The GAA 'myth'

Donald Trump

Sweet.Science wrote: »

You also mention employment etc - most GAA players now are college educated and have degrees masters etc . Of course employment will be easier for them .

On that point. I knew of a fella years ago who played underage soccer for Ireland. His team did fairly well. He stayed in Ireland and did his Leaving before he went away to England to play professionally. But he was an anomaly on that team -the rest had dropped out of school to move to English clubs to try to make it.



About 10 years later I saw a "where are they now" article in a local paper about the lads on that Irish underage team. I think that only 2 of them (maybe 3) had "made it". The fella I knew of was plying his trade part-time in minor leagues. He had stints both in Ireland and the UK.


In the "where are they now", some of the fellas had apparently quit all connections with the game in early 20s. I think there was one who had gone on to go to university and trained as a physio. Rest all still had some tentative links to soccer, but didn't appear to have anything spectacular in terms of employment.



The fella I knew of was a good Gaelic football player as well. He probably wouldn't have been good enough to have made senior Intercounty but probably would have made county minor. In fairness to his parents, they made him stay to do his Leaving, but had he given up the soccer and stuck with the GAA, he probably would have gone to college and received a degree.

seamus

FrancieBrady wrote: »

I have to admit, it has zero to no profile in my life. And I would be laying the blame for that squarely at the feet of the overpaid top of the FAI if it was my sport.

Look at the slick and quality advertising the GAA does alone even though it is streets ahead of the LOI.

Time the soccer people started throwing the toys into the circle instead of firing them out of it.

QFT.

The FAI are a joke of an organisation, whose sole purpose for existing is to fund the lifestyles of the incompetent cartel running it.

Perfectly illustrated last week when the FAI declared that a fund was to be set up to pay players' wages in the event that a club ran out of money. The FAI declared that it would pay half of the fund the players' union would pay the other half.
The total fund is to be €300k, and the player's union said that they simply don't have that kind of money, they don't have €150k to "spare".

The head of the FAI is paid €430k a year. Despite the leagues collapsing into bankruptcy and the national team performing poorly and with no prospect of improving. You could pay a donkey with a colander on its head a third of that salary and it would still do a better job than John Delaney.

It's funny to hear the princessball crowd complain about GAA greed and use phrases like "Grab All Association", when you have the pigs at the trough of the FAI literally bleeding it dry and being ignored by the football supporters.

robbiezero

trapp wrote: »

True, fair point.

as I said I have a lot of time for the GAA, play football, played hurling, follow both codes closely, go to county, club games and so on.

It just happens that I am involved in soccer also and find it very irritating, unfair even, the attitude some GAA people have towards soccer.

For example lumping LOI players in with the millionaires of the Premier League and saying that all soccer players are in it for money.

As this thread is the GAA myth, there is one clear myth, LOI soccer players put in every bit as much effort as a county player yet the county players get all the benefits with employment, sponsorship etc.

I know a succesful League of Ireland manager who is now umemployed, would that happen to an All Ireland winning manager?

All of this is understandable because the GAA is better supported with huge crowds at county games but then the myth is the idea put forward that they are all doing it for no reward unlike the soccer lads getting all the money.

This is blatantly untrue yet some GAA folk refuse to accept it.

I remember 3 Tipp lads going on the Late Late show after winning the All-Ireland in 2010 saying about how they couldn't find work anywhere.
Its a myth that county lads just get employment sorted for them - Immigration during the recession was a issue for county teams especially in the west.

Obviously as with any sport, the more high-profile the player or manager, the easier it is to find employment. LOI players just don't have anywhere near the same profile as the likes of Joe Canning, Bernard Brogan etc.

yourdeadwright

The worst is the GAA wife ,
Goes local club games, drinks in the clubhouse , wears the county Jersey, loves a ballad session, Drinks pints ,Loves the parish,
Imagine marrying that ,
Ps I jest

chopperbyrne

Anybody who supports any LOI club knows just how bad the FAI are, and has no problem stating that.

Everyone knew that Bray shouldn't have been given a license, but all the FAI care about is the association fees they collect.

They are a terribly run organisation.

FrancieBrady

chopperbyrne wrote: »

Anybody who supports any LOI club knows just how bad the FAI are, and has no problem stating that.

