2016 Leinster Football Championship

[Donnellys Hollow]

  That match should have been in Carlow for a start. €25 into Croke Park when you could have got into Portlaoise last Saturday for a tenner proves yet again the sheer stupidity of the Leinster Council fixtures committee. 

Did you not read all the complaints, they charged €25 into Portlaoise.

Tenner onto the terrace I think.

[Dinny Breen]

Exactly 10 years ago yesterday Dublin hurlers were losing to Westmeath, then the money came and now they have an outside chance of winning an AI.

You know what they say about Kildare hurling don't you?

A waste of good ash.

Don't use attendance figures on a horrible lashing wet day which you wouldn't bring kids out in to cover up the utter rancid nature of that hologram of a team you have masquerading as a football team.

0-9 in the best of yesterdays weather against a Div 4  team is pathetic. An absolute embarrasement. I'd fancy Carlow to score more then 0-9 against wexford if they played them

St Vincent's beat the full Wexford team in a challenge game this year by about 15 points .

If I were you i'd worry less about our hurling support and more where Gaelic Football is going in your county with all the money you wasted in the last 20 years

Ha! The best grunt yet. Stick to the dogma, farcical from Dublin posters as usual. Maybe someone up in the Ivory Tower will acknowledge the financial advantage and home advantages and actually admit "you know what it is unfair". There is nothing you can do about population and Dublin in football have a fantastic culture and history, advantages no one can quibble about. This is a Leinster mess and Dublin are as complicit as every other single county and are only too happy to benefit from Corporate GAA and the idiocy that allowed this happen.

[INDIANA]

Exactly 10 years ago yesterday Dublin hurlers were losing to Westmeath, then the money came and now they have an outside chance of winning an AI.

You know what they say about Kildare hurling don't you?

A waste of good ash.

Don't use attendance figures on a horrible lashing wet day which you wouldn't bring kids out in to cover up the utter rancid nature of that hologram of a team you have masquerading as a football team.

0-9 in the best of yesterdays weather against a Div 4  team is pathetic. An absolute embarrasement. I'd fancy Carlow to score more then 0-9 against wexford if they played them

St Vincent's beat the full Wexford team in a challenge game this year by about 15 points .

If I were you i'd worry less about our hurling support and more where Gaelic Football is going in your county with all the money you wasted in the last 20 years

Ha! The best grunt yet. Stick to the dogma, farcical from Dublin posters as usual. Maybe someone up in the Ivory Tower will acknowledge the financial advantage and home advantages and actually admit "you know what it is unfair". There is nothing you can do about population and Dublin in football have a fantastic culture and history, advantages no one can quibble about. This is a Leinster mess and Dublin are as complicit as every other single county and are only too happy to benefit from Corporate GAA and the idiocy that allowed this happen.

None of which has anything to do with a county with the third highest population base in Ireland scoring 0-9 over 70 minutes against a Division 4 team. Don't use extraneous arguments to divert from what was an absolute shambles by the Kildare footballers yesterday.

Must rank as one of your worst ever displays. You'd have been better off asking some of the Dublin hurling fans to tog out for you yesterday. they could only have improved things

[From the Bunker]

Kildare have the 7th largest population - 210,312. Wexford  are 15th - 145,320.

[Ohtoohtobe]

The great thing about Dublin is not only the superb football they play but their fans' legendary humour and good grace in victory.

[Shamrock Shore]

Game of games tonight....

Leinster JFC - semi final.

Wexford v Longford

Throw in at 7.30 in Innovate Wexford Park.

C'mon The Larries

[seafoid]

they should just call it the Dublin procession

[twohands!!!]

Game of games tonight....

Leinster JFC - semi final.

Wexford v Longford

Throw in at 7.30 in Innovate Wexford Park.

C'mon The Larries

When I see the junior it reminds me of a story about a junior game from my uncle (70+) who was at a junior game recently between two neighbouring parishes - there was a goalmouth scramble and a defender from one team made a save, caught the ball and ended up on the ground. Anyway there was contact from one of the opposing forwards of the nippy corner-forward variety on a delicate part of the anatomy of the lad on the ground. Back starts yelling out in pain/cursing and the forward takes to his heels off up the side of a hill behind the goal - the rest of the players hadn't a clue what happened until the back cleared things up (with some choice language) stating the player in question had deliberately trod on his private area - by this stage the nippy corner forward was gone a good distance up the hill, and he wouldn't come down for fear of retaliation, so the ref had to give him a red half-way up the hill. The player who was sent off saw the red and kept going for home (around 8 miles it was estimated) in full-kit and boots.

