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Until I hear a steady stream of players from division three and division four counties say that they want a tiered structure at senior county level, I won't believe that there is any demand for it. The players I know would prefer to train all year for a Leinster championship and to keep alive the dream of "maybe, it might be our day" than to give in and admit that the Dubs are unbeatable. The Leinster SFC match between Offaly and Westmeath at Mullingar this year meant more to those involved than any intermediate final would, and that's as it should be. I'd wager you'd get a similar response from Leitrim, who would have targeted the game against Roscommon all year, and good luck convincing Tipperary (A D3 team, let's not forget!) that they belong in a second tier championship after the year they've just had.

There's no shortage of ex-players from Kerry, Dublin and Mayo who like to push for a second tier championship, but it's easy say that when your county wouldn't be involved. They're like the Merc drivers who want better public transport, not so that they'd have to use it and rub shoulders with the great unwashed, but so that it might clear the roads a bit and make more space for them. Of course the likes of Martin Breheny wants it too. He can have more games between the big teams and save himself the hassle of mixing with the hoi polloi out in the sticks. 

Moreover, those selling the idea of a second tier championship like to promise things that they're not in a position to deliver. Already we're in a situation where the national media is far more interested in reporting bland comments from a manager or player with one of the top teams than on actual matches, and the GAA has allowed this situation to the develop. A picture is painted of good coverage of second tier games and an August Sunday in Croke Park, but what will actually happen instead is that the crowds won't be good enough, the games will be quietly moved out of HQ, and the papers will largely ignore the competition. Already I've noticed that many papers don't provide reports from ordinary games that they would have covered previously, instead going for wrap up articles, or ignoring them already. The TV cameras will have no interest in covering Leitrim vs Carlow the Junior championship so sponsorship opportunities for those counties will diminish, widening the gap even further.

[I have said for years that the kerry system is the best system to improve the general standard of football in a county and should be implemented in every county. However, a lot of local politics would mean that amalgamated/divisional sides would not be voted for in several counties.]

Just checked there now its ten years since a Kerry club reached the All Ireland senior final so its not just winning it their having trouble with but reaching finals as well.

I'm arguing the current Kerry club system has increased their chances of winning intermediate and junior All Irelands and the opposite at senior level.

Their lack of a senior club AI is nothing to do with a system, and only betrays your lack of understanding of Kerry football. The true strength of Kerry football is that the game is strong in every corner of the county, and while I'm not sure how many clubs they have, even the smallest junior club imaginable tends to have a decent structure, good coaches, and a clear pathway for players to develop to the best of their potential, via the divisional system. Their most ordinary junior sides would be middling intermediate in most counties.

That same system handicaps them in terms of providing a senior All Ireland contender - ten of the last twenty Kerry SFC winners were divisional sides, which means that 10 of the last 20 Kerry contenders in the All Ireland club race came in on the back of not actually winning a county title.

I'm sure if their main aim was to produce All Ireland club winners they might do things differently, but they have other goals that supercede that by some margin.

Finally, some sense on the matter!!!

The Kerry system has been in place long before the AI club series was introduced for intermediate and junior clubs. The system was not introduced by the Kerry county board to help kerry clubs rack up junior and intermediate club titles. It is a method to improve the general standard of club footballer throughout the county and therefore increase the pick of players who might be at inter-county standard. The aim is to improve the Kerry county team's chance of winning All Irelands, not to increase the chances of winning intermediate and junior club all irelands.

I completely agree that a by-product of the system is that Kerry clubs will win more intermediate and junior all irelands. But the Kerry county board are doing nothing wrong here.

I have said for years that the kerry system is the best system to improve the general standard of football in a county and should be implemented in every county. However, a lot of local politics would mean that amalgamated/divisional sides would not be voted for in several counties.

To be fair, it's not just local politics. I accept that Kerry hurling is going well at the moment but there still is no real dual culture down there, so that makes it a lot easier to implement a system like this. I'd love to see something similar in Offaly but we could be in a situation where between eight and ten members of our intercounty hurling panel would also play club football with intermediate/junior football clubs. If they were to be afforded the option of playing with a divisional side, then working out fixtures would be impossible.

Similarly, Kerry has a lot of clubs, roughly 70-80 or so I'm guessing? That makes it a lot easier to put something like this in place, since you can have divisions with enough clubs to make them workable. Most of the counties around here have maybe 25-30 clubs in total that play football. That's a different world entirely. 

Just checked there now its ten years since a Kerry club reached the All Ireland senior final so its not just winning it their having trouble with but reaching finals as well.

I'm arguing the current Kerry club system has increased their chances of winning intermediate and junior All Irelands and the opposite at senior level.

Their lack of a senior club AI is nothing to do with a system, and only betrays your lack of understanding of Kerry football. The true strength of Kerry football is that the game is strong in every corner of the county, and while I'm not sure how many clubs they have, even the smallest junior club imaginable tends to have a decent structure, good coaches, and a clear pathway for players to develop to the best of their potential, via the divisional system. Their most ordinary junior sides would be middling intermediate in most counties.

