HoganStand GAA Football and Hurling

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Hurling, a national game?

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I'm surprised my own county doesn't do better in the hurling. We have about 10 clubs that play and the top few are some serious good sides and could complete with most clubs in the country. Yet, we are considered a football county (not even a dual county) and are pretty woeful at the football these days! liam500 (Wicklow) - Posts: 175 - 04/08/2017 13:15:25 2028894 Link
Replying To Moyle: "Hurling would benefit from having a separate association to promote the game like the Camanaíocht Association which very effectively promotes Shinty in Scotland." Yeah, having Hurling and Gaelic Football governed by the one body is baffling. Killarney.87 (Tipperary) - Posts: 2513 - 04/08/2017 13:54:09 2028918 Link
Replying To liam500: "I'm surprised my own county doesn't do better in the hurling. We have about 10 clubs that play and the top few are some serious good sides and could complete with most clubs in the country. Yet, we are considered a football county (not even a dual county) and are pretty woeful at the football these days!" Ye seem to be extremely inconsistent. Every couple of years Wicklow look like they are going to make a breakthrough like Carlow, Westmeath or Kerry and then the team disappears again. Westmeath are making great strides of late. What really encourages me about them is how they are performing at under 21 level. That's the right way to go about it. Killarney.87 (Tipperary) - Posts: 2513 - 04/08/2017 13:56:45 2028919 Link
Replying To Killarney.87: "Ye seem to be extremely inconsistent. Every couple of years Wicklow look like they are going to make a breakthrough like Carlow, Westmeath or Kerry and then the team disappears again. Westmeath are making great strides of late. What really encourages me about them is how they are performing at under 21 level. That's the right way to go about it." Westmeath have a rich hurling history & would've frequently beaten the likes of Offaly & Laois in Leinster championship until the 1980s. There's a hurling area & fierce club rivalries which sustain the passion to drive the game further. keeper7 (Longford) - Posts: 4088 - 04/08/2017 14:16:11 2028936 Link
Replying To Killarney.87: "Yeah, having Hurling and Gaelic Football governed by the one body is baffling." Interesting idea but I'd safely say hurling enjoys a much bigger profile in Ireland than shinty does in Scotland. keeper7 (Longford) - Posts: 4088 - 04/08/2017 14:18:02 2028938 Link
Replying To janesboro: "having read this post tis a fair achievement ye manage to field a county side with only a few clubs playing hurling" Didn't our county manager bring in 5 Westmeath players to beef up the team! keeper7 (Longford) - Posts: 4088 - 04/08/2017 14:22:18 2028940 Link
Replying To Hardtimes: "It's a pity hurling isn't played more but that's just the way the association developed. There were two forms of the game back in the day, ioman and caman. The former is the form of the game we have today, the latter was more widespread, played all over and similar to shinty. Caman was a ground game. Games would have been very rough and loosely organised. Not sure what type of ball or sticks they had but I'm sure they used what was available, probably plenty of blackthorn. Ioman was popular in the southern counties. There was much more gentrification in these areas so the games would have been better organised as there were more people with time on their hands to do such. There would have been a better defined set of rules and plenty of access to quality ash. The association formed in Thurles so naturally the founders would have been most influenced by the southern form of the game, if they were even aware of the northern game at all. Rules were drawn up for the two codes we have today and organised structures put in place with understandably no provisions for caman made. The game died out. Naturally hurling prospered where they grow the ash, football where they grow the rush." Good post, Hardtimes. In my opinion though, the founding fathers made the right decision. Hurling is a much richer game than shinty to both play & watch. keeper7 (Longford) - Posts: 4088 - 04/08/2017 14:24:42 2028942 Link
Replying To janesboro: "kilkenny has a population of only around 100k" and they dont compete in the leinster football championship or the league... seanfinn (Monaghan) - Posts: 360 - 04/08/2017 15:00:31 2028957 Link