[Kuwabatake Sanjuro]

Will it still end up being a little short of a sell out in Kilkenny. Regardless we are possibly looking at one of the worst years for attendances in the Leinster championship for a couple of decades. I know plenty of Kildare fans who have said like me that if we manage to scrape by Westmeath/Offaly that they wouldn't bother going to watch the Leinster final as nobody has any interest in watching humiliating hammerings.

The more I think of it the less crazy my idea of a Leinster B championship seems. This proposal would see Dublin get a bye to the AI quarter final while the other 10 teams would forfeit their entries to the AI championship (none of us have a chance of competing in it anyway for the forseeable future). Instead these teams would compete for up to 7 consecutive weeks in the middle of the summer in a competitive championship.
2 seeded groups of 5, 4 games, 2 home, 2 away each weekend in June.
Top teams in each group progress to semi finals with a 1 week break and home advantage.
2nd in group A plays third in group B with home advantage and vice versa.
The extra few games would help with the revenue lost from the dwindling Dublin bandwagon who are too bored to watch Dublin hammer minnows. If they want competitive football they could play in Ulster in a similar manner to Galway hurlers.

[lenny]

Will it still end up being a little short of a sell out in Kilkenny. Regardless we are possibly looking at one of the worst years for attendances in the Leinster championship for a couple of decades. I know plenty of Kildare fans who have said like me that if we manage to scrape by Westmeath/Offaly that they wouldn't bother going to watch the Leinster final as nobody has any interest in watching humiliating hammerings.

The more I think of it the less crazy my idea of a Leinster B championship seems. This proposal would see Dublin get a bye to the AI quarter final while the other 10 teams would forfeit their entries to the AI championship (none of us have a chance of competing in it anyway for the forseeable future). Instead these teams would compete for up to 7 consecutive weeks in the middle of the summer in a competitive championship.
2 seeded groups of 5, 4 games, 2 home, 2 away each weekend in June.
Top teams in each group progress to semi finals with a 1 week break and home advantage.
2nd in group A plays third in group B with home advantage and vice versa.
The extra few games would help with the revenue lost from the dwindling Dublin bandwagon who are too bored to watch Dublin hammer minnows. If they want competitive football they could play in Ulster in a similar manner to Galway hurlers.

This kind of thinking is becoming more and more common. As a Derry mand I knew going into our game v tyrone we had no chance and were going to get stuffed. At this moment we are not good enough to compete with the top 8 or 9 teams in the country. I've said it before on here that the county scene would be much more appealing from my point of view if there was a senior, intermediate and junior just like at club level. Derry playing at intermediate level would give us a chance and we would not be going into games knowing a stuffing was the only likely outcome. Teams like Derry, Meath, Kildare, laois, Armagh and Galway would make for a fairly even and competitive inter.mediate championship. Teams like Cork, Dublin, Kerry, Tyrone, Donegal, Mayo would make for a competitive senior championship without too many mismatches. Teams who win an intermediate championship or junior could move up to the level above for the next year. Teams could play in a round roblin league section first guaranteeing 3 or 4 games which would allow for development and also make club fixtures easier to orgainise.

[Kuwabatake Sanjuro]

The big problem with the Senior, Intermediate and Junior at intercounty level is that the gap will widen and end up with a situation like the Christy Ring, Rackard cups etc. where the weaker championships are ignored completely in the media and by fans. Club championships are different as the community are part of things and there are local rivalries that mean things.

In the league for example this year I think the attendance at Carlow and Antrim was 101 people, if they were playing in a Junior AI QF I can't imagine the crowd would be much bigger.

[Cunny Funt]

Turkey shoot for Dublin this evening.

[TabClear]

Turkey shoot for Dublin this evening.

Gonna be a long evening for lapis.

[Aaron Boone]

Dublin 2-7 Laois 0-04.

[Jinxy]

Laois would be winning if this was in O'Moore Park.