That same system handicaps them in terms of providing a senior All Ireland contender - ten of the last twenty Kerry SFC winners were divisional sides, which means that 10 of the last 20 Kerry contenders in the All Ireland club race came in on the back of not actually winning a county title.

I'm sure if their main aim was to produce All Ireland club winners they might do things differently, but they have other goals that supercede that by some margin.

I'm well aware that in all these situations, it's invariably the case that no side is 100% right or wrong. However am I the only one reading this who thinks that a player giving his opinion on a selection issue shouldn't be a problem in and of itself?

For example, say I'm given the job of managing a club team, and a midfielder approaches me and says that he believes player X should get the starting goalkeeper slot. Now of course I'm not going to say "right so, and by the way, who should I pick for full back?" but on the other hand if the player approaches me in the right way, of course I would listen to his views, and if he offers me new information, I'll take that on board. The final call will be mine and I'll expect that to be respected of course.

Now if I go on and pick a different keeper and the player chooses to either

(1) complain publicly
(2) fail to work with the chosen starter in training and matches as he should
(3) bad mouth me or the chosen keeper in his home, place of work etc
(4) knock on my door again the following week making the same request again

then I have a problem. However at no stage is it claimed that any of this happened. If AOS asked for Hennelly, but accepted the decision of Clarke if and when it was made, well then I don't believe he's done anything wrong - and there is nothing in any of this interview to suggest that players did anything other than simply make suggestions.

Similarly with the "Toughest Trade" issue - nobody expects that players do absolutely nothing except work, eat, sleep and train. Everybody has some form of life going on. If AOS was set to miss a lot of training/games and that wasn't cleared with management, then of course there is something to address there - but you address it with the player, not the third party. Again, to go back to my club example, if I have players that have an issue with their diet, I don't ring Supermacs and ask them to cut the lads off at the source.

As I said, I'm aware that there is often more to these stories than meets the eye, but that anecdote alone suggests to me that H/C wanted to treat the lads like minor footballers, dictating their lives and accepting no discussion whatsoever, ad that was always going to be a tough sell with a mature, experienced panel like the Mayo senior football group.

With teams like the Nire, it's never their best four or five footballers that are the problem - the problem is their weakest four or five, plus the bench. The last two or three names to be filled into the Crokes teamsheet will be players that would almost certainly make the Waterford county team and probably either have in the past or will in the future play for Kerry. That depth is where the mismatch will be - not in the top players, even allowing for Cooper/Buckley/Brosnan etc.

Also, winter football is still a factor but not nearly as much as it used to be. Yes you get dour 1-8 to 0-10 games in winter, but they tend to be between teams where the score would be 2-9 to 0-12 if they met in the summer. I don't have any stats on this, it's pure gut feeling, but I suspect that modern pitches - certianly like the one in Mallow - tend to take the winter far better than what we traditionally associate with Winter football. I covered a schools game today and the field was in superb order, I've no idea how they did it - and that was a school field. These two teams are well able to score and they will attack as normal - which is why I suspect that there will be plenty of scores both ways, and thus I'd be happy to punt the handicap. 

You think Crokes will beat the Nire by 6 or more LS? Don't know about that at all. The Nire have plenty of county footballers or hurlers and would be a dogged bunch and in Conor Gleeson they have one of the best forwards Waterford have produced in many years. I wouldn't know enough about either team to comment on who will win but from what I do know I'd be surprised if Crokes win handy.

It's only an opinion, I'm not saying it's a cast iron certainty or anything. But this is a freescoring team and as was pointed out above, Carbery Rangers were very ordinary. If it was Crokes against them, I'd be similarly bullish.

I think the odds are accurate. I would suggest that there isn't much between where Corofin were when they won the All Ireland and where they are now, due to the age profile of the side. Brigids, on the other hand, have introduced some good young players, players that will probably play senior football for Roscommon in the future, but you need to be a lot better than good to replace the likes of Frankie Dolan. Karol Mannion and Darragh Donnelly are two other key men that are not operating at the same level as they were back in 2012/2013, while you can't take out a player of Ian Kilbride's calibre and not have an effect on the team - he was man of the match in a lot of the games they played this year. Only Niall McInerney is a significant upgrade on where they were back then, since he's probably the best defender in Roscommon on 2016 form.

If you forced me to have a bet, I'd back Corofin minus two, but as I said, I think the odds are largely accurate. The odds say that if you played the game ten times, Corofin would win six, Brigids would win three and there would be one draw. I'd find it hard to disagree with that.

Crokes minus five in the Munster final will be my bet for the weekend instead. 

The fact bookmakers and neutrals by extension have written off Brigids will be plenty of motivation for them because they hardly consider themselves inferior to Corofin.

Bookmakers have made Brigids two point underdogs to a side that lifted the Andy Merrigan cup just 20 months ago. Two whole points. If a pundit went on the radio and said "I fancy it to be close, but I'd give Corofin the edge by a point or two" then nobody would call that being written off, so why people decide it is when it's a bookmaker that does it mystifies me.

The oul' media wouldn't be long telling us when there's virtually nobody at a game though.
Serious crowds at Westmeath football and the 2 Offaly Finals considering the populations.
As was Kilkenny final but that's to be expected.

Was apparently over 5,000 at the Roscommon county last year in Hyde park a big drop in attendance figures this year. Is because of the tv coverage or Kiltoom doesn't draw a big crowd?

I don't think that's correct. I can't remember the exact number but one of the local papers reported it as around 3,000 - and I do remember being stunned by how low the number was, given that you had two huge clubs in the final both without a win either in a long time or ever, a 50/50 game, and in a county that generally has a large number of football supporters.

Great stuff lads - keep it coming.

I noted the online stuff with interest all right - I suspect a lot more county boards are going to go down that route. If there is a potential audience of 10k+, then surely county boards will realise that there is probably at least 1,000 - 2,000 of those who would pay a fiver to view it.

I checked out the Tipp football final again and found a number of 1257 on the Nationalist site. That looks like it'll be the lowest in the country - though relegating it to Cashel and playing it the same day as a great game between Sars and Ballygunner at Semple didn't help.

Another way of putting it is that it's entirely unsurprising how few counties Colm Keys/The Indo is interested in watching.

Aside from the fact that a list like this is schyte at the best of times, anyone who could try their hand at it and ignore Brendan Murphy, who realistically should be in the top ten at the very least, doesn't know what they're at. I can't remember the last time I watched Carlow play and he wasn't ridiculously impressive.

[Leinster]

Ahoy,

Looking for a bit of collaborative help from the board here, for the purposes of something I'm writing. All bar the very last of the county finals have been played by now and I'm curious as to the attendances, and the average that exists across the country for these games. A few were surprisingly high, others were lower than I thought. However it would be nice to get the full picture - so if people could help me fill in the gaps here, that would be great. I'm only including the McCarthy Cup counties in hurling, since it would be a bit of a misnomer to include county finals like Leitrim or Sligo hurling, or Kilkenny football for that matter.

Ye might just mention if there were any particularly unusual circumstances either, if aware - for example if they played a Limerick final on the same day Munster were playing in Thomond, or if the game threw in any time other than a Sunday afternoon. Similarly, if ye're aware that an attendance was a couple of thousand higher or lower than the norm for some reason, let me know.

Thanks kindly!!

Leinster

Dublin F -          H -
Wicklow F -
Louth F -
Wexford F -        H -
Kilkenny H - 9130
Carlow F -        H -
Meath F - 6000
Westmeath F - 5772     H -
Offaly F - 5519      H - 6675
Longford F - 3000 (estimate)
Laois F -      H -
Kildare F - 5000 (estimate)

Munster

Cork F -       H -
Kerry F -  6713    H - 3250 (draw - estimate) 2745 (replay)
Tipperary F - 1257    H - 6546
Waterford F -     H -
Clare F -      H - 5036 (draw) 5058 (replay)
Limerick F -     H -

Ulster

Fermanagh F - 3400
Donegal F - 7860
Down F -
Derry F - 4374
Cavan F - 8600
Monaghan F - 4000 (estimate)
Armagh F - 6390
Tyrone F - 8800 (estimate)
Antrim F - 2700

Connacht

Galway F -       H - 5237
Mayo F - 5375
Roscommon F - 1800 (estimate)
Sligo F -
Leitrim F -
London F -

Duignan might be reconsidering the notion today after Rynaghs won again in Offaly. First time in 20 years or so I'd say.

That must have gone down very well in Banagher.
Where do they say "that  beats Banagher" ?

It good to see things going well for him again cos he must have had a very tough time after his wife died

Great day for him all round - he managed Ballinamere/Durrow to win the minor title on the same day, with his sons both involved. His elder son Seán lifted the cup as captain. He was also sent off to the terrace from the dugout during the game, and was presented to the crowd as part of the 1991 Offaly NHL winning team.

Busy day for Michael!

A big factor here is that it's easy to diagnose the problem, but it's far from easy to come up with a solution.

To give one example, in my own home club of Ferbane. We have representatives on the county minor, under-21 and senior panels in football and hurling. Now as it happens, none of the minors were starting for the seniors this year but that would be unusual in and of itself. Last year we would have had both. Now in Offaly, there would be rules that would state that:

(1) If a county minor is playing a championship game on saturday, then his club can be fixed to play championship on Sunday
(2) For the National league, the county manager must name his 26 players midweek and then all other panelists are available to play club league that weekend.
(3) No "training weekends" or any other such nonsense when county players are unavailable for their clubs in the league.

Now bear in mind that last year, neither our senior footballers nor senior hurlers made any real inroads into their competitions - and yet every single weekend from the 23rd of April through to the middle of July was within 7 days of an Offaly hurling or football championship.


Now it's the easiest thing in the world to talk about clubs being the bedrock and all that, but what actual practical solutions can you put in place for a situation like that? Condensing the county championship is certainly welcome but you're still going to have huge swathes of the summer when county players are unavailable to their clubs - the gaps just aren't there.

Dessie to step down at end of year.

How many abusive posts will follow

I don't know about that, but I would be very curious as to what size of a pension pot will follow him. That's not something I expect we'll ever learn about though.