LSFC - Longford v Dublin 31 May 2015 in Croke Park

[Zulu]

I was actually just about to say something like that. All this current hand wringing seems to ignore the fact that it was, in a lot of cases, ever thus. The only major change is Dublin have, by clever investment and utilisation of resources, managed to put serious distance between themselves and everyone else in Leinster. It appears to me that the media are primary drivers for change because they are not interested in a turkey shoot in May. 30 years ago nobody even knew about it except the people in the counties themselves, and those watching a brief report on the Sunday Game or listening to Sean Óg.

Look at these winning margins

Connacht - 15 points, 10 points (in the final)
Leinster - very close in general, but Dublin beaten in the first round by Longford (in Mullingar)
Munster - 14 points, 13 points in the final.
Ulster - 16 points, 14 points.

The Year? 1970.

But that's the point AZ. The system hasn't helped anyone and people are finally starting to ask questions. In the 1970's how much sport could you watch? How many sports were available to people to play? Sure club teams trained for 6 months and were knocked out after one game and nobody seemed to question it. Why continue to do something that has never worked?

[Zulu]

It's got nothing to do with the journey being arduous.
It's about playing against teams you have no rivalry with.
I know lads who would rarely go to Meath games but they would always show up when we play Kildare, for example.
The same applies on their side of the fence, no doubt.
Likewise with Louth.
We need people to go to these games at the end of the day.

If Meath and Tipperary were both the two best teams in Ireland and were playing everyone in both counties would want to be there. It's about the quality of the game too and like I said you can have plenty of neighbouring rivalries outside of provinces. You not telling me if Cavan and Meath met in an All Ireland semi final these lads would be telling you they're going to give it a miss, sure their no Kildare are they? Cork Meath came from nothing but two top teams clashing in close games repeatedly. We don't need neighbours playing we need teams competing against similar opposition.

[Keyser soze]

I think it is fairly obvious what the cause of the problem is here and therefore the solution is also self evident.

The back door has to go. Too many teams are happy to get their asses handed to them and get a [few] wee road trip/s in the qualifiers hopefully. Needs to go back to straight knockout cause it aint championship football in its current form.

And god give me strength when I hear wankers on talking about Champions League groups and doing away with Provincials and the League and posting up a new structure that someone [and I mean this literally] has drawn on the back of an envelope, and saying what a brilliant idea this is!!

[AZOffaly]

Well that's subjective isn't it? My argument is that is has worked as well as any competition where you want everyone to play can. We've had 21 different provincial winners since 1973 that I can count.

But lookit, I'm not averse to change if the change is good and clearly addresses a problem. But all I've heard in the last few days is a clamour about Dublin being so ahead in Leinster, and some teams getting bad beatings early in the year.

Any change has to be demonstrably better. And it has to clearly solve an agreed problem. I don't think people have articulated the problem in anything other than nebulous terms, or on a temporary situation in Leinster, which really is the responsibility of the other Leinster counties to resolve.

If the problem is agreed to be that the weak counties shouldn't be let play the strong ones at all, well then various solutions are possible, but I wouldn't agree with that.

[Syferus]

Parity in preparation should be the first goal and not changing competition based on a system where one county has a mountain of money and a few others have hills of money to utilize. The GAA needs to properly police itself financially at IC because it went beyond insane years ago now. I'd wager more counties would be able to compete with more regularity if they were on an even playing field financially and there was good oversight provided. To me that will end up being more sustainable for the GAA than simply dumping teams into gettos and expecting it to improve things.

[Rossfan]

I think it is fairly obvious what the cause of the problem is here and therefore the solution is also self evident.

The back door has to go. Too many teams are happy to get their asses handed to them and get a [few] wee road trip/s in the qualifiers hopefully. Needs to go back to straight knockout cause it aint championship football in its current form.

And we also need to go back to 17 aside, laced leather footballs, big boots up to your knees and bring back the point posts too.
All this modern new fangled sh1te has to be got rid of.
And Longford will then win Leinster....... 

[AZOffaly]

Parity in preparation should be the first goal and not changing competition based on a system where one county has a mountain of money and a few others have hills of money to utilize. The GAA needs to properly police itself financially at IC because it went beyond insane years ago now. I'd wager more counties would be able to compete with more regularity if they were on an even playing field financially and there was good oversight provided. To me that will end up being more sustainable for the GAA than simply dumping teams into gettos and expecting it to improve things.

This is slightly on a tangent, but I think it's a fair point. However the GAA is a democratic organisation, so if people are not happy with the amount of money Dublin is getting (which is your point I think) then they should raise it at congress and come with a proposal to redistribute the money fairly.

Dublin is getting a lot of money, and they are spending it wisely. They also have a lot of competition for young lads up there, so that has to be a factor.

However, down the country people are also competing for young lads, and you are right, you need money to prepare teams like Dublin do, but you have to have a plan and you have to demonstrate a business case that justifies it. It's pointless just whining about money the Dubs are getting, if you can't demonstrate how you would spend a bigger slice of the pie.

