Has the intercounty system in football told us all it’s ever going to tell us?

[thewobbler]

Let's flesh it out, and give an extra week for the spring to bed in:

April 11 Club Football Round Robin 1
April 18 Club Hurling Round Robin 1
April 25 Club Football Round Robin 2
May 2 Club Hurling Round Robin 2
May 9 Club Football Round Robin 3
May 16 Club Hurling Round Robin 3
May 23 Club Football Quarter-Finals
May 30 Club Hurling Quarter-Finals
June 6 Club Football Semi-Finals
June 13 Club Hurling Semi-Finals
June 20 Club Football Final
June 27 Club Hurling Final

Inter-county championships begin July 11th

All-Ireland Hurling Final September 26th
All-Ireland Football Final October 3rd

Provincial club championships resume October 17th, to be completed by November 14th
All-Ireland Club Finals December 12th

Seems a pretty reasonable time scale to me

1. You have circa 4-5 weeks at the start of that schedule where midweek games are only possible in floodlit, championship standard venues. Which in most counties will be extraordinary pressure on 1-3 venues. Basically there's no room for dual sport on the one weekend, not at early rounds anyhow.

2. Should we have a washout weekend any time during those 4-5 opening weeks, it can't be slotted in midweek. Literally every last fixture moves by a week? But hold on, there is no spare week / allowance week for this? So do we just push everything back by a week including the county programme?

But most of all this.

Your solution to the club~county player availability problems that have driven a wedge into the association for the past 20 years (apart from this year) is to revert almost entirely to the system that was in place 2 years ago (county, then club, then county, then club) except to railroad the club championships into a window that isn't big enough, instead of allowing them to be completed when counties exit their championship.

This is so poorly thought out it's insulting.

You might want to check when the sun sets in mid-April

April 11th sunset in Dublin: 8:19pm

They even play cricket in Ireland in April

But apparently now, it's impossible to play GAA

And it's apparently impossible to re-arrange any fixtures in a system which has a two week gap between fixtures, and plenty of adequate midweek daylight

Lord knows how they cope with the NFL and NHL which is played on a week to week basis in January, February and March

Two and a half months in spring and high summer is apparently not enough to complete club championships

The mind boggles

Your mind only boggles  because it doesn't have real world experience of solving problems.

1. Until late-April in Ireland, you cannot start (non-floodlit) GAA matches any later than 6.45pm. Every half serious match takes 85 minutes (2 x 5 mins of injury time, 15 minutes of half time).

6.45pm throw-ins for some championship matches are feasible. Probably less so if you have to travel half the length of a county at rush hour.

2. There might be a two week gap. But if all the better venues in a county are needed for hurling championship the following weekend, good luck squeezing that wiped out football series in.

3. There's a maximum of 32 NFL and NHL games on any given weekend, and as they largely go on alternate weekends, a full series wipeout only needs 16-20 venues the following weekend to fulfil that series. Most counties will have 1-2 highly playable year-round venues. But they won't have the venue capacity to rehouse 30 fixtures within that county. You don't need this explained to you. I know you don't.

——

Sid with the greatest respect it's clear you're one of these guys who thinks that fixture coordination is easy. Because you've never been involved in it.

[sid waddell]

The right plan isn't complicated Sid. It's pretty much what was mooted a few weeks ago by the GAA.

1. Play county championship immediately after national league. This is the county season. It would run from January to early June.

2. Do not unnecessarily prolong the county championship. This isn't so much about getting rid of super 8s or back doors. And definitely not about getting rid of rest weeks. But there's no reason on this earth, why all 16 provincial quarter finals wouldn't take place on same weekend.

3. Start club leagues as early as is practical. But county panellists (maximum 32) are ineligible for club league football until their county has exited the championship, unless released temporarily by county mgt.

4. Club championships can start whenever a county board wants and can take any format they like. But provincial club championships start in first week of September, and all Ireland club championships start mid October, regardless of whether clubs have progressed.

5. For the welfare of our elite players, who've now possibly been on the go for 10 months within a break, November is a complete compulsory shutdown at adult levels. Clubs and counties have AGMs. Everything resets. Then in December we start planning / training for the coming season.

4.

