the Championship post celtic tiger

[seafoid]

Keith Duggan has a very good analysis here

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sport/2011/0625/1224299583517.html

There is a jaded feel about the old competition this year. The price of tickets has become the only hot topic of this championship. Even the players are complaining now that the All-Ireland, stretching from mid-May to mid September, is unnecessarily long. Young players are back on the emigration trail. The romance of the qualifiers is over. The players are looking around at the empty seats and the penny is beginning to drop. Heroic though the players were and are still, all those full houses were not people coming to see them, per se.

.. Some year soon, the GAA is going to have to reimagine the All-Ireland championship and make it a bolder and leaner competition. If they leave it as it is, the All-Ireland championship will slowly lose its way. And it is too important and too great for that.