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During last Saturday after a heavy amount of alcohol taken, partially to drown my sorrows i got chatting to an English lad living over here. Anyways, discussion turned to GAA and where does the money go.

Now before i start let me say i'm extremely proud of the amateur nature of the GAA and the fact the players don't get paid and play for pride. The english guy had his opinion that Ireland has a culture of "shame" or something like that, remember i was lucky to be standing at this stage.

Anyways its not his points i want to talk about because i didn't think they were relevant but instead ... where does the money go ?

In fairness i don't get to travel to HQ all that often but ....

50 yoyos for new jersey + 35 for ticket + 25 yoyos for train + 20 food and 100 drink (ok lets cut that down to 20 to make it average for most people).

Thats 150 yoyos for a day supporting sligo.

Now i also spend quite a bit of me own cash on gear and i'm sure adding up petrol and time taken off work for injuries etc and .. well ok its not a fortune but its still a good few quid.

Now look at the GAA, they're going to get 8 fecking million for letting the rugby and soccer lads in next year, how many more for the championship yearly taking + god knows how much from everything else. i.e > government grants, concerts, drink/food sold during games etc etc etc.

Now they put up ticket prices by a 10'r last sunday for the hurling.

Now i'm not saying players should get paid (although i'd probably agree with it in some form or another) thats not what i want to discuss. Its who DOES get the dosh from all this ?

The GAA is supposed to be "ours", its our association, an amateur one. Yet in September how many tickets are going to corporate wankers who have no interest in the game whatsoever, how many tickets go to high level GAA people to give to their mates, uncles, cousins etc ?

I know a lot of the money trickles down to the grassroots level but .. how much of it ?

Basically what i'm saying is the GAA are raking the cash in, its probably the greatest profit making business in this country when you consider the majority of their "workforce" work for free.

Are we all dopes ? Are the GAA top dogs living the high life ?

This country has to be one of the most corrupt if not the most corrupt in the world. How many dodgy builders/architects/politicans etc do we have and they get away with murder.

I find it hard to believe that all the cash the GAA takes in go where we believe it goes and where it should go.

Anyways ... time to sit back and take the abuse i'm in for

[1. What is Bittorrent ?]

Hey lads, just wondering do many of you have broadband ? I assume a lot of posters here would.

Anyways, just letting you know that theres a great website i've being using for the past couple of years to download GAA matches. Its aussietorrents.com.

Unfortunately its not as simple as downloading a file as most of you would be used to doing it. Its availible by a system called bittorrent.

I'm going to try and write a small tutorial for anyone thats interested and try and explain basically what you need to get and what you need to do.

1. What is Bittorrent ? BitTorrent is a protocol designed for transferring files. It is peer-to-peer in nature. Basically this means that one or more people called "Seeds" will have the entire file (GAA match) on their computers. You will connect to their computer using bittorrent software and you will download small bits of the match at a time, not like ordinary downloading from start to finish but just small bits here and there in the file. The bits that you download will then be availible for other people to download from you, while you can download small bits from other people as well. This process continues until you have the entire file.

2. Where to get the Bittorrent software ? I assume your all using Windows (I'm not).

Heres a few links to a few different bittorrent clients.

http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/download.html <-- This is the official one. It kinda sucks but should do the job for you.
http://bt.degreez.net/
http://krypt.dyndns.org:81/torrent/download.phtml
http://www.gudy.org/azureus/

Any of those will do you fine. (You only need ONE of them.)

p.s -> If you install the official client, ignore the "Invite you to download Mandrake" BS. You definitely don't need it.

3. Now what do i do ? Bittorrent itself is just software, it'll work automatically for you once installed. Anyways, now you need to find a website that provides torrent files.

I use aussietorrents.com for GAA matches but i think they require an invitation still. I can send invitations but i only have a small number of invites.

Anyways you can still get the GAA matches on these sites.

www.mininova.org <-- Just search for relevant details such as "GAA" or "Galway vs Sligo" or whatever.

4. Bittorrent is slow, what do i do ? Bittorrent can be slow to start off (first ten minutes) but then usually gets fast. If its really slow and stays really slow then you have a problem with your firewall or your NAT. I'm not gonna go into that here but its very easy to find out how to fix that problem online. Just google for "Bittorrent NAT problem" or "Bittorrent slow".

Anyways. Hope that was helpful.

On TV3 tonight, Kilkenny goalkeeper James McGarrys wife Venessa was tragically killed in an accident in Kilkenny earlier today.

Ar dheis De go raibh a h-anam

My thoughts and sympathy are with James and the whole family.

Puts all into perspective lads.

Hey lads, looking into heading stateside for a while and wondering about work etc. I'd wanna be involved with the GAA scene anyways but just wondering if theres anyone who can give me a bit of advice on how to get a work visa ?

I'm an IT professional but not too bothered about what kind of work.

Thanks.