Everyone knew that Bray shouldn't have been given a license, but all the FAI care about is the association fees they collect.

They are a terribly run organisation.

Most of the change achieved in the GAA has been because it came from within, member power at convention.

LOIers have the same power if they want to wield it.

Collapse the whole thing and begin again if need be.

Buer

smelly sock wrote: »

The reason why GAA got 30million for puc is because they can fill it numerous times a year.

They cannot. I don't believe they've filled it once yet for a match, or even come close.

Oversized stadiums is an issue with the GAA. It's something they do repeatedly. They sell out a game at these grounds maybe once every 2-3 years if even. McHale Park, the Gaelic Grounds, Fizgerald Stadium etc. All completely oversized for their needs.

I'd much rather see all that money put into developing a higher quality ground that is two thirds the size. 45k for Pairc Uí Chaoimh is overkill particulary with Semple Stadium being the primary ground in the province already.

I'd rather they develop 1-2 top quality smaller grounds of 30-35k in each province and then focus on smaller, well facilitated grounds for remaining counties of around 15-20k depending on surrounding population.

DONTMATTER

Buer wrote: »

They cannot. I don't believe they've filled it once yet for a match, or even come close.

Oversized stadiums is an issue with the GAA. It's something they do repeatedly. They sell out a game at these grounds maybe once every 2-3 years if even. McHale Park, the Gaelic Grounds, Fizgerald Stadium etc. All completely oversized for their needs.

I'd much rather see all that money put into developing a higher quality ground that is two thirds the size. 45k for Pairc Uí Chaoimh is overkill particulary with Semple Stadium being the primary ground in the province already.

I'd rather they develop 1-2 top quality smaller grounds of 30-35k in each province and then focus on smaller, well facilitated grounds for remaining counties of around 15-20k depending on surrounding population.

Our population is growing all the time. We'll have to build bigger stadiums eventually!

Buer

DONTMATTER wrote: »

Our population is growing all the time. We'll have to build bigger stadiums eventually!

Then do it in decades when the populations of Cavan (32k stadium), Monaghan (36k stadium) and Mayo (42k stadium) require grounds of that size.

For context, Croke Park would have to hold about 700,000 people for it to have the same capacity to population ratio in Dublin that St. Tiernach's Park has to the population of Monaghan.

DONTMATTER

Buer wrote: »

Then do it in decades when the populations of Cavan (32k stadium), Monaghan (36k stadium) and Mayo (42k stadium) require grounds of that size.

For context, Croke Park would have to hold about 700,000 people for it to have the same capacity to population ratio in Dublin that St. Tiernach's Park has to the population of Monaghan.

Planning ahead. Most neutral Ulster games get played in Clones, as well as Ulster finals.

Buer

DONTMATTER wrote: »

Planning ahead. Most neutral Ulster games get played in Clones, as well as Ulster finals.

And still isn't full even when Monaghan themselves are in the final. The number of large stadiums in Ulster is not even close to justifiable.

FrancieBrady

Buer wrote: »

And still isn't full even when Monaghan themselves are in the final. The number of large stadiums in Ulster is not even close to justifiable.

Better looking at it than looking for it - as the FAI should know at this stage.

DONTMATTER

Buer wrote: »

And still isn't full even when Monaghan themselves are in the final. The number of large stadiums in Ulster is not even close to justifiable.

28,000 at these years final, 32,000 the year before, 33,000 in 2016, 32,000 in 2015 when Monaghan won it.
Sounds good to me.

andekwarhola

Buer wrote: »

They cannot. I don't believe they've filled it once yet for a match, or even come close.

Oversized stadiums is an issue with the GAA. It's something they do repeatedly. They sell out a game at these grounds maybe once every 2-3 years if even. McHale Park, the Gaelic Grounds, Fizgerald Stadium etc. All completely oversized for their needs.

I'd much rather see all that money put into developing a higher quality ground that is two thirds the size. 45k for Pairc Uí Chaoimh is overkill particulary with Semple Stadium being the primary ground in the province already.

I'd rather they develop 1-2 top quality smaller grounds of 30-35k in each province and then focus on smaller, well facilitated grounds for remaining counties of around 15-20k depending on surrounding population.