[INDIANA]

Parity in preparation should be the first goal and not changing competition based on a system where one county has a mountain of money and a few others have hills of money to utilize. The GAA needs to properly police itself financially at IC because it went beyond insane years ago now. I'd wager more counties would be able to compete with more regularity if they were on an even playing field financially and there was good oversight provided. To me that will end up being more sustainable for the GAA than simply dumping teams into gettos and expecting it to improve things.

This is slightly on a tangent, but I think it's a fair point. However the GAA is a democratic organisation, so if people are not happy with the amount of money Dublin is getting (which is your point I think) then they should raise it at congress and come with a proposal to redistribute the money fairly.

Dublin is getting a lot of money, and they are spending it wisely. They also have a lot of competition for young lads up there, so that has to be a factor.

However, down the country people are also competing for young lads, and you are right, you need money to prepare teams like Dublin do, but you have to have a plan and you have to demonstrate a business case that justifies it. It's pointless just whining about money the Dubs are getting, if you can't demonstrate how you would spend a bigger slice of the pie.

Parity in preparation should be the first goal and not changing competition based on a system where one county has a mountain of money and a few others have hills of money to utilize. The GAA needs to properly police itself financially at IC because it went beyond insane years ago now. I'd wager more counties would be able to compete with more regularity if they were on an even playing field financially and there was good oversight provided. To me that will end up being more sustainable for the GAA than simply dumping teams into gettos and expecting it to improve things.

Most of that money went into hurling development Syferus . Keep flip flopping . It's entertaining watching . Are you sure Enda Kenny isn't from Roscommon

Longford beat a star studded Dublin u21 side in 2012. We are not responsible for Longford not getting their house in order.

[Keyser soze]

I think it is fairly obvious what the cause of the problem is here and therefore the solution is also self evident.

The back door has to go. Too many teams are happy to get their asses handed to them and get a [few] wee road trip/s in the qualifiers hopefully. Needs to go back to straight knockout cause it aint championship football in its current form.

And we also need to go back to 17 aside, laced leather footballs, big boots up to your knees and bring back the point posts too.
All this modern new fangled sh1te has to be got rid of.
And Longford will then win Leinster....... 

No I don't think any of these ideas are of any use. In fact they're equally as stupid as people coming on a thread to complain about meaningless games, and their solution is to have lots more meaningless games.

[BluestackBoy]

Wallopings have always been a feature of the GAA & will continue to be so. As long as there is a huge gap in quality there will be wallopings & that's that.

What is raising people to fever pitch is the fact that there are so many people commenting on all things GAA at the moment that your head would be spinning trying to keep up with them all.

Just off the top of my head we have Brolly, Spillane, O Rourke, McHugh, Cake, McGuinness, Breheny, O'Sé, & that's only scratching the surface of the national media.

As far as the provincial media is concerned we have 4 ex players commenting in Donegal papers & I'm sure the rest of the country is the same.

We then have managers saying stupid things, usually after games where they have been beaten.

Every one of these is trying to make his voice heard & for some of them the only way to do it is to up the ante, be outrageous & get people going.

If we would all calm down, take a deep breath & just enjoy our Sundays we would all be a lot better off. 

[AZOffaly]

Jinxy raised a good question earlier on. If the Dubs weren't strolling through Leinster every year, would this discussion even be on the agenda? I don't think it would.

Maybe a change in format would be a good thing. As I said, I'd like to see a championship run on groups seeded according to league position, but some of the bad beatings would still be on show in that format. So as I said, what are we trying to solve?

Don't make changes to try and legislate against a genuinely superior Dublin team (at the moment) in Leinster or because Tipp hammered Waterford. Make changes if you think it will make for a better competition.

And in Leinster, counties need to band together to identify why the Dubs are leaving them in the slip stream. It's not just about getting money, it's about how you spend that money. If they can show how they could spend further investment and close the gap, then it's only fair they get it. If they would spend it making the county grounds a 30k all seater stadium, or paying an outside management team a pile of expenses, then bollix to it.

[Zulu]

why have Offaly a one in a million chance of winning the Leinster championship? Given that they won one in 1997, and a D1 national league in 1998?

Would you back them to win one in the next 10 years? There's little to go on to say they will. Besides, this isn't about Dublin's dominance, it's about Cork and Kerry's, Mayo and Galway's and Donegal and Tyrone's as well. It's about letting good teams play each other and weaker teams have something realistic to aspire to.

Again, are we basing everything on the *current* Dublin dominance in Leinster?

I know you hate hearing this, but in my lifetime I have seen the following teams win Senior Provincial Titles (off the top of my head)

Meath, Dublin, Kildare, Laois, Westmeath Offaly, Clare, Kerry, Cork, Leitrim, Sligo, Galway, Roscommon, Mayo, Tyrone, Armagh, Donegal, Monaghan, Cavan, Derry, Down.

That's 21 out of the 31 mainland counties. Missing from that list are Tipperary, who are hopefully heading in that direction, and Louth who should have won in 2010.

So if we are to use your lotto analogy, that's a hell of a lot of lucky lucky dips in 40 years.