That isn't a very clever plan because it simply does not take account of the GAA as a whole and its place in the sporting eco system

Any plan has to balance club players with media exposure, of which the inter-county game is the overwhelming driver

This is the reality

The inter-county championships need to be coming to the boil in September - because this is the time that maximises exposure for the GAA - which is extremely important

July, August, September are your key months, you can push it into the first week of October if needs be

Other sports have a fallow period in September and October - the soccer season hasn't hit full swing, there is little of interest in the way of rugby, or most other sports

This may not be important to you if you exist in a mindset where there are no other sports to compete with for media exposure

But this is a key point

Having the latter stages of the All-Ireland championships competing with a World Cup or Euros is not clever, not clever at all - because the inter-county championships are why kids want to start playing the games in the first place - minimise their exposure, and you minimise the very thing that gets kids involved

So the pluses for my plan are fourfold:
i) club championships have a designated period, get played in what is generally good weather - April/May/June - and can build up their own momentum and interest without being interrupted
ii) The club championships serve as a real chance for players to stake a claim for inter-county teams
iii) The influence of county managers is curbed - they have to play second fiddle to the clubs
iv) Media exposure is maximised

Club leagues can start in March with two or three rounds of games before the championship in April, then resume from late June/early July, when championship is finished

[thewobbler]

Well Sid the only thing that's unfolding from your most recent post is that you've limited interest in the club game, and that you are more interested in the GAA "product" than the GAA "community".

Hence you put the needs for media exposure over the needs for an active club football programme during the summer months.

This is okay. You're entitled to think like this.

But roughly 98% of the Association is more closely aligned to the other way. That's why the absolutely f**king ridiculous scenario whereby county managers would withhold players from club duty, for 3 county games in a 9 week window, is now coming to an end.

[sid waddell]

Let's flesh it out, and give an extra week for the spring to bed in:

April 11 Club Football Round Robin 1
April 18 Club Hurling Round Robin 1
April 25 Club Football Round Robin 2
May 2 Club Hurling Round Robin 2
May 9 Club Football Round Robin 3
May 16 Club Hurling Round Robin 3
May 23 Club Football Quarter-Finals
May 30 Club Hurling Quarter-Finals
June 6 Club Football Semi-Finals
June 13 Club Hurling Semi-Finals
June 20 Club Football Final
June 27 Club Hurling Final

Inter-county championships begin July 11th

All-Ireland Hurling Final September 26th
All-Ireland Football Final October 3rd

Provincial club championships resume October 17th, to be completed by November 14th
All-Ireland Club Finals December 12th

Seems a pretty reasonable time scale to me

1. You have circa 4-5 weeks at the start of that schedule where midweek games are only possible in floodlit, championship standard venues. Which in most counties will be extraordinary pressure on 1-3 venues. Basically there's no room for dual sport on the one weekend, not at early rounds anyhow.

2. Should we have a washout weekend any time during those 4-5 opening weeks, it can't be slotted in midweek. Literally every last fixture moves by a week? But hold on, there is no spare week / allowance week for this? So do we just push everything back by a week including the county programme?

But most of all this.

Your solution to the club~county player availability problems that have driven a wedge into the association for the past 20 years (apart from this year) is to revert almost entirely to the system that was in place 2 years ago (county, then club, then county, then club) except to railroad the club championships into a window that isn't big enough, instead of allowing them to be completed when counties exit their championship.

This is so poorly thought out it's insulting.

You might want to check when the sun sets in mid-April

April 11th sunset in Dublin: 8:19pm

They even play cricket in Ireland in April

But apparently now, it's impossible to play GAA

And it's apparently impossible to re-arrange any fixtures in a system which has a two week gap between fixtures, and plenty of adequate midweek daylight

Lord knows how they cope with the NFL and NHL which is played on a week to week basis in January, February and March

Two and a half months in spring and high summer is apparently not enough to complete club championships

The mind boggles

Your mind only boggles  because it doesn't have real world experience of solving problems.

1. Until late-April in Ireland, you cannot start (non-floodlit) GAA matches any later than 6.45pm. Every half serious match takes 85 minutes (2 x 5 mins of injury time, 15 minutes of half time).

6.45pm throw-ins for some championship matches are feasible. Probably less so if you have to travel half the length of a county at rush hour.

