The hurling has been cat - plenty of constipated hurling. I sometimes wonder if the league is too competitive as teams can be flat come Championship. The under 21 Championship has been far better with half the games.

The football was better this year than last but still nothing to shout about. Half the provincial finals were a joke. The top teams are not going to be surprised by the lower division teams any more so May, June and half of July serves little purpose.

Things are far better now than 30 years ago but our world has changed and the Gaa is not the only show in town. When you snooze you loose. Wake up Gaa officials

Ban (Westmeath) - Posts: 1415 - 04/08/2015 09:40:43    1763506

I am in two minds now. Yeah lots of one sided games this year but that has always been the case. On the other hand you have Dublin. Kerry, Donegal, Mayo and possibly Monaghan all with a chance of winning Sam...have we ever had so many teams in with a shout? It has been this way for a few years now when you add in Cork and Tyrone.

yew_tree (Mayo) - Posts: 11236 - 04/08/2015 09:49:57    1763510

Personally I think the hurling has been woeful in comparison to years gone by.. Munster was pretty poor all round and that is usually the pinnacle of it for me bar the AI final.

Football has not been so bad, couple of landslide results but that as always been the case, it is nothing new! I think the twitter machine is really making a bigger deal out of it. How the game of football is played has changed but there is not a whole lot you can do about it really without some landmark rule changes.

Football gets a lot of flack but let's be honest it is far more competitive than the hurling - the munster championship aside. People finally thought that KK were going to go quiet for a couple of years, won it last year and will prob win again this year and if not them, it will be Tipp. It is predictable!

The football semi finals should be 2 fascinating games whoever plays in them along side Dublin and Kerry. Also, the league (football) has become far more competitive the last number of years!

AthCliath87 (Dublin) - Posts: 345 - 04/08/2015 09:57:54    1763519

The weekend may have been a reminder of how the gaps between the elite and the rest is getting greater but the levels of excellence the top players are reaching is being too easily lost in the communal and now annual decrying about structures, standards and the disadvantaged.

Three of the four games were effectively decided by moments of sheer genius that were worth the journey alone.

Will we see better team-work and understanding from any team that Donegal's for Ryan McHugh's goal?

What about a more accurate 40-metre pass than Jack McCaffrey's for Bernard Brogan's early goal or Colm Cooper's glorious awareness and passing for Darran O'Sullivan's first goal?

If you're not entertained by Michael Murphy's exceptional leap and turn or Diarmuid Connolly's two points, especially his second one, then you're hard to please.

The standard of foot-passing was, at times, exceptional from the likes of Odhