The GAA needs to get past its suspicion of hype

[rionach 4]

thanks duffleking . Yes  I agree we should explore other avenues and I know also that the game itself is quite capable of standing on it's own. I have been to a few baseball matches in the states and if ever a game needed hype this was it . The whole thing was an experience . Like a lot of us sports way way over the top but it packed them in .
American football is so huge in the usa that it is nearly impossible to get a ticket. It to contains a lot of hype due to the stop start nature of the sport. I read that the green bay packers has a waiting list of 100,000 for season tickets. the waiting list is over 10 years long. 
Dublin I hope packs them in this weekend ,
It's a great venture and I wish them sucess. While the sport does not need to many gimics we should not however take our support for granted.

[Zulu]

We should be careful that we don't elevate our own games and dismiss the entertainment value of others too easily. There are plenty of poor hurling and football games and while American football is a stop start game, I think it is a brilliant spectacle in its own right. A number of posters made the classic GAA mistake of dismissing something by pointing to the extremes of hype and promotion. I don't see many gimmicky things going on at American football games and we don't need to copy everything, however we should remain open minded and aware of where sport is going. The fireworks display before the Dublin Tyrone game a few years ago underlined the value of spending a bit of money to add to the occasion. That game will live long in peoples memories because of the hype and fireworks even though the game was excellent in of itself. Hype and self promotion shouldn't be dismissed but neither should we lose sight of the games, it's a balancing act but one we must engage in.

[Jinxy]

The fireworks were after the game.
They were amazing.

[Eamonnca1]

Well i have no idea what's going on there

As with all sports it's a lot more interesting when you know what's going on.

What you're looking at there is the tail end of a sprint race which was probably about 1km long.  When it comes down to the last couple of laps they'll slow away down and each will try to force the other to take the lead. If the other boy takes the lead, you can sit in his slipstream and come around him on the last lap with fresh legs and beat him to the finish line.  If you take the lead, you have to jump away as quickly as you can in the hope that you shake him off and he doesn't get into your slipstream and get the benefit of your draft, which is very hard to do. The point of a track stand is to psyche each other out and see who can hold out the longest and force the other to make the first move.  Whoever makes the first move is at a big disadvantage.

Trust me on this, a track stand is sore on the legs; you balance by pointing your front wheel to one side and rocking back and forth on the fixed gear. Note how their feet weren't touching the track, the feet are locked into the pedals like any other bike. Oh, and there's no brakes, no gears and no freewheel. Plus you have to ride on that gravity-defying banked track, which is a strange sensation the first couple of times you do it.

I agree it's a bit of an acquired taste from a spectator point of view.

There's plenty of other types of racing on velodromes though.  Most of the ones around here will have big groups of riders on the track at the same time, so there's all sorts of points races (15 laps but you get points on laps 5 10 and 15), 'devil take the hindmost' where the last man is eliminated on each lap until there's two left to sprint it out, the Madison which is a relay where riders grab their partners by the hand and slingshot them into the race, etc.  They have an annual event at the local track here which runs all weekend, commentators in all races, free beer and food, DJ music belting out during races etc.  It's actually good crack.

[Eamonnca1]

It continually amazes me that while junk sports can fill their stadiums with people screaming at the spectacle of two fellas doing nothing on a bike for five minutes, we have Dublin crawling with tourists from all over the world on Summer Sundays and not a single one of them has been told that there's something amazing going on up the road in a half-full Croke Park.

Well I don't agree with your description of the sport of track cycling, but I agree with everything else you say.  Let's face it, if I were to show you the same event without the crowds and then tried to convince you to come along to the velodrome and pay to see it you'd probably laugh at me.  But did you notice how they managed to fill that place with screaming crowds anyway? The presentation of the sport makes a huge difference - it's all about two things:

1 - Making sure everyone in the crowd knows what's going on and why they should be excited about it.
2 - Creating an atmosphere.

The GAA fails miserably at the first part.  In all the All Ireland programs I've ever seen, I don't remember ever seeing an explanation of the rules of the game for the benefit of any tourists who might be in the crowd.  I've seen plenty of youtube clips of people watching deadly exciting games of hurling but can't share in the excitement because they don't fully understand what's going on. Same way you'd feel if you were dropped into the crowd at that velodrome.

As for creating an atmosphere, the game itself does a good job of that in the GAA, so you don't need such cringeworthy efforts as baseball's '7th innings stretch' where the crowd gets up after the 7th innings and sings along to a stupid song while stretching their arms and legs. But the halftime entertainment needs a bit of work though. That deedly-dee music drives me up the fecking wall! Give us something modern FFS!

[Hardy]

I didn't mean to describe cycling as junk sport. I like cycling - it was just in the wrong place as I let off a burst of indiscriminate fire. I agree with all you say.

Does anyone know who is in charge of marketing or games promotion for the GAA? The fact that we have to ask this, when whoever it is (if he/she exists) should be one of the most familiar faces on TV, says it all.

[Bud Wiser]

Does anyone know who is in charge of marketing or games promotion for the GAA? The fact that we have to ask this, when whoever it is (if he/she exists) should be one of the most familiar faces on TV, says it all.

That was one of my sentiments some time ago too Hardy, we have to ask who it is since Danny Lynch left the job and when he was there we had to ask where he was.

Its a pity Humphries did not delve a bit deeper into the financial transactions that allow the manager of a Munster hurling team to be paid 140K while the government, if we evenb had one, is trying to spend money we have not got rebuilding half a run down ghetto of a large area of their city. Where does the GAA's part in the community apply when these people can't afford to pay the entrance fee to watch the likes of this manager strutting his stuff and getting paid more (over 2.5K a week on top of his punditry fees) in a day than they will have to spend on bread and butter in a year?   There now, that should liven up the debate a bit !

[Main Street]

I think it's great that the Dubs are grabbing the initiative to play in Croke Pk and having a big campaign to get the crowds in to fill out the echo, it's good for both teams and the competition.
However the radio advert itself does my head in, amongst other things, the voice over uses bastardised speech, referring to Croke as Cwoke.

[Eamonnca1]

I didn't mean to describe cycling as junk sport. I like cycling - it was just in the wrong place as I let off a burst of indiscriminate fire. I agree with all you say.

Oh no worries, I understood your underlying point. I've often said similar things about cricket being a 'boring' sport but still managed to spread around the world wherever its proponents went and was spread much more successfully than our own games. (Although it's probably a bit uncharitable to describe cricket as boring, I'm sure it has its own selling points too.)

Does anyone know who is in charge of marketing or games promotion for the GAA? The fact that we have to ask this, when whoever it is (if he/she exists) should be one of the most familiar faces on TV, says it all.

Dermot Power.

[Zulu]

To be fair I think the GAA do a reasonable job in promoting the games considering they don't have the resources that other sports do. Much of the money raised is put back into the clubs and counties. There is a plenty that can be done but I'm sure some of it isn't being done through lack of resources, there are a lot of hands in the kitty.