2. There might be a two week gap. But if all the better venues in a county are needed for hurling championship the following weekend, good luck squeezing that wiped out football series in.

3. There's a maximum of 32 NFL and NHL games on any given weekend, and as they largely go on alternate weekends, a full series wipeout only needs 16-20 venues the following weekend to fulfil that series. Most counties will have 1-2 highly playable year-round venues. But they won't have the venue capacity to rehouse 30 fixtures within that county. You don't need this explained to you. I know you don't.

——

Sid with the greatest respect it's clear you're one of these guys who thinks that fixture coordination is easy. Because you've never been involved in it.

What I propose is eminently feasible

Club championships are already held from April

The way you're going on, we live in a permanent monsoon season

It may surprise you to learn that April is the driest month in Ireland

[sid waddell]

Well Sid the only thing that's unfolding from your most recent post is that you've limited interest in the club game, and that you are more interested in the GAA "product" than the GAA "community".

Hence you put the needs for media exposure over the needs for an active club football programme during the summer months.

This is okay. You're entitled to think like this.

But roughly 98% of the Association is more closely aligned to the other way. That's why the absolutely f**king ridiculous scenario whereby county managers would withhold players from club duty, for 3 county games in a 9 week window, is now coming to an end.

The GAA as a "product" is the most important thing that drives interest in the club game, ie. getting children to play in the first place

Without the GAA as a "product", the club game withers away

This may be news to you if you live in a mental 1954, but the world has moved on - Ireland has a become an urban society

Refusal to understand this will result in the death of clubs

My plan sets out a very active club programme, it puts the club front and centre while also maximising the media exposure needed through inter-county which is needed to keep the GAA at the centre of Irish life

Anybody not capable of understanding that different needs have to be balanced hasn't a clue

[thewobbler]

And it might surprise you to learn that i was involved with a senior football club team that had saw an April league fixtures series wiped out in at least 10 of 20 seasons.

This is the difference between real world experience, and clinging to the first confirmation bias piece you come across on the internet.

——-

As mentioned many posts ago now, you are confused about the role of logistics. Logistics is about ensuring the delivery of a product. And when you devise a schedule in which 2200 clubs end up with one champion, and  make no allowance for postponements, you're not doing logistics. You're living in a fantasy land.

But fundamentally, this doesn't come across  as an issue for you. As long as the Daily Star publishes a 12 page pullout in June, with full page interviews with Cluckon and Philly, then your needs from the GAA will be sated. So whether it's logistics or fantasy, it doesn't matter.

[thewobbler]

Well Sid the only thing that's unfolding from your most recent post is that you've limited interest in the club game, and that you are more interested in the GAA "product" than the GAA "community".

Hence you put the needs for media exposure over the needs for an active club football programme during the summer months.

This is okay. You're entitled to think like this.

But roughly 98% of the Association is more closely aligned to the other way. That's why the absolutely f**king ridiculous scenario whereby county managers would withhold players from club duty, for 3 county games in a 9 week window, is now coming to an end.

The GAA as a "product" is the most important thing that drives interest in the club game, ie. getting children to play in the first place

Without the GAA as a "product", the club game withers away

This may be news to you if you live in a mental 1954, but the world has moved on - Ireland has a become an urban society

Refusal to understand this will result in the death of clubs

My plan sets out a very active club programme, it puts the club front and centre while also maximising the media exposure needed through inter-county which is needed to keep the GAA at the centre of Irish life

Anybody not capable of understanding that different needs have to be balanced hasn't a clue

You are so very wrong.

The reason why children join GAA clubs, and first get involved in the game, is because:

1. The GAA has a physical footprint in almost every community in Ireland in the form of grounds. It is convenient.

2. The GAA reinforces community. A club from your community represents your community. This doesn't appeal to everyone, but it appeals to many.

3. The GAA has an established playing  and coaching network in primary and secondary schools that ensures almost every child is exposed to the game when growing up.

4. The GAA is embedded in cultures through parents, uncles and aunts, grandparents. There will always be an expectation from a family member who has enjoyed the GAA that future generations of their family will do likewise.


——

Your point about media is not unnoticed. It has an important role to play in attracting families without any GAA connection. It has a role to play in converting the possibles to probables.

