Kilkenny county board and football

[johnneycool]

I think kk should be punished for allowing lads to be humiliated like that. Either have respect for yourselves and the game or lose your grants for hurling.
That'll learn them.

Then Croke Park would be awash with money coming back from all the other county boards losing their football grants using your criteria.

[Craigyhill Terror]

Kilkenny footballers are getting hammered week in and week out in NFL division 4 - there's no equivalent hurling team to that, a side that's getting scutched even in their league.

Maybe that's because Kilkenny is the only county that treats football with contempt while there are plenty of counties that treat hurling with contempt relative to football, leading to more hurling teams at the same rubbish level

[Jinxy]

There's no shame in trying and failing miserably.
The shame is in not trying to begin with.
Kilkenny are clearly not trying.
At all.
They're basically saying 'Leave us alone or we'll turn every football fixture you give us into an absolute travesty'.
Plenty of counties are useless at hurling.
They still make the effort though.

[Jinxy]

Name the counties that don't then.

[brokencrossbar1]

I was in the Carrickdale a number of years back and there were a few teams booked in for the weekend, Derry hurlers were playing down the country so they were booked in and KK footballers were there also, they were playing in the National league the next day.  I was up from Cork for the weekend with a team.  Anyway, Saturday evening and we were sitting in the lounge having a pint, the games were on teh next day.  All the Derry lads were sipping their blackcurrant and water etc etc, we were having a few pints but not too many as we were out the next day but it was a bit of craic.  We got talking with the KK lads, they were locked, the noght before the game, they were asking us which was the best place to go to Newry or Dundalk, they were on the total rip.  It wasn't just the players, all the officials were at it too.  leave them at it I say, its a fecking amatuer sport and they will never win anything at it, they fulfill fixtures and give the lads who are not good enough at hurling the chance to wear the county jersey.  the players themselves knew that they were never going to win too many games and they were happy enough to do what they were at.  Sure we know there's one team in those colours doing well enough in football anyway, why get people mixed up

[ross4life]

Leitrim crap at? well make your own mind up on that, not bad at Scor mind your

Not too many Leitrim posters on this site, though they do have some supporters that come on and defend them

What is it with you & Leitrim did you get a bad pint in Mohill one time? i remember last year you compared Leitrim's footballers to Kilkenny 

As Loneshark said above "Kilkenny footballers are getting hammered week in and week out in NFL division 4 - there's no equivalent hurling team to that" Where not a hurling county ourselves but if you go to places like Four roads,Athleague etc it's hurling mad i don't think there's a town or village in Kilkenny with any real interest in football.

[ross4life]

Cavan don't have a team in the NHL. Surely that's worse?

If they did would they ship the same type of beatings Kilkenny do in the football league? out of interest what are Cavan's recent hurling minor,U-21 results??

[Milltown Row2]

Point being Ross4life. If a county team (Kilkenny) have a team in the league and a county team (Cavan) don't, who's worse? Are they the same?

I've no problem with Leitrim at all, I'm only using them as a county that's poor at hurling and don't seem to put any effort into it. I'll happily use Cavan from now on

[ross4life]

Point being Ross4life. If a county team (Kilkenny) have a team in the league and a county team (Cavan) don't, who's worse? Are they the same?

I've no problem with Leitrim at all, I'm only using them as a county that's poor at hurling and don't seem to put any effort into it. I'll happily use Cavan from now on

Good i won't need to defend little Leitrim anymore so  I guess we won't know how bad Cavan are at Hurling until they re-enter the NHL.

[Lone Shark]

Cavan don't have a team in the NHL. Surely that's worse?

That's debatable. What I do remember is that when Cavan pulled out of adult level, they had only two clubs playing and they said they were going to concentrate on hurling at underage level and build it up from there. If they didn't have adult players with any interest in playing for the county, and they did actually start trying to develop hurling among 10-14 year olds, then I'd say that's fair enough. If that was just words and they just ignored hurling, then of course Cavan stand indicted just as much as Kilkenny - all the more so if the players wanted to keep competing.

Equally, if Kilkenny county board are creating the conditions for a county team to play and no players are coming forward, then I'd actually be inclined to let them off the hook. The concern here is that this isn't what's happening - that there are players who would like to develop and play the game for their county, but that there is no organised training, teams are cobbled together the night before, and any attempt to try and play is actively stifled. Then the county board claims that because nobody wants to fight the county board and make it happen anyway, there is no interest. On another level, the county board wants to get whatever central grants are available for "fielding" football teams, so they make sure fifteen players take the field, but incur no expense beyond the washing of the kit.

Everybody has their own anecdotes. For example, in the Offaly hurling heartlands, there is a similar attitude to the sport of football in a lot of clubs. Kinnitty recently gave a bye in a Junior B championship semi final after winning several games to get that far. The management claimed that they didn't want to risk injuries a week before a county hurling semi final. Then they trained in bad light during the week when their floodlights failed. Now which activity carried the greater risk of injury? All they did was cause a huge row in the club as they had several players who played football only, and those lads had to give a walkover in the biggest game of the year, and the wound was still festering when they went on the field and took an unmerciful hiding from Coolderry.

In another very strong hurling club, quite literally one man has kept football going. When they started to do too well, the club came up with a nonsense reason to try and get him suspended. Just to be clear, his own club suspended him, not the county board or anyone else. Basically he took an under 14 football team to play a round robin match against another club, when both teams were out of the running for the championship. His side had fourteen player, and another young lad from a nearby hurling club who was looking to become a permission player but hadn't yet been cleared. The manager went to the opposition manager and explained, offering to play the game as a challenge and forfeit the points. The opposition said no, play for the points since it was all academic, neither of them were going to win anything anyway. The illegal player was insured, and nothing was really at stake, and his club lost the game. Cue a twelve month suspension, despite no objections from anywhere. 

