Time to Split Dublin

[moonster]

Full time students? With access to all the training facilities and living close to home.
How many third level colleges in eg Leitrim, Roscommon, Longford or Offaly?


Having a full time GPO takes a HUGE burden off the volunteers in the clubs.
Recruitment of players with a school-club link
Providing structured basic coaching to kids before the come to the club
Ability to organise games and blitzes in conjunction with other club GPOs

The point is that there is no equivalent 50% funding for clubs down the country to even think about hiring a GPO. You try and amalgamate 3/4 clubs together and they still wouldn't get funding.

Maybe clubs should put resources into underage structures than forking out large sums for senior management teams.

[Baile Brigín 2]

This thread aged well.

[Captain Obvious]

It's one of the funniest defences of the unfair advantages Dublin have and it's one that gets the Dubs in a real muddle.

The population of 1.3 million doesn't count as an advantage they say. That's because the Dubs play loads of other sports, rugby, soccer etc, apparently these sports aren't available to kids outside Dublin! Then they say that the 1.3 million count includes tonnes of foreigners and culchies, apparently foreigners don't live in any other county and culchies always remain in their own counties!

This is where it gets really funny though. After spouting on about how their population isn't an advantage, you ask them about the millions of euro they receive every year off all of us. What's their reply? We need the money because of our huge population!!! 

On the money to pardon the pun.

It never sense to amazing me how a "newbie" can bump a thread that hasn't been posted on for years.

[The Boy Wonder]

On the money to pardon the pun.

It never sense to amazing me how a "newbie" can bump a thread that hasn't been posted on for years.

'Dont Matter' posted the initial item on this thread and it Don't Matter that moonster is a newbie
- amusing to see a longtime poster looking down at a newbie 

[moonster]

P.s if youz culchies really love your game you'll get out and start coaching kids and play your part in getting your county in order and rise to the level of standard Dublin have set rather than moaning about the other team being better on an Internet forum

fair point.

however, Dublin have over 100 paid coaches in clubs? That is a huge issue
Our club wouldn't see a paid coach from one end of the year to the next.

So the senior manager doesn't get paid?

[onefineday]

This thread aged well.

It did indeed, and it's safe to say that the current travails of the Dublin senior team would be much more manageable if they were at least 2 and realistically 3 senior intercounty teams in the county.
The numbers involved at underage in Dublin are so vast as to make them unmanageable for a single team/intercounty outlet. The amount of talent that is lost to gaa is immeasurable. People talk about Dublin's golden generation being a unique collection of footballers, but I'd argue that dublin has the potential to produce similarly talented players on an ongoing basis, simply by weight of numbers. The problem is that players start to drop off when they don't make it through those first development squads at the age of 13/14 and apply their focus elsewhere, that is often rugby in some areas where the schools rugby is prestigious and the setups are quasi professional or soccer in other areas, where again, set ups are impressive and professional.
Unlike in other counties there's no schools system to pick up the slack as gaa in schools is generally a case of pulling together a squad for 5/6 games a year, maybe a trial early in the year, no training and the whole exercise is simply about getting a half day off to go play a game!

Similar sentiments apply at senior club level, crokes and Boden for example typically have 4 boys and girls teams at each age from u8 through to u16 (that's u8,u9,u10...). You could argue that it's a bigger achievement to play 1st team for Boden than it is to play intercounty elsewhere, especially when you factor in the recruits who've moved to the county.

I understand the tradition built on heffo's army of the 70's, but really, to be fair to the youngsters aspiring to play for dublin and to build on the work of the past 20yrs, give them more intercounty outlets and make the prospect of playing intercounty (and senior club) more achievable.

[Baile Brigín 2]

A convenient argument.

When Dublin were winning, split them to dilute the talent.

Now they are shite, split them to consolidate the talent.

The weight of numbers argument fails. More clubs in Cork etc.

But substantitvely you are right. Gaelic games in Dublin is, and has always been far behind soccer. The success of the Dubs didn't translate into an increase in playing numbers at juvenile level.

He reality is there are, for example, 9 GAA clubs in the whole county of Dun Laoighre Rathdown (population 240k) and one of  them is a dominant superclub and about half are wobbling.

But unlike other areas of the county there are clubs. It is virtually impossible to start a club with Dublin land prices so we are then forced to funnel kids through the soulless and soul destroying superclub machine.

I have a friend in Rathfarham whose choice is Ballyboden or one of the various soccer clubs. His kid is in a friendly, community based club where he gets fame time based on merit. And that isn't in the local GAA.

The big expansion success was taking on the goys in Dalkey. Cuala worked, but play out of a soccer club. The traditional working class clubs have been thrown to the wolves as a result. They lost to soccer, so why bother?
2 or 4 Dublin county boards won't change any of this. And they certainly won't get better access to schools or parks.