The 2024 All Ireland Senior Football Championship (Sam Maguire Cup)

If the demand for tickets exceeds the capacity of a small ground, that is a bad outcome for fans. As I said in the thread before, Parnell Park was not a good spectator experience with a full house. And what small ground would Meath use instead of Navan?

I dont think it's always a bad outcome for demand to exceed tickets supply. A lot of sports operate on that basis. Its about how much the demand exceeds supply. Premier league games and AI finals for example are situations where not everyone who wants to go can go. But season ticket holders and most supporters with club memberships get to go. The couple of thousand who don't get to AI finals usually accept they won't be going and watch it on TV. Smaller grounds carefully selected to be slightly under capacity or even just at capacity can create the same effect.

Think the Hyde capacity is only like 18.5 K at present.

there will be a great atmosphere in the Hyde. Will sell out quickly .

Galway Armagh will surely be the same. A handy spin up the N17 for Avon’s crew . Hurling over for the year. They will outnumber Armagh 3 or 4 to 1 surely . It’s basically a home game for Galway ;)

Armagh will have more support than Galway. Armagh travel in big numbers, Galway football fans aren't great for traveling. Usually only turn up for mayo games and maybe all Ireland semi finals / final.

Haha excellent

The irony being ol' KM knows this better than anyone, having followed the path of greener pastures like thousands of Mayo men before him and sought longterm gainful employment in Galway. You'd think he'd be more grateful ;)

I guess we're so used to Mayo outnumbering Galway 3 or 4 to 1 than when the crowd is about 50/50 as it was at the Connacht final this is something to remark on.

Imagine sh1ting on that ye managed to outnumber the opposition support.........when ye were playing at home!

:D

Sure it's all a bit of craic !

Rumours of change in Derry.

Most likely mayo out again the following week. Thankfully that's at home though.

Yes the success of the hurling championship is simply the best teams meeting each other in front of enthusiastic crowds. It's literally staring football in the face what needs to be done.

With the league format it would mean 7 games + quarter final = 8 games minimum for the top 4 teams in Division 1. The bottom 4 Div 1 teams and top 4 in division 2 would have an extra play off game to make the quarters. So that seems very reasonable to me.

For a top 4 divison 1 team to make the AI final it would be 7 games + quarter final + semi-final + final = 10 games which seems like a good number. That's 10 properly competitive marketable games spread out over the summer. Players, supporters, TV, GAA, sponsers - everyone's a winner.

The elephant in the room is the provincials which clearly don't work anymore for at least half the provinces. I can't see any format working that includes them while the top teams are so far ahead of the weaker teams. They could be run off as a pre-championship warm up tournament instead of FBD/McKenna etc if needed but they shouldn't be connected to the championship proper anymore.

If you are going to kill that elephant, the obvious replacement is a home and away League. But like your proposal, that has zero chance of being accepted.

There is no need for any further games after the League. Top of the League is the best team in the country.

Anyway the current set up got 95% backing at Congress, and has only been going for a year and a bit. It is a nice parlour game dreaming up new formats, but they don't hold water in the real world.

People have been using the attendances as an argument to ditch this format. Far too soon. I would wait until the end of the season, and see how aggregrate attendances compare to other years. But the pandemic has put a bit of a spanner in the works for that in recent years. Complaints about low attendance at particular matches is nothing new.