Kilkenny Football

[Baile Brigín 2]

Ultimately, its an amateur sport, and if there is insufficient interest it could actually compromise the ability to field a team on an annual basis.

The trade off is Kilkenny do a lot for hurling, and in many ways a lot of the heavy lifting for a sport whose strength is concentrated in two provinces. Football is sufficiently strong that all teams can at least meet in the Tailteann Cup. That isn't the case in hurling hence the tiered Championship. It might not be noticed, but last week Longford and Leitrim had a day out in Croker as the culmination of their hurling season for silverware and promotion.

In reality, the KK football issue is a non-issue. They have not competed in Leinster for years, and I think its nearly 100 years since their last won a Leinster Senior Championship football match. The county is hurling mad and has produced some truly immense hurlers. Tipperary and Limerick deserve credit for making efforts to render their footballing efforts competitive (Tipp even have recent silverware). Kilkenny football gets the level of credit and respect it deserves.

So by this logic Sligo, Mayo, Fermanagh, Cavan, Monaghan, Kerry, Meath, Wicklow and so on can just drop hurling.

Leaving aside the unfairness, Kilkenny can put money into their hurlers other counties spend on uncompetitive teams, is part of being a county board not also as a custodian of Gaelic games?

Not exactly. Although your point is sound regarding the County Board. Monaghan, Fermanagh, Wicklow, Kerry, and Meath have all won at least one hurling title in recent years and Cavan have made it to the final. So there is a reason to continue fighting. Football as a sport will never need five tiers of competition, and even if such competitions were opened up below the Tailteann Cup, you'd find teams wouldnt want it, and would see it as condescending.

In many ways, hurling needs to be promoted in a way football doesn't, and lets be honest, teams like Cavan, Wicklow, or Sligo dropping their hurling team would probably make no noticeable different to the quality of their football teams.

And maybe Kilkenny would be competitive at some level in football. We will never know.

My point is that if one county can bin the code they see as hassle and take that couple of hundred grand and spend it on the code they like, why can't every county take that approach?

Tough shit if you are good at it, your county board couldn't be arsed fielding a team.

They entered the league from 2008-11, 32 games played and lost all 32 by a combined margin of 653 points. Their average score was less than 5 points a game and in the last year they failed to score at all against Leitrim and only scored 1 point against Roscommon. Unless in the last 15 years there's been some incredible improvement that's gone unnoticed by everyone, they aren't capable of competing even in Division 4.

There's 41 clubs in Kilkenny and 30 have played Football this year, another 6 have played underage so it isn't lack of numbers that's the issue, there's actually more clubs playing Football in Kilkenny than there are Hurling in the majority of other counties. The problem is that it isn't taken seriously, seems that they all just see it as a bit of fun before the proper stuff starts, unless that mentality can be changed the situation will stay the same.

The best solution would be to revive the Junior Championship properly so they at least have a proper championship that they might be able to be competitive in instead of a couple of games over the one weekend which was just a whim of Larry McCarthy's so a few lads from New York could win something in Croke Park.

There's nothing to stop any county from not fielding, other than that the hurlers (or footballers in a couple of cases) would be in absolute uproar that they didn't have a team which would cause the county board too many issues so they just pay lip service to it instead and do the bare minimum.

So they weren't fielding, tried for 3 years, and shockingly were way off. You have to build. And if they were made field they would have.

That was the problem though, they weren't getting any better, if anything they got worse. Their best score difference by far was in the first year.

2008 -109 (Scored 3-60)
2009 -192 (Scored 1-39)
2010 -171 (Scored 5-29)
2011 -181 (Scored 6-18)

There were comments at the time that most of the lads on the panel wouldn't be in the best 50 footballers in Kilkenny and it's hardly surprising with results like that. Who was going to commit to a team that was beaten 3-19 to no score at home by Leitrim?

They played their senior final on 2nd May and there won't be any football played now until next February, apart from a couple of games for Railyard in the Carlow league. Trying to put a team together from a group of lads who haven't kicked a ball for 6-7 months is just going to end the same way as last time.

So because the culture was shite and the county board weren't arsed putting a decent manager in, they get to not bother?

I do take your point, but I don't accept that a county should be allowed not field a team. It's unfair on the players who might have ambition and fails the basic custodian of Gaelic games piece.

I agree but I can't see any other solution. Does anyone really gain anything if they field a team and get hammered every week?

They did field at Minor this year which is a start but they lost all 3 games in Leinster by a total of 60 points and that was in a group with Carlow, Wicklow and Wexford. Then Carlow beat them by 29 points in the All-Ireland C. I suppose it's a start at least and they can hardly do worse than the year Wexford beat them 17-20 to no score.

But that is a circular argument. We don't take it seriously because we are shite. We are shite because we don't take it seriously.

You have to start somewhere and that can be the very bottom.

[Armagh18]

Ultimately, its an amateur sport, and if there is insufficient interest it could actually compromise the ability to field a team on an annual basis.

The trade off is Kilkenny do a lot for hurling, and in many ways a lot of the heavy lifting for a sport whose strength is concentrated in two provinces. Football is sufficiently strong that all teams can at least meet in the Tailteann Cup. That isn't the case in hurling hence the tiered Championship. It might not be noticed, but last week Longford and Leitrim had a day out in Croker as the culmination of their hurling season for silverware and promotion.

