Messages

what is the admission price for children for the national league matches ?

Galway

Hope:
That the evidence in front of our eyes in 2021 isn't as bad as it looks and Galway can have a huge turnaround that includes promotion and a Connacht title. Free hit after that.

Expectation:
League will tell a lot and you'd have to be worried enough, relegation and the Tailteann Cup should be unthinkable but games still have to be won. Div 2 was an absolute dogfight to get out of before and will be no different this time. If Galway don't do it at the first time of asking then we're in serious bother.
Mayo rightly will be warm favourites to win Connacht first round match, hard to envision Galway beating a Mayo team at full tilt and if there's no Connacht title in 2022 then it's the road for this management setup. The bullish All Ireland prediction looks farcical at this stage.

On that, there are no positive vibes about the setup, only concerning rumours. Will players that 100% should be on the panel and in some cases 100% starting on the 15 be involved? If not then why not?
Cooke heading abroad after one year back isn't a great sign. Of course, professional obligations and rightly prioritising the career should be the main reasons but if he thought there was any chance of Galway doing something this year...
Long story short on expectations, at least beat someone else other than Roscommon FFS.

Longer term hurlers (5)  to surpass fuballers (9) in terms of all Irelands.

Mightn't be the worst shout in the world and that's taking into account how flaky the hurlers are. Paul Bellew has talked a good game and there was a lot of merit in his Galway GAA: The Future document that was released prior to him getting the chairperson role, but at the end of the day he's another hurling man.
Where's the long term plan for the footballers to even get back to the big one never mind to win it? It doesn't exit. As an ordinary punter on the outside looking in I don't know what the football board are at, if one semi-final in 20 f**king years isn't ringing the alarm bells what are they waiting for? There's plenty of Mayo football people laughing at the ineptitude and it's hard to say they are wrong.

I don't believe there is a football board in place, Kevin Clancy has served his five year term, and Mary Judge is now the county vice chairperson. To put it bluntly its time for some ordinary punters to step up now.

Our club AGM is next weekend, the current chairperson is stepping down, but no one is remotely interested in taking over from her. What happens in the situation where a chairperson can't be found ? can a club still register and field teams ?

We'll see how it goes but it's not like things could get much worse I suppose, you couldn't be that optimistic all the same, would be a miracle turnaround.
Be right back to square one in 2023 I'd say.

If players walk away it will get worse, if Mayo progress on the current path with proper s&c and Galway don't the gap will get wider, no doubt about it. Standing still is going backwards.

The press statement from Galway GAA is telling "The Kildare man will join Padraic Joyce next season as a coach."

"a coach" not "the coach"

We haven't seen any detail behind this, how involved will he be ? Its a five hour round trip for him to Galway, its hard to see him coming up to Galway that often, maybe i'm being cynical.

anyone have any update on the managerial situation ?

No news yet on who has been nominated for the hurling job, and everyone seems to be in the dark in regard to the future of PJ

If I'm totally honest I find it bizarre youd go to the bother of attending a game your own county isnt involved in .if you paid me to go to watch dub v kerry I wouldn't go and it wouldnt sit right thinking I'd be taking a ticket off some unfortunate soul who travels round the country supporting his/her county

There is that, but this is a long standing policy within the GAA, This isn't the year to change it. There are plenty of Mayo and Tyrone people involved in GAA clubs throughout the country who are expecting tickets. Nearly every GAA club in Galway has a Mayo person on the executive.

Mayo County Board selling tickets to companies in the area for €590 each. Got to keep that training fund topped up.

Supposedly the contractors working on mchale park are refusing to accept facebook likes in lieu of payment hence the need for cash.

Just get the feeling for some reason GAA are not bothered about pushing crowd out to 60k for some reason .

If I were a Mayo or Tyrone person who had been going along to games and supporting the GAA over the years, I'd be pissed off if the GAA has the opportunity to take my money and let me see my county in the final, but couldn't be bothered making the effort.

I'm at the age where I accept organizations like the GAA dont give two fooks how I feel . I could write ya an essay on my dedication in following the county team but shur what use is it , nobody gives a fook , they only laugh at ya . Every raffle in the country at the moment has two tickets to giveaway.  Clubs in kilkenny ffs have four tickets for a football final with a 50% reduction in capacity , how does that come about ?

Exactly, yes I know there are people from all over Ireland that want to see the showpiece of the football calendar, but there should be an exception made this year and give the two competing counties 20,000 or so each.

Do you want to rephrase that ?

Exactly, yes I know there are gaa volunteers up and down the country who have kept our clubs going in exceedingly difficult times over the past 18 months who would like to see the all Ireland, but gaa should screw them and give the two competing counties 20,000 tickets or so each.

If you were an officer of a gaa club over the past 18 months you would think twice about this. From my experience 99% of the gaa members didn't bother with gaa activity until training resumed in june 2020, whilst club officers were left stuck wondering how on earth they were going to pay back the clubs loan in March/April/May 2020 

Those Refs, admins, etc don't do it to get an AI Final ticket for a match involving 2 other Counties.