I think the thinking, even on a relatively benign and unconscious level, is not so much if the grounds are actually needed, rather the cultural imperative of needing to build as many as possible as a bulwark of sorts (and crucially to divert as much public funding in that direction) because they see themselves as being in some kind of mortal one-way battle with 'soccer' for the hearts and minds of young people.

The Thomas Davis debacle was a classic example. Shamrock Rovers gave the site back to the council (and had themselves spent a good bit of money on preliminary building already) so that it could be made into a municipal facility with Rovers as paying anchor tenants.

The ground could never accommodate senior GAA (due to the space restrictions of the site, bounded as it is by two main roads and a secondary school) without shrinking the capacity down to an completely pointless size for a municipal facility, yet TD still nearly bankrupted themselves trying to hobble the project through the courts for years and hope rovers went out of business.

All fully backed by the Dublin County Board, by the way.

The chairman of TD even wrote a leaked email saying they were trying to stop 'association football' gaining a foothold in Tallaght.

Ironically, the stadium is now happily used by football, rugby and junior gaelic games and is a great community resource, open to anybody that needs it.

chopperbyrne

andekwarhola wrote: »

Ironically, the stadium is happily used by football, rugby and junior gaelic games and is a great community resource, open to anybody that needs it.

And would have been even if it was privately owned by Shamrock Rovers.

trashcan

seamus wrote: »

QFT.

The FAI are a joke of an organisation, whose sole purpose for existing is to fund the lifestyles of the incompetent cartel running it.

Perfectly illustrated last week when the FAI declared that a fund was to be set up to pay players' wages in the event that a club ran out of money. The FAI declared that it would pay half of the fund the players' union would pay the other half.
The total fund is to be €300k, and the player's union said that they simply don't have that kind of money, they don't have €150k to "spare".

The head of the FAI is paid €430k a year. Despite the leagues collapsing into bankruptcy and the national team performing poorly and with no prospect of improving. You could pay a donkey with a colander on its head a third of that salary and it would still do a better job than John Delaney.

It's funny to hear the princessball crowd complain about GAA greed and use phrases like "Grab All Association", when you have the pigs at the trough of the FAI literally bleeding it dry and being ignored by the football supporters.

Believe me, you don't have to tell any football supporter in this country how bad the FAI are, particularly those of us who support an Irish team. You left out the part of last weeks denacle where they made the announcement that the PFAI were going to put up half the money for this fund without asking the PFAI how they felt about that first. Incredible stuff. There is no question that the top brass in the GAA and the IRFU are streets ahead when it comes to looking after their interests and fighting their corner.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

Zebra3 wrote: »

The most incredible thing about the GAA myth as it were is that people stand up in a court of law and make a point that the accused/convicted is a member of the GAA as if this makes him or her somehow deserving of a lenient service.

It says a lot about corruption in this country that judges allow these comments to be made, and there is no political or media backlash to this.

The GAA could do worse than call this sort of crap out, allowing their name to be abused by criminals.

This isn't unique to the GAA at all.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

Buer wrote: »

Then do it in decades when the populations of Cavan (32k stadium), Monaghan (36k stadium) and Mayo (42k stadium) require grounds of that size.

For context, Croke Park would have to hold about 700,000 people for it to have the same capacity to population ratio in Dublin that St. Tiernach's Park has to the population of Monaghan.

Clones and McHale Park are often full to capacity.

Brendan Bendar

trashcan wrote: »

What bugs me about the GAA is that the seem to feel they are constantly under threat from the dreaded "soccer". Remember the Thomas Davis/Shamrock Rovers saga in Tallaght ? Thomas Davis went to extraordinary lengths, purely to try and block a "soccer" stadium being built in the area. I couldn't be paid to watch either GAA football, or hurling, but even I have to admit that they get crowds that LOI football could only dream of. The reality is there is no threat to the GAA.

are you for real,pal?

gormdubhgorm

Sheeps wrote: »

No self respecting Dub should ever follow or support GAA. I know Dublin are obviously the best at the football, but that's only to annoy the bog warriors. The whole thing is a complete joke.

Says a poster called Sheeps....

fonecrusher1

A load of West Brit hermits having a go at the GAA. Sheesh!

Some things never change.....