But the GAA is first and foremost a community organisation. This is what drives it and feeds it.

[sid waddell]

And it might surprise you to learn that i was involved with a senior football club team that had saw an April league fixtures series wiped out in at least 10 of 20 seasons.

This is the difference between real world experience, and clinging to the first confirmation bias piece you come across on the internet.

——-

As mentioned many posts ago now, you are confused about the role of logistics. Logistics is about ensuring the delivery of a product. And when you devise a schedule in which 2200 clubs end up with one champion, and  make no allowance for postponements, you're not doing logistics. You're living in a fantasy land.

But fundamental, this doesn't come across  as an issue for you. As long as the Daily Star publishes a 12 page pullout in June, with full page interviews with Cluckon and Philly, then your needs from the GAA will be sated. So whether it's logistics or fantasy, it doesn't matter.

Where do you live? Invercargill?

I have made allowance for the unlikely occurrence of postponements - I have quite clearly done so

Shouting that I haven't doesn't make it true

And I'm also only following on a theme which has actually happened in the GAA - club championships starting in April - this has already happened

I find it quite the chuckle that you're talking about real world experience when you seem to be blissfully unaware that Ireland has become an urban society and kids do not tend to play something because of tradition anymore, they have any amount of other options - even in one horse towns

Downgrading the inter-county scene as you, and indeed some of the top decision makers in the GAA itself propose, is lunacy, it's the surest way to downsize the GAA as a whole

Shouting about 12 page supplements in The Star? You really have lost the plot

Also, for your information, NFL and NFL weekends regularly cut across each other, I'd say they probably cut across each other more often than than not

[sid waddell]

Well Sid the only thing that's unfolding from your most recent post is that you've limited interest in the club game, and that you are more interested in the GAA "product" than the GAA "community".

Hence you put the needs for media exposure over the needs for an active club football programme during the summer months.

This is okay. You're entitled to think like this.

But roughly 98% of the Association is more closely aligned to the other way. That's why the absolutely f**king ridiculous scenario whereby county managers would withhold players from club duty, for 3 county games in a 9 week window, is now coming to an end.

The GAA as a "product" is the most important thing that drives interest in the club game, ie. getting children to play in the first place

Without the GAA as a "product", the club game withers away

This may be news to you if you live in a mental 1954, but the world has moved on - Ireland has a become an urban society

Refusal to understand this will result in the death of clubs

My plan sets out a very active club programme, it puts the club front and centre while also maximising the media exposure needed through inter-county which is needed to keep the GAA at the centre of Irish life

Anybody not capable of understanding that different needs have to be balanced hasn't a clue

You are so very wrong.

The reason why children join GAA clubs, and first get involved in the game, is because:

1. The GAA has a physical footprint in almost every community in Ireland in the form of grounds. It is convenient.

2. The GAA reinforces community. A club from your community represents your community. This doesn't appeal to everyone, but it appeals to many.

3. The GAA has an established playing  and coaching network in primary and secondary schools that ensures almost every child is exposed to the game when growing up.

4. The GAA is embedded in cultures through parents, uncles and aunts, grandparents. There will always be an expectation from a family member who has enjoyed the GAA that future generations of their family will do likewise.


——

Your point about media is not unnoticed. It has an important role to play in attracting families without any GAA connection. It has a role to play in converting the possibles to probables.

But the GAA is first and foremost a community organisation. This is what drives it and feeds it.

1-4 are necessary to drive high levels of participation but by themselves they are not sufficient

I did not start playing because of anything to do with club tradition, I started playing purely because my father dragged me to the first Dublin-Meath match in 1991 and I was excited by the atmosphere - I demanded to be brought to the other three matches, and suddenly had recognisable heroes to look up to - and because of the Cork-Tipp Munster finals in '91 - up to then, the only place I occasionally pucked ball was against my own garage with a hurley given to me as a Christmas present a few years before - I liked doing that, but I barely even knew there was such a thing as a GAA club a mile down the road from me, up to then my attitude towards the GAA as an organisation was largely one of contempt - I saw it, not to put too fine a point on it, as an organisation for culchie bogmen - as many Dublin kids of the time tended to

It was nothing to do with the reach of the local club or the local school, or tradition - I grew up consumed by Maradona and Liverpool and the Ireland team of Jack Charlton, so I played soccer well before I played GAA - as did most kids my age in Dublin - soccer was by far the primary interest

Why? Because there were heroes

[thewobbler]

Okay hear me out here.