The same club looked like making a real run in the football one year, so the hurling manager gave ultimatums to all the hurlers not to play football. Note he didn't give the same ultimatums to the guys that he knew would pick football, or who would be strong enough mentally to tell him where to put his ultimatum - it was only given to the lads who preferred hurling and who were replaceable. Some principle that.


The point I'm making is that nobody is blameless here and to a certain degree, this attitude to be found in every county in Ireland. However that doesn't excuse it and much like a similar lengthy debate we had on this board, the fact that the rules or indeed the spirit of the game is not being universally applied is no excuse to ignore the ethos of the association entirely. But again, maybe Kilkenny people are right and you could put in place a perfectly good setup and no-one would play. That's why I'd like to test out the theory before declaring that the KCB are out of order. 


By the way the whole idea of no forum for the county to play in is nonsense. There is a Junior football championship. I'm sure their clubs would be perfectly welcome in Carlow leagues, or Wexford Leagues, or wherever, much like happens in Ulster hurling. Even amalgamated teams if they wanted. Last year O'Loughlin Gaels won division 5 of the Féile, beating the best teams from Leitrim and Clare in the knockout stages. You can't tell me that there isn't enough there to be working with, or that those lads have no interest in football, if the county genuinely wanted to develop. Neither can you tell me that O'Loughlin Gaels, who played in an All Ireland Club final the same year, are sacrificing their hurling. Something here doesn't add up, that much is clear.

[Milltown Row2]

Great, so are we (the posters) in agreement that Kilkenny, and everybody (bar Kilkenny hurling folk) on here,  want Kilkenny to try harder in football. and the likes of Cavan to try just as hard in hurling?

Which means that this is a wasted thread.

Lone Shark, youre right about Kilkenny having good prospects in football at underage, if my own club would encourage our best underage hurlers of the past 10 years to concentrate on hurling I have no doubt that we would be challenging yearly for senior hurling honours and possibly be appearing in club All Ireland semi finals.
I heard Shefflin,McCormick, DJ and a right few other Kilkenny lads were decent footballers with DJ having played county.

Clubs and counties generally have a main code, don't hammer them for it, don't say that one county is bad and another isn't if they are both doing the same, if not worse in Cavan's case.

[Hardy]

Comparisons with hurling are not apt for one simple reason - you can work hard at your hurling and still struggle to make inroads, it's a very, very difficult art. Football, by and large, isn't.

I agree with all you say, LS, except that bit. It's ould hurling-mystique propaganda that seems to have seeped into the soul of the GAA to the extent that it's accepted as dogma. Bating a ball with a stick is just as fundamental a human activity as kicking one with your foot.

To debunk the "hurling is very hard, but any ould fool can kick a ball" myth, I'm offering the following challenge that I offered here before that wasn't taken up.

I've never played a game of hurling in my life. I've hit a ball with a hurley maybe fifty times. That was a tennis ball. I've hit a sliotar maybe five times. And all 55 times, I held the hurley the wrong way, like a golf club. I'm still willing to have a competition with any hurler, of any age and level of proficiency, who hasn't played competitive football at any level, as I haven't played any hurling. I'll take twenty 45s with a hurley and he'll take twenty 45s with a football. I'll lay €100 at 2/1 that I'll score more points than him.

[AZOffaly]

How about 20 45s versus 20 '20s'. That's the equivalent in terms of physical strength. Or maybe a 45 versus a 65.  Maybe a more accurate skills test is ask a non footballer to solo the ball around 10 cones, and count how many times he loses control. Repeat the dose with a non hurler trying to solo a sliothar. I think I'd take your money.

I'm primarily a football man, with a decent bit of hurling as well, and I think the basics in hurling are that little bit harder than in football, but to be really good at either you need to be very highly skilled.

However, I think this is a bit of a straw man, because I suspect that what LS is hinting at is that it is probably easier to appear 'competitive' in football than hurling due to the vagaries of the two sports. The gap in quality might be as pronounced, but if you bring an ultra defensive strategy to football, against a good team, you stand a good chance of losing by less than 20 points. If you do the same against a good hurling team, you could lose by over 30, because goals are easier to score in hurling, and a sliotar travels further than a football, espcially when a good player strikes it.

In reality you are not competitive in either case, but the appearance is a lot different.

[Milltown Row2]

Comparisons with hurling are not apt for one simple reason - you can work hard at your hurling and still struggle to make inroads, it's a very, very difficult art. Football, by and large, isn't.

I agree with all you say, LS, except that bit. It's ould hurling-mystique propaganda that seems to have seeped into the soul of the GAA to the extent that it's accepted as dogma. Bating a ball with a stick is just as fundamental a human activity as kicking one with your foot.

To debunk the "hurling is very hard, but any ould fool can kick a ball" myth, I'm offering the following challenge that I offered here before that wasn't taken up.

I've never played a game of hurling in my life. I've hit a ball with a hurley maybe fifty times. That was a tennis ball. I've hit a sliotar maybe five times. And all 55 times, I held the hurley the wrong way, like a golf club. I'm still willing to have a competition with any hurler, of any age and level of proficiency, who hasn't played competitive football at any level, as I haven't played any hurling. I'll take twenty 45s with a hurley and he'll take twenty 45s with a football. I'll lay €100 at 2/1 that I'll score more points than him.

Hurling from the 65 and football from the 45, that's how it works Hardy FFS  'SHAKES HEAD'

[AZOffaly]

By the way Hardy, when you say '45s' in hurling, do you mean with the roll lift as well, or are you talking about striking it out of your hand? Because if you mean the roll lift, then you're codding yourself.