

In the GAA you get banned because of who you are and escape a ban because of who you are.

It's pathetic.

Nah. Connolly moved towards and pushed the linesman. Cody was blocked by the 4th official. Similar, but different.

Should a player who accidentally runs into a ref in the middle of the field get a ban too? Intent & context are important.