Possibly not, but I really don't see a good reason why they should not be granted tickets when they have always received them. It hasn't been an easy ride for the past 18 months for the chairpersons and secretaries of GAA clubs throughout the country, all-Ireland final tickets are a small token of gratitude to these people who are the lifeblood of our association.

i thought the hurlers didnt lack fitness against Waterford ? they weren't playing for each other a totally different thing.

Winning Sam is a nice goal, but i would be happy with instilling a process of continual improvement.

The team haven't improved in the last two years, so i can't see why that would change next year unless something changes.

If some of our best young players don't get good coaching now they may move on and forget about intercounty football.

hard to know where to go from here, but first off congrats to Mayo and James Horan. Credit to James Horan for his lead in rebuilding this Mayo team, and in fairness to Mayo they have been putting the effort in with the Mayo Coaching plan.

I really think it's time for PJ to go, fundamentally he didn't have much experience in coaching coming into the role and it's showing. He seems to want to be the manager of a Galway team that wins an all ireland, but does he want to be a great coach/manager ? How come he never managed a club team prior to getting the Galway gig ? compared to Horan who has gone on to do a Msc in Coaching and has a couple of stints managing teams.

As a county how can we expect to compete with Mayo when we're not investing the same in s&c as Mayo are ?

I don't want to be slating the county board, but the structures are wrong to me, we're a big dual county like Cork and Dublin, we should have a CEO to run the whole operation. Where does the buck stop? Is it the football committee or the county committee, or in between ? For some reason HQ don't think we need a ceo. imho Gottchse should be promoted to CEO. The last CEO didn't work out, but that's no reason not to appoint another one.

We need a person of the calibre of Lukasz Kirszenstein overseeing an S&C programme, someone who has experience working in a professional sports environment. If it's good enough for the hurlers, why not the footballers ? the s&c coach should be independent of the county manager and they need to be fulltime.

[Galway are probably 7 or 8 players away]

Lets see what the championship brings although I've very little optimism.

Same boat here, have to support whatever happens but really not seeing where some massive transformation will come from at the minute, the results don't lie.
PJ didn't speak to the media afterwards either, a really, really poor look, I know this is a backbreaking loss but have to front up and own it, you're the man in charge.

He looked absolutely crushed at final whistle which is understandable,  but as you said, he's the manager and it's his job to come out and represent his team and defend them.
Having said that, i think ye might be a bit hard on him/the team.  They should have won that match, and i still think they may well win Connacht. They lost their nerve in final minutes of last year's connacht final and again today which must be a worry but they did a lot right up to then.
They wouldnt have a hope against Dublin in a semi final but sure there's very few, if any, that would.

I don't expect to win Connacht but its not going to be a major shock if Galway did. If they can get beat Roscommon everyone knows that Mayo struggle to break down a packed defence which I'm sure is what Galway will provide.

If we're been realistic looking at the Galway and Mayo teams individually Mayo look like their only a few players away from challenging for the big prize and they may find them this summer whilst Galway are probably 7 or 8 players away, now like Mayo they may find a couple of players may nail down a place over the next few months but that gap to the Dubs shouldn't be that big with the underage success Galway have had.

Now clearly that isn't just Joyce's fault but there are a good few players who aren't the panel who like Varley & Kerin who would be in my starting 15. Kerin was a bit rash in his last appearance for Galway against Mayo a few years ago but prior to that he'd never let Galway down and put in some excellent performances.

Galway have had some really tough defeats to deal with in the last 9 months and ultimately the manager is too blame, game management was non existent throughout the match.

Jeez, if we're 7/8 players away from the big one, who are the other 7/8 players we have currently? Because I'm really struggling to see any at this time. Don't think we have any defender that would get on the Mayo or Dublin sides, any right midfielder either (though Tierney may finally fill a spot for us there), and no forward that would make a Kerry or Dublin team bar Walsh at his best. It almost beggars belief that we can't transition some good underage players through to adulthood/senior level but there just seems to be a disconnect there now. Structures must be lacking or something.

Our hurlers finally seem to be doing this properly. They have currently a very good U20 team arising out of several AI-winning Minor teams; they're already conditioned to play Senior but won't be rushed in until good and ready.

This is certainly part of the problem,. None of this is done, what is the long term plan to put structures in place that would even allow Galway to be at least competitive at the top level every year instead of standing still year after year bar the odd blip like 2018. If the plan is wait for a set of generational players to all hopefully come along in the same timeframe then best of luck with that.
Too many on county board don't care once the hurlers are doing alright is the truth of it as well, you only need look at the selective edit they made to KW's statement when he left the gig that highlighted the problems at their end.

I don't think its a fair comment to say that the county board only care about the hurlers. A significant proportion of the county board are from a football background, including the secretary, pro and coaching officer. I don't believe the spend on the footballers is that much smaller that the hurlers. I think the hurlers are spending their money better in terms of s&c. Fundamentally Galway needs more people getting behind the county and contributing to doing things.

Hello,

Has anyone recently bought a scoreboard for their club grounds. We're looking at options at the moment.

Ideally I'd like to get one which i could update from a mobile phone, rather than have a specific controller for it that could get lost.

This seems like a very strange move ! I wonder do they feel there is a lot of dead wood they could get rid of ?

Personally I would much rather see the GAA cut back on capital development rather than staffing.

Anyone know what percentage of the GAA's expenses staffing is ?

County boards need to be ran by paid professionals.