Replying To keeper7: "Interesting idea but I'd safely say hurling enjoys a much bigger profile in Ireland than shinty does in Scotland." Yes,it probably does,but Shinty is absolutely flying. Moyle (Tipperary) - Posts: 86 - 04/08/2017 15:01:07 2028960 Link
Replying To keeper7: "Good post, Hardtimes. In my opinion though, the founding fathers made the right decision. Hurling is a much richer game than shinty to both play & watch." You're more than likely right keeper but access to plentiful quality ash has a massive bearing on the development of hurling. Hardtimes (Cavan) - Posts: 1056 - 04/08/2017 15:05:18 2028966 Link
Replying To Moyle: "Yes,it probably does,but Shinty is absolutely flying." Flying in the Highlands maybe... keeper7 (Longford) - Posts: 4088 - 04/08/2017 15:05:51 2028967 Link
Replying To keeper7: "Flying in the Highlands maybe..." About 4000 people go to the biggest game in Shinty each year, it's not really comparable at all to hurling in terms of profile. Soma (UK) - Posts: 2630 - 04/08/2017 15:27:31 2028975 Link
Replying To MedwayIrish: " Replying To tonydoranfan: "[quote=PaudieSull1: "[quote=bloodyban: "[quote=Cockney_Cat: "Another issue is that the traditional hurling counties are nearly all big big population counties. bloodyban (Limerick) - Posts:639 - 02/08/2017 18:28:21 2028033 Big big population counties? Below is a list of the top ten counties by population (data from census 2016 in the Republic of Ireland and 2011 in Northern Ireland) 1 Dublin 1,345,402 2 Antrim 618,108 3 Cork 542,196 4 Down 531,665 - Fingal 296,214 - South Dublin 278,749 5 Galway 258,552 6 Derry 247,132 7 Kildare 222,130 - Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown 217,274 8 Limerick 195,175 9 Meath 194,942 10 Tyrone 179,000" Cork, Galway, limerick Dublin are all big populations.. the likes of Tipp ect are 150, 000. Forget the northern counties are half protestant so that rules out half their populations. They neither want to or would be welcomed to play GAA by those northern backwoodsmen republicans" Good man bloodyban........you should come up and try promote hurling before you throw insults at those that do.........your right over half the population in Down and Antrim don't want to play Gaelic games but it's nothing to do with the GAA not being welcoming and all to do with their own mentality."]Well said paudie... the problem down south is that we are over run with "want to be" protestants you want to be in with the in crowd!!! ie rugby!!!!!"]You think liking rugby makes you a wannabe prod? In which case I'm guilty as charged! Never really understood why some feel the need to choose between sports like that. GAA, soccer and rugby all float my boat."]But you're 'broadminded' Medway. Borderline tree-hugger! GreenandRed (Mayo) - Posts: 7359 - 04/08/2017 15:53:13 2028989 Link
Nothing borderline about it G&R..................Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.......now where's that tambourine?! MedwayIrish (Wexford) - Posts: 2324 - 04/08/2017 16:29:36 2029003 Link
Replying To Killarney.87: "No point getting too worked up about it because I don't see it changing anytime soon. Keep posting about hurling, that's all you can do on a personal level here. I find it strange that the GAA tries to push Hurling outside of Ireland but doesn't seem to do as much to promote the game in Ireland. You see GFC clubs in football counties at opposed to GAA clubs. I am not aware of a HC in Tipperary, my club and any club I ever played against was a GAA club. There would be uproar on here if Kilkenny clubs changed from GAA club to HC. I had genuine excitement for the Jeff Stelling/ Chris Kamara's trip around Ireland to learn more about the GAA but I felt deflated when I realised that it will only look at Gaelic Football. The frustrating thing is it's an AIB initiative, not a sky sports led one. I hope they will do a part two next year that looks at Hurling but you'd never know what might happen. Even that alone is frustrating, real begging bowl stuff. Maybe the thinking is that Gaelic Football might draw in soccer fans in the U.K. faster than Hurling especially with with Stelling and Kamara doing it. The all Ireland club hurling final always seems to be the curtain raiser to the football final on St Patrick's. I would like to see it alternate from year to year. There is plenty to get annoyed about, you just have to keep plugging away. As the saying goes "hard decisions, easy life; easy decisions, hard life". Unfortunately the easy decisions seemed to be made from frequently than the hard decisions." In Dublin I know of three hurling only clubs just off the top of my head in faughs, commercials and setanta, also not 100% sure but reald dearg and civil service and st Kevin's may also be hurling only clubs too as I can't remember seeing or playing them at any level in football. hill16no1man (Dublin) - Posts: 12665 - 04/08/2017 16:35:19 2029009 Link