Yes but that was an unusually competitive period. If we take out the main teams then we are left with one win for Westmeath, Leitrim, Sligo, Monaghan, Cavan and Clare. Most of those counties won their provincials when they were competing for All Ireland's - Derry, Down, Armagh, Tyrone, Donegal, Galway.

Do you think in the era of academy's and professional set ups that Dublin or Kerry will regress? I think that the big counties will rarely been particularly bad ever again, Cork, Mayo, Galway, Dublin, Kerry, Donegal, Tyrone, Meath, Kildare, Down and few more are no longer depending a good crop coming through, they are now all trying to manufacture them. That means it is even less likely for a Leitrim to repeat their one win in 130 odd years.

I know you hate hearing this, but in my lifetime I have seen the following teams win Senior Provincial Titles

By the way, I don't hate hearing that or anything else. I want a realistic and through discussion of football. And I don't dispute the positives that the provincial championships bring I just don't think they bring enough, often enough to outweigh the very serious negatives they bring.

[Sidney]

Parity in preparation should be the first goal and not changing competition based on a system where one county has a mountain of money and a few others have hills of money to utilize. The GAA needs to properly police itself financially at IC because it went beyond insane years ago now. I'd wager more counties would be able to compete with more regularity if they were on an even playing field financially and there was good oversight provided. To me that will end up being more sustainable for the GAA than simply dumping teams into gettos and expecting it to improve things.

This is slightly on a tangent, but I think it's a fair point. However the GAA is a democratic organisation, so if people are not happy with the amount of money Dublin is getting (which is your point I think) then they should raise it at congress and come with a proposal to redistribute the money fairly.

Dublin is getting a lot of money, and they are spending it wisely. They also have a lot of competition for young lads up there, so that has to be a factor.

However, down the country people are also competing for young lads, and you are right, you need money to prepare teams like Dublin do, but you have to have a plan and you have to demonstrate a business case that justifies it. It's pointless just whining about money the Dubs are getting, if you can't demonstrate how you would spend a bigger slice of the pie.

Parity in preparation should be the first goal and not changing competition based on a system where one county has a mountain of money and a few others have hills of money to utilize. The GAA needs to properly police itself financially at IC because it went beyond insane years ago now. I'd wager more counties would be able to compete with more regularity if they were on an even playing field financially and there was good oversight provided. To me that will end up being more sustainable for the GAA than simply dumping teams into gettos and expecting it to improve things.

Most of that money went into hurling development Syferus . Keep flip flopping . It's entertaining watching . Are you sure Enda Kenny isn't from Roscommon

Longford beat a star studded Dublin u21 side in 2012. We are not responsible for Longford not getting their house in order.

It's very easy for Dublin to slag off other counties for "not getting their house in order" when Dublin is the economic powerhouse of the country, has the most attractive sporting brand in the country, is able to negotiate multi-million euro sponsorship deals, and creams off more development money than the other 31 counties combined.

http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/dublin-claiming-the-bulk-of-gaa-s-development-funds-1.2091641

[Jinxy]

It's got nothing to do with the journey being arduous.
It's about playing against teams you have no rivalry with.
I know lads who would rarely go to Meath games but they would always show up when we play Kildare, for example.
The same applies on their side of the fence, no doubt.
Likewise with Louth.
We need people to go to these games at the end of the day.

If Meath and Tipperary were both the two best teams in Ireland and were playing everyone in both counties would want to be there. It's about the quality of the game too and like I said you can have plenty of neighbouring rivalries outside of provinces. You not telling me if Cavan and Meath met in an All Ireland semi final these lads would be telling you they're going to give it a miss, sure their no Kildare are they? Cork Meath came from nothing but two top teams clashing in close games repeatedly. We don't need neighbours playing we need teams competing against similar opposition.

I agree.
However, if we were the two best teams in Ireland, the chances are we'd meet in the All-Ireland series.
My point is this, if we are currently doing a disservice to the Longfords of this world then the solution is to give them more games against opposition at the same level.
This is where the local rivalry aspect comes to the fore.
I don't see how anyone could argue that two division 4 teams playing each other in Leinster is not preferable to a division 4 team from Leinster playing a division 4 team from Connacht.
To be honest, my gut feeling on the issue is that this has less to do with giving the weaker counties a fair shake and more to do with the ultimate goal, which is to get the top teams playing each other more often and generate increased revenue & exposure in some kind of champions league style structure.
Needless to say, the intervention of Dessie Farrell has done little to convince me otherwise.

[Zulu]

Parity in preparation should be the first goal and not changing competition based on a system where one county has a mountain of money and a few others have hills of money to utilize. The GAA needs to properly police itself financially at IC because it went beyond insane years ago now. I'd wager more counties would be able to compete with more regularity if they were on an even playing field financially and there was good oversight provided. To me that will end up being more sustainable for the GAA than simply dumping teams into gettos and expecting it to improve things.

Look that's nonsense. Even the lads arguing for the retention of the provincials have posted up results showing hammering were always there even before money became an issue.