The GAA has continued to prosper for 125 years, largely through its unique community ethos.

In a completely fair fist fight, soccer would almost certainly have trumped and then eroded other team sports in Ireland, just as it managed to do across Europe in the 1900s.

But the GAA didn't fight a fair fight. It bought up and stole land, it got firmly in bed with the church and schools, it banned dual sport participation, and it prohibited any member from freely or easily transferring to another club.

The methods were/are often below the belt. But the outcome is that an extraordinary number of towns and parishes across Ireland are interchangeably identifiable with their GAA club. It club is somewhere between embedded in their community, and the cornerstone of their community.

——

As a concept it doesn't work as well in large urban areas. This has very little to do with positioning, and everything to do with the facts that:

1. Partly due to the sheer volume of neighbours, and partly due to ease of transportation to city centres for socialising, city dwellers are less likely to have a close-knit community identity.

2. GAA clubs are innately based on pyramids. Regardless of whether you have 300 players registered at each age group, or 12 players registered at each age group, only 15 people can line out in the senior championship for their club. Regardless of whether you've 100 paying members or 2000 paying members, you will have roughly the same size of management committee. In a pyramid scenario like this, it's inevitable that those in the wider parts of the pyramid don't fee as enamoured with the club as those at the points. Except in smaller rural clubs, the wide part isn't that wide at all.

—-

You, being an urban dweller doesn't have the same affinity to your club as I do, as a rural dweller. This is understandable.

What I find less understandable is the premise that the GAA in 2020 must react, adapt and change to fight for prominence in growing urban areas, rather than continue to reinforce its community centric credentials.

See for me, if it all comes down to marketing and positioning, then the GAA is bucked. It will not be able to compete with English soccer.

But as long as in each of those urban communities, there are men and women proudly maintaining and pushing its virtues, then that GAA club will continue to provide an identity for a subset of the community in which it resides. It can't cover everyone. A gAA club with 10000 members just doesn't work.

But for those who get involved, it becomes a crucial part of their life.

——

To me, this extraordinarily more important to the association than competing with soccer. I couldn't give a damn of soccer grows tenfold in national importance over the next 10 years. That's their thing. As long as we've got clubs in every parish battling each other, that's our thing.

[Rossfan]

Even if we become a small minority and soccer and more likely rugger become the major sports everywhere?
Once there are 10 pure true "gales" left...?

[thewobbler]

Why would that happen Ros?

If the strategy/policy of not aping what soccer does has served us well for 125 years, why would we throw it out now? Urbanisation may pose a threat, but nowhere near the threat suggested by Sid.

[Rossfan]

"Pure GAA" may be safe in rural Nationalist 6 Counties but the majority of young folks in the 26 now live in housing estates in large towns and cities.
Their parents in most cases come from somewhere else and the young folks play all sports and couldn't give 2 hoots who scored the winning point in the Junior Final in 1956.
The GAA's best "selling point" for them is good playing/dressing room facilities and if you have a decent County team it helps too.

[thewobbler]

As per any debate, it's very easy to get statistics to prove just about bugging.

There is a greater percentage of Ireland's population now urbanised than ever before. But at the same time there has never been a higher number of rural dwellers.

Rural GAA clubs are not powered by percentages. They're powered by actual people.

——

Does this mean the Association shouldn't try to appeal to non-existing urban dwellers?

Absolutely not.

But if we are really at a point where the shop window is more important than the infrastructure, the we are doomed, for soccer has that strategy sewn up.

Thankfully, we are nowhere near that point.

[Rossfan]

There are NOT more rural dwellers than ever before.
Roscommon had 250,000 people in 1841 we now have 65,000.
Most rural clubs here have to amalgamate to field underage teams.
Not sure what you're arguing now?
Do you want an end to televised County games or do you want Inter County abolished?
Do you want clubs to be community organisations instead of fostering Gaelic games?
Why can't we have all 3 complementing each other?