Kilkenny GAA Thread

For me the defence is excellent. Mikey lawlor tommy,

Blamch reid paddy

Then our problems occur,

2 midfielders needed and 2 or 3 forwards, as for writing off the older players I would have started some ahead of younger ones who continually havent turned their potential into the players they might be .word for paddyy deegan after last year he had a grwat game last sunday IMO and was our top scorer from play I think.

I’m glad you said alleged county, that mask has slipped a long time ago.

Rather than concentrating on a possible twentieth for us you could focus on your 4 in a row last Sunday- something we’ve never done. Yet anyway

Kilkenny isn't "medium in pop size" (the average county population is over 200k, Kilkenny's population is 104k and they are in the bottom dozen of the 32 counties in terms of population). And if your logic above is sound then why haven’t Cavan (tradition, football only, geography etc) not won an All-Ireland in over 70 years, why haven’t they replicated Kilkenny's hurling success?

Kilkenny are a total outlier, so let's park them and look at the stark fact that after tomorrow, not a single county with a population under 100,000 has even reached one of the last 50 All Ireland finals. Other than Kilkenny, Clare are the only county with a population under 150,000 to have won an All-Ireland of those 50 played.

12-13 years ago a group got together in Dublin and decided a county of over 1 million should be able to win All Irelands at a vastly higher rate than previously, and they set about making that monstrous advantage count, add in massive financial clout and we see the results, the dam finally burst and Dublin became a winning machine.

It has always been an uneven playing field but it's now a chasm and is going to get worse, counties that can’t hope to compete with the big counties, will just get utterly demoralised and fall off a cliff in terms of competitiveness and we will be left with a tiny elite group of contenders in both codes in perpetuity.

The genie is out of the bottle, the disparity in population is already a major issue with regards to retaining competitiveness, throw in massive financial muscle on top of that and the inter county model breaks asunder. If we stay with the county model, the GAA has to be innovative and develop some form of equalisation formula to incentivise smaller counties that they can compete.

btw

Kilkenny's golden age under Cody ended a full 7 years ago, with defeat in the 2016 AI by Tipp. They have done remarkably well to stay very competitive since and would have won at least one more AI if it wasn't for this great Lim team. No one in Kilkenny believes we have a golden crop of senior hurlers and should be winning All Irelands billyo.

Finally, your last comment is snide, but at least it reveals to readers, your true colours.

Mod Edit

Warning issued.

Well said.

Hope your prediction on Kilkenny is more accurate than the one you made over 20 years ago when proclaiming that the new championship format for 2002 would see the rate at which Kilkenny won AI's drop off a cliff (they won 10 of the next 14 All Irelands). As if this wasn’t enough, it was soon topped by you laughing at a young lad in a 2001 challenge match as typical of the type of poor hurler Kilkenny were then producing (JJ Delaney).

Some of us have long memories.

Bye for now M.

There's a couple of "probably"s bearing a lot of load in that post, surely there's no place for them in a post lamenting what happens when "you out statistics in hands of people who can't deal with them"?

This has been obvious for a good while now.

Brian Ryan is not the only development officer. PJ Ryan, Sean Kelly, Cora Delaney off the of my head are all directly employed by Kilkenny GAA as far as I know. Unless they're all part time but I don't think so.

Fair enough and thank you.

Ah Cavan has 25k less of a population than kk for starters. Geography and tradition both fail Cavan. Cavan have not appeared in a final let alone one it in living memory.. therefore it's history. Kk have won an all Ireland in every decade since the 1900s(sometimes multiples) and lost another 25. That's tradition. Geography of Cavan means poorer land, less accessibility and investment in infrastructure. Kk has good land, a port, industry and motorway access direct to 2 large cities. Added to that it's pop centre (about 25k probably more now) is highly accessible and centrally placed. Also the population of Kerry has only just broken 150,000 2hile it's was closer to 100k in the 70's. Offaly's pop was 60 to 70k in the 1990s so unfortunately your idea that kk are outliers is busted. I would suggest that kk certainly punch above their weight when medals to population is considered but again geog/tradition help to "mind the gap"

Dublin have done very well to reverse the fortunes of gaa especially football and money has no doubt helped but money alone without those with the foresight to use it is pointless. Dublin (with a pop of over 1mill) and stacks of euros still can't get hurling anywhere near the standard in truth.

I whole heartedly agree with your view on the golden ones. However many in your county do not see that. A quick flick through the pages here proves that.

I don't see how my final comment is snide. Many will tell you that the financials of the county are good and some even believe the potential is there to increase that yield. If anything was snide it was my reference to the garlic cheese chip cup.. which ironically is the very thing keeping those demoralised counties going I might add!

Janey Marooned

would you not not just give credit to Limerick. They are possibly on the edge of throwing the ball but it’s not their fault it’s not been blown. It’s up to the ref. And that bullshit comment about rugby is not what a KK man should be saying. We in KK have always taken our beating. Kudos to Limerick a super team and the best team won on the day.