All Ireland GAA final & All Ireland LGFA final

Women do not have interest in sport in general the same way men do.

This is it.

And men don't have the interest in women's sport that they have in men's sports.

I the short to medium term the ladies finals are never going to go much beyond the 50k attendance you saw a few years ago because at that 50k you have maxed out the people interested in and able to attend.

Maybe in a few decades the current crop of young girls that are becoming fans will continue to support the game and attendance will increase, but your not going to get adults, female or male, who are not interested now to start becoming interested.

I went on Sunday, just because my wife and kids were going (my wife and daughter are big fans), and even though I help out with an u14 team, I'm not that interested.

I'd have just as easily stayed at home and not even watched it on TV.

There was no need for the snarkiness in the post but there is an element of truth to it.

I don't live in Ireland and so don't attend GAA games for either men or women. If i have a choice of going to men or womens then ill go to men because its normally a better game. Pretending that isn't the case is just going to disappoint people if they do attend a women's game.

I have a season ticket for my local soccer team. I also bring my daughter to the local womens games as i want to show her women can play sports. There is no way i would go otherwise as the game just isn't as good and i have limited time to watch games.

I thought Emma Duggan lobbed the keeper for Meath's goal in that final vs. Dublin, after Dublin messed up a short kickout?

For what it’s worth, I have other 30,000 worth of scores data in Camogie between shot location, methods etc and there hasn’t been one handed point scored in that! I suppose in that sense they didn’t need to get rid of the handed point rule!

But ya, Camogie is far more progressive.

Agreed at LGFA rule of picking up needing changing. Just makes it look poor and less skillful.

I meant to post the attendance for the 3 camogie finals in Croke Park on Sunday. It was 27,811. If you combined the women's football finals(30,340) with the camogie finals, Croke Park wouldn't even be 3/4's way full. Those games shouldn't be held there in my opinion.

Ah, but you could say the same about something like the annual triple-header of the Christy Ring, Nickey Rackard and Lory Meagher Cup Finals. The attendance on one of those days wouldn't even approach the attendance figure for Camogie or LGFA Finals day.

So do you deny the hurlers from all those counties the chance to win a trophy in Croke Park too, and instead make them play their final in some much smaller and far less glamourous provincial ground?

Look at the teams involved, Kildare v Derry, Donegal v Mayo and Fermanagh v Longford. Not exactly hurling strongholds. Hurling isn't strong outside of Munster, Galway and select Leinster counties.

"So do you deny the hurlers from all those counties the chance to win a trophy in Croke Park too, and instead make them play their final in some much smaller and far less glamourous provincial ground?"

If the attendances aren't big enough, then yes.

And men don't have the interest in women's sport that they have in men's sports.

Not sure that that's really true - I'm pretty sure we all watched Rashidat in the 400m and the relay team without complaining that they are several seconds slower than the men's races.

I don't necessarily buy the whole argument about the lower quality being the main reason for lower attendances either, we all know that loads of the mens games are going to be sh*te nowadays and while numbers have fallen back, lots of us still go to them.

IMO, a good whack of it is habit, we've never gone to the women's matches so therefore we don't go. It's also not seen as an "event" in the same way that the mens is - it's the same reason that (almost) every year, you can get loads of tickets for the semi finals but tickets for the final are impossible to get. Similarly, you don't get massive numbers at most LoI games but you'll get loads travelling to the UK for matches every week.

I actually think the Lidl ads are quite good - if they can get a reasonable number of people (esp young kids) going to the matches, over time this will become a habit and numbers overall will increase. More needs to be done around marketing of fixtures though, it can be hard to find out what matches are on and when, it really doesn't help when that information isn't readily available.

Maybe but there's been talk for ages about how womens rugby should actually change to using a size 4 ball down from size 5 as it might help improve game. Some of those changes/adaptations are to help the game and don't see why the women's game should completely ape men's game.

Was unaware of any talk about using a size 4 ball in women's rugby, but have just done some googling, and seems there's a real 50/50 divide in opinion on it. Also read a story on BBC Sport from earlier this year about how trials with a size 4.5 ball.

Either way, I'd actually consider the size of the ball to be relatively insignificant in terms of what I mentioned. More significant is the fact that women's rugby players would still be playing to same rules as the men's game, unlike in the LGFA, where those couple of things are simplified in order to make the game easier to play.

Yes. Olympics is basically a TV event once every four years when people sit back at home to watch stuff (both men's and women's) that they don't normally watch. For example, taking just Irelands medal-winning performances, I'd say I hadn't watched things like amateur boxing, rowing, or gymnastics since the last Olympics.

It is going to be hard for them as they are playing games at same times/weekends as mens matches and there will only be one winner there im afraid.

When you think about it, your last paragraph really does illustrate how the first challenge in attracting bigger attendances to the camogie and LGFA finals is presented by how even the people directly involved in those codes aren't particularly interested in going to the finals.

Every GAA club in the country must be inundated with requests for its allocation of tickets for the hurling & football finals. Mine certainly is.

However, LGFA clubs have to be made buy tickets for their finals, and obviously camogie clubs don't go looking for tickets for their finals in any great numbers either, if the suggestion is that they should just be made buy them too.

Anyway, just an observation. When all's said and done, 25,000 to 30,000 is actually a very healthy attendance compared to probably 98% of sporting events in this country. Perhaps we should be comparing the LGFA and camogie finals attendances to all those other events, rather than comparing them directly to the men's finals.