Divide Dublin in two rears its head again

[Donnellys Hollow]

His point about Dublin's financial resources are fair comment, forget about population, the money Dublin have at their disposal gives them a competitive advantage over every county in Ireland

Here's an article on Ireland's wheelchair rugby team. An very enjoyable piece

http://www.irishexaminer.com/archives/2013/0209/world/refusing-to-be-defined-by-twist-of-fate-222213.html

Lots of things give counties competitive advantages - you could say having a large, well organised supporters club with access to apartments to entice IC players from other counties gives an unfair competitive advantage

That rules Kildare out so.

MacKenna is far from the worst. I would have agreed with most of his views on the transfer situation last year but I wouldn't pay much heed to those power rankings he writes which are nonsense IMO.

[Dinny Breen]

His point about Dublin's financial resources are fair comment, forget about population, the money Dublin have at their disposal gives them a competitive advantage over every county in Ireland

Here's an article on Ireland's wheelchair rugby team. An very enjoyable piece

http://www.irishexaminer.com/archives/2013/0209/world/refusing-to-be-defined-by-twist-of-fate-222213.html

Lots of things give counties competitive advantages - you could say having a large, well organised supporters club with access to apartments to entice IC players from other counties gives an unfair competitive advantage

That rules Kildare out so.

MacKenna is far from the worst. I would have agreed with most of his views on the transfer situation last year but I wouldn't pay much heed to those power rankings he writes which are nonsense IMO.

Those power rankings did more damage than good but did stir up debate which is the point I suppose. He was quite consistent on the transfer saga and still is although I thought he was a bit preachy at times.

[heffo]

His point about Dublin's financial resources are fair comment, forget about population, the money Dublin have at their disposal gives them a competitive advantage over every county in Ireland

Here's an article on Ireland's wheelchair rugby team. An very enjoyable piece

http://www.irishexaminer.com/archives/2013/0209/world/refusing-to-be-defined-by-twist-of-fate-222213.html

Lots of things give counties competitive advantages - you could say having a large, well organised supporters club with access to apartments to entice IC players from other counties gives an unfair competitive advantage

That rules Kildare out so.

MacKenna is far from the worst. I would have agreed with most of his views on the transfer situation last year but I wouldn't pay much heed to those power rankings he writes which are nonsense IMO.

Those power rankings did more damage than good but did stir up debate which is the point I suppose. He was quite consistent on the transfer saga and still is although I thought he was a bit preachy at times.

The power rankings were a load of balls but I wouldn't worry about them or his bias against Dublin, it's his preachy, whiney attitude and his Eamonn Dunphy-lite manner he tries to affect and then complain when people respond to his bait.

[Hill16 Blues]

McKenna writes a lot of decent articles to be fair.

No big mention of Dublin hurling I note in the articles.

Why would there be? They've done little of real note in that code and most of the best dual players are choosing football so I'd imagine their domination of hurling is a way off yet.

I really don't agree with the idea of splitting Dublin but there is no point in ignoring the possible problems an overly dominant Dublin might pose for the GAA as a whole. A situation to be monitored but the idea of splitting Dublin would be worst case scenario stuff IMO.

Does he? You might put them up I've never read on these decent articles. Miracles do happen I suppose.

Split Cork in half they have more clubs then us. Its a tired old argument built on sand tis debate

Vast tracks of Dublin don't even play GAA and probably never will if the truth be known.

Meath would have beaten Carlow by 25 points at least and this wouldn't have been a story.

This has more to do with the standard of other counties underage teams in Leinster being crap rather then Dublin being good.

Leinster at football is in a crisis in my view and its completely tilting results in making Dublin look like a superpower.

Other counties are well able to beat us at all levels. In my view its not dublin that needs to be split its the provincial boundaries that need to be reshaped to add a bit of balance to the provincial championships.

He has written many fine articles and the one at the start of this thread is a recent example, just because the Dubs around here don't agree with him doesn't make it a poor article. While I agree with a number of his points, I don't think splitting Dublin is a solution but he doesn't propose that either, he simply doesn't rule it out as a solution to a potential future problem, which is a sensible thing.

The point that seems to be escaping our Dublin contributors is that unlike any other county, Dublin has the potential to utterly dominate the GAA IC scene through advantages no other county could hope to enjoy. This has to be a concern for everyone, Dubs included, as the integrity of our championships would be undermined if one county dominated not, primarily, through excellence but by population, infrastructure and finances.

Personally I think we are a long way from that happening and sport isn't all about numbers or money, English rugby proves that, but I think it is fair to raise the issue as a talking point and it's something worth tracking to make sure the worst case scenario doesn't transpire.