In reality, the KK football issue is a non-issue. They have not competed in Leinster for years, and I think its nearly 100 years since their last won a Leinster Senior Championship football match. The county is hurling mad and has produced some truly immense hurlers. Tipperary and Limerick deserve credit for making efforts to render their footballing efforts competitive (Tipp even have recent silverware). Kilkenny football gets the level of credit and respect it deserves.

So by this logic Sligo, Mayo, Fermanagh, Cavan, Monaghan, Kerry, Meath, Wicklow and so on can just drop hurling.

Leaving aside the unfairness, Kilkenny can put money into their hurlers other counties spend on uncompetitive teams, is part of being a county board not also as a custodian of Gaelic games?

Not exactly. Although your point is sound regarding the County Board. Monaghan, Fermanagh, Wicklow, Kerry, and Meath have all won at least one hurling title in recent years and Cavan have made it to the final. So there is a reason to continue fighting. Football as a sport will never need five tiers of competition, and even if such competitions were opened up below the Tailteann Cup, you'd find teams wouldnt want it, and would see it as condescending.

In many ways, hurling needs to be promoted in a way football doesn't, and lets be honest, teams like Cavan, Wicklow, or Sligo dropping their hurling team would probably make no noticeable different to the quality of their football teams.

And maybe Kilkenny would be competitive at some level in football. We will never know.

My point is that if one county can bin the code they see as hassle and take that couple of hundred grand and spend it on the code they like, why can't every county take that approach?

Tough shit if you are good at it, your county board couldn't be arsed fielding a team.

They entered the league from 2008-11, 32 games played and lost all 32 by a combined margin of 653 points. Their average score was less than 5 points a game and in the last year they failed to score at all against Leitrim and only scored 1 point against Roscommon. Unless in the last 15 years there's been some incredible improvement that's gone unnoticed by everyone, they aren't capable of competing even in Division 4.

There's 41 clubs in Kilkenny and 30 have played Football this year, another 6 have played underage so it isn't lack of numbers that's the issue, there's actually more clubs playing Football in Kilkenny than there are Hurling in the majority of other counties. The problem is that it isn't taken seriously, seems that they all just see it as a bit of fun before the proper stuff starts, unless that mentality can be changed the situation will stay the same.

The best solution would be to revive the Junior Championship properly so they at least have a proper championship that they might be able to be competitive in instead of a couple of games over the one weekend which was just a whim of Larry McCarthy's so a few lads from New York could win something in Croke Park.

There's nothing to stop any county from not fielding, other than that the hurlers (or footballers in a couple of cases) would be in absolute uproar that they didn't have a team which would cause the county board too many issues so they just pay lip service to it instead and do the bare minimum.

So they weren't fielding, tried for 3 years, and shockingly were way off. You have to build. And if they were made field they would have.

That was the problem though, they weren't getting any better, if anything they got worse. Their best score difference by far was in the first year.

2008 -109 (Scored 3-60)
2009 -192 (Scored 1-39)
2010 -171 (Scored 5-29)
2011 -181 (Scored 6-18)

There were comments at the time that most of the lads on the panel wouldn't be in the best 50 footballers in Kilkenny and it's hardly surprising with results like that. Who was going to commit to a team that was beaten 3-19 to no score at home by Leitrim?

They played their senior final on 2nd May and there won't be any football played now until next February, apart from a couple of games for Railyard in the Carlow league. Trying to put a team together from a group of lads who haven't kicked a ball for 6-7 months is just going to end the same way as last time.

So because the culture was shite and the county board weren't arsed putting a decent manager in, they get to not bother?

I do take your point, but I don't accept that a county should be allowed not field a team. It's unfair on the players who might have ambition and fails the basic custodian of Gaelic games piece.

I agree but I can't see any other solution. Does anyone really gain anything if they field a team and get hammered every week?

They did field at Minor this year which is a start but they lost all 3 games in Leinster by a total of 60 points and that was in a group with Carlow, Wicklow and Wexford. Then Carlow beat them by 29 points in the All-Ireland C. I suppose it's a start at least and they can hardly do worse than the year Wexford beat them 17-20 to no score.

But that is a circular argument. We don't take it seriously because we are shite. We are shite because we don't take it seriously.

You have to start somewhere and that can be the very bottom.

Yeah would agree. Need to start somewhere and if it takes a few years of hammerings thats what it takes unfortunately. Similar situation to Waterford where boys who'd maybe be good footballers are sitting on the fringes of the hurling team, it's a shame something couldn't be worked for them to play football.

[The PRO]

Here's my understanding of it and I stand to be corrected too.

Any county is free to not enter any competition in any code or grade (minor/under 20/adult). If they don't enter a team in one of the codes at any grade, it affects their central funding.

So if for example Laois decided not to enter minor hurling, they'd receive less money from Croker.

So, most counties then enter everything (I think you'd have "development competitions" for minor and under 20 hurling teams from the likes of Louth, Cavan, Fermanagh etc).

Kilkenny definitely played minor football this year, pretty sure they didn't play under 20 football and they'll play adult next month in the All-Ireland junior.

I suppose the short answer is, any county is free to do what Kilkenny do. It has happened before with counties other than Kilkenny.