Replying To keeper7: "Westmeath have a rich hurling history & would've frequently beaten the likes of Offaly & Laois in Leinster championship until the 1980s. There's a hurling area & fierce club rivalries which sustain the passion to drive the game further." I know and it is great to see them bouncing back. Hurling needs new teams (ones who haven't done anything in 20+ years) like them shaking up the apple cart. Antrim and Down hurling should be better looked after by the GAA too, there is an obvious gra for the game in those counties. We may as well revitalise the game in counties that like the game first as a starting point to expanding it. Killarney.87 (Tipperary) - Posts: 2513 - 04/08/2017 16:43:01 2029013 Link
Replying To Soma: "About 4000 people go to the biggest game in Shinty each year, it's not really comparable at all to hurling in terms of profile." Yeah, I am not sure I get your reference to Shinty Keeper 7? I think something like Rugby league in England would be a better comparison? Killarney.87 (Tipperary) - Posts: 2513 - 04/08/2017 16:44:30 2029014 Link
One thing regarding the amount of hurling threads/discussion currently. There are just 3 inter-county hurling matches left to be played after mid-July, as opposed to much more in football, which still has qualifiers, then 4 quarter-finals after that. That's going to be worse next year, with the super 8 in football. The proposed hurling changes won't make a difference here, as its not going to add any extra games to the championship after early July. So its natural that there will be more discussion about football than hurling for most of July and August, and that'll be exacerbated next year. There's far more counties left competing in football than hurling, after mid July. The fears that hurling will be totally eclipsed by football in the business part of the summer due to the super-8, were/are not addressed by the new hurling proposals. Marlon_JD (Tipperary) - Posts: 1823 - 04/08/2017 17:25:38 2029029 Link
Replying To Laois76: "I counted the number of hurling threads on here and 3 out of 30, 10%, are hurling threads. It's a sad reflection on the national interest levels in hurling. You'd wonder after 133 years how the game hasn't spread or been promoted more. I'm not going to compare gaelic football to hurling and say one is better than the other. But surely hurling is the equal of gaelic football. In my opinion both games when played properly and between teams of equal ability are excellent. A bad hurling game is as bad as a bad football game. However, Kieran Donaghy alone has 2 threads on the national forum here while Galway v Tipp in hurling, which has been a classic for 2 years and is shaping up to be another, trails behind. And you have nothing threads like 'Ulster Boys Making All the Noise on the Hill', 'Kerry have it easy' , 'Cute Kerry Hors', 'Pat on Jim', 'Andy Moran-Roscommon fans' all accumulating comment. There's all the usual quota of bull threads you get at this time of the year, some biging up the opposition, others saying they're cynical, highlighting small incidents in games and trying to make big disciplinary issues out of them, criticising booing etc etc. Like how many times can we rehash Kerry have it easy and are cute hors or Dublin are a juggernaut with huge financial backing and a massive population base? These topics have been done to death for over 10yrs." A simple answer here is that the hoganstand website is not read, or at least participated in by most people in some counties that happen to be Hurling heartlands. They have their own forums. I know they do in Cork definitely. BaldyBadger (Cork) - Posts: 311 - 04/08/2017 17:34:18 2029037 Link
I tried to start a thread earlier involving the GPA and a famous hurler and it was blocked. Killarney.87 (Tipperary) - Posts: 2513 - 04/08/2017 19:08:24 2029074 Link