Dublin has the potential to dominate?? Ah right so we should now split Dublin as a result. This is such a pile of crap! Kilkenny and to a lesser extent Kerry have actually dominated. At what point has that dick written an article suggesting the splitting of these counties? As already highlighted its the usual dub bashing that is nothing but boloxology! As also pointed why try and raise standards elsewhere when you can drag the likes of Dublin down! O'rourke should know better if he wants to be taken seriously!

[Rossfan]

The Dublin bucks here are very defensive and stick in the mud I see .
"Not an inch" seems to be the order of the day.
Yet didn't their Chairman ask for Dublin to be made a Province?
Ye won't be getting a one county Province anyway.

[seafoid]

McKenna writes a lot of decent articles to be fair.

No big mention of Dublin hurling I note in the articles.

Why would there be? They've done little of real note in that code and most of the best dual players are choosing football so I'd imagine their domination of hurling is a way off yet.

I really don't agree with the idea of splitting Dublin but there is no point in ignoring the possible problems an overly dominant Dublin might pose for the GAA as a whole. A situation to be monitored but the idea of splitting Dublin would be worst case scenario stuff IMO.

Does he? You might put them up I've never read on these decent articles. Miracles do happen I suppose.

Split Cork in half they have more clubs then us. Its a tired old argument built on sand tis debate

Vast tracks of Dublin don't even play GAA and probably never will if the truth be known.

Meath would have beaten Carlow by 25 points at least and this wouldn't have been a story.

This has more to do with the standard of other counties underage teams in Leinster being crap rather then Dublin being good.

Leinster at football is in a crisis in my view and its completely tilting results in making Dublin look like a superpower.

Other counties are well able to beat us at all levels. In my view its not dublin that needs to be split its the provincial boundaries that need to be reshaped to add a bit of balance to the provincial championships.

He has written many fine articles and the one at the start of this thread is a recent example, just because the Dubs around here don't agree with him doesn't make it a poor article. While I agree with a number of his points, I don't think splitting Dublin is a solution but he doesn't propose that either, he simply doesn't rule it out as a solution to a potential future problem, which is a sensible thing.

The point that seems to be escaping our Dublin contributors is that unlike any other county, Dublin has the potential to utterly dominate the GAA IC scene through advantages no other county could hope to enjoy. This has to be a concern for everyone, Dubs included, as the integrity of our championships would be undermined if one county dominated not, primarily, through excellence but by population, infrastructure and finances.

Personally I think we are a long way from that happening and sport isn't all about numbers or money, English rugby proves that, but I think it is fair to raise the issue as a talking point and it's something worth tracking to make sure the worst case scenario doesn't transpire.

Dublin is full of people with zero time for da gah. There must be at least 100,000 Man Utd fans in BAC who use the 'we' form to describe what happened at the so called "Theatre of dreams" the previous  Saturday.
So i don't think there is much chance of Dublin dominating.

If money and population meant anything Kildare would have a county standard pitch.     

[Ard-Rí]

Divide it in 7 and then cut out its tongue. And then shoot the tongue.

[Flutehook]

Divide it in 7 and then cut out its tongue. And then shoot the tongue.

OK.... maybe we'll just rotate Tommy Carr in as Manager every 3 or 4 years. That should keep yiz happy.

[Dont Matter]

WHY WONT ANYONE MENTION THE 7 MILLION REASONS WHY DUBLIN ARE DOMINATING UNDERAGE FOOTBALL AND HURLING?

For those who don't know, in 2005 true blue Bertie Ahern gave Dublin 7 million smackeronies. This is the reason Dublin have won numerous underage Leinsters and All Irelands in the last few years. Not because they got their act together, that they've had a sudden interest in improving hurling and other untruths thrown out on this thread.
They were happy enough to take the money and be bought success so they'll have to accept being split into two.

[INDIANA]

WHY WONT ANYONE MENTION THE 7 MILLION REASONS WHY DUBLIN ARE DOMINATING UNDERAGE FOOTBALL AND HURLING?

For those who don't know, in 2005 true blue Bertie Ahern gave Dublin 7 million smackeronies. This is the reason Dublin have won numerous underage Leinsters and All Irelands in the last few years. Not because they got their act together, that they've had a sudden interest in improving hurling and other untruths thrown out on this thread.
They were happy enough to take the money and be bought success so they'll have to accept being split into two.

Its never going to happen so we don't have to accept anything.

Dublin went to the other counties and copied their development model- thats why we've been successful of late.

We've been improving hurling since 97 with the first Dublin Colleges hurling team. So you are talking out of your arse.

As a poster said above soccer is huge in Dublin still and always will be. A lot of areas don't play it at all and never will

There are now areas of Dublin where GAA largely dominates and thats great credit due to the people in those areas because its no mean feat when you've  a million more distractions then other counties.

[Michael Schmeichal]

WHY WONT ANYONE MENTION THE 7 MILLION REASONS WHY DUBLIN ARE DOMINATING UNDERAGE FOOTBALL AND HURLING?

For those who don't know, in 2005 true blue Bertie Ahern gave Dublin 7 million smackeronies. This is the reason Dublin have won numerous underage Leinsters and All Irelands in the last few years. Not because they got their act together, that they've had a sudden interest in improving hurling and other untruths thrown out on this thread.
They were happy enough to take the money and be bought success so they'll have to accept being split into two.

This is absolute nonsense. Can you produce some evidence of these outlandish ramblings? I have a feeling we will be waiting.

[heffo]

WHY WONT ANYONE MENTION THE 7 MILLION REASONS WHY DUBLIN ARE DOMINATING UNDERAGE FOOTBALL AND HURLING?

Why won't anyone mention it? Since you've joined you've scarcely mentioned anything else.

[Lone Shark]

Its never going to happen so we don't have to accept anything.

First and foremost - absolutely. I get physically sick when I hear people talking about amalgamating smaller counties and if I'm not going to allow my own county identity to be stripped away, I'm sure as hell not going to say that it should be stripped away from Dublin GAA people.

No proper, competitive person wants to split up Dublin, and I suspect Colm doesn't either. He probably just left it too late to take the time to come up with a proper article and so he knocked together a whinge quickly.

Dublin went to the other counties and copied their development model- thats why we've been successful of late.
We've been improving hurling since 97 with the first Dublin Colleges hurling team. So you are talking out of your arse.

Dublin's work in underage hurling has been a huge boost to everyone. God knows the number of counties that can succeed in the world of hurling is small enough, let's not go taking away another one.

As a poster said above soccer is huge in Dublin still and always will be. A lot of areas don't play it at all and never will

I'm not sure if you're referring to soccer or gaelic games when you say "it" in the above sentence. Either way, the GAA should never accept any territory as lost. Dublin have a huge monetary advantage certainly and there may have to be an examination of ways to level that out, but my limited experience is that the Dublin CB have done their best to exploit all areas.

As an aside, perhaps this is one of those situations where a little bit more information is needed before we can judge? The reason I say that is because we all know Dublin have an awful lot more money than other counties. That said, splitting up a county that makes €1m in sponsorship per annum to make up four counties that get €100k each makes no sense.

However I think the concern people have, sometimes unfounded, is that Dublin get to spend millions on team preparation while other counties have to make do with less than a tenth of that. That is unfair. It's not right that Dublin players know that they'll benefit financially from playing intercounty games while other county players will suffer.

Perhaps the trade off here is that Dublin should be kept together, allowed to maximise their potential, but there should be oversight to ensure that the huge amounts of extra revenue they have is spent on things that are good for the association as a whole - new clubs in areas where more clubs are needed, more playing pitches, more underage coaches - not more members of Jim Gavin's backroom team.

There are now areas of Dublin where GAA largely dominates and thats great credit due to the people in those areas because its no mean feat when you've  a million more distractions then other counties.

I call BS here. Rural Ireland isn't the same as it was in feckin Glenroe. I grew up in Ferbane, a village of 900 people in West Offaly. Within a half an hour you had access to pretty much every sport or activity that a child in Terenure or Glasnevin could get at, and more.

Making GAA the number one priority of the next generation is tough everywhere, and Dublin's challenges are not unique in that regard.

[seafoid]

Urbanisation/rural depopulation is going to be a real challenge for the GAA over the next 100 years.
Even in traditionally strong counties like Offaly you have economic centralisation with Tullamore growing at the expense of the rural parishes. Same in Galway . Athlone is a "Hub" town that might not have as much GAA DNA as other places in Roscommon/Westmeath.

[deiseach]

This seems to be a solution in search of a problem. If Dublin come to dominate the game completely - and we're talking ten-in-a-row territory here before it become a problem - then fine, let's see what needs to be done. But as heffo points out, the Carlow example is a terrible one and doesn't indicate any long-term trends.

I don't have any problem with Ewan MacKenna. I admired his stance on Cian O'Connor, although he undermined his position a bit by castigating 'RTÉ' for their supine interview technique when it comes to drug cheats even though he's writing Bill O'Herlihy's biography. But he's typical of the GAA hack who constantly feels the need to Do Something To Fix The GAA. I blame the lack of transfer market churn which allows other sports writers to endlessly make stuff up speculate while GAA journalists chew their pencils down to the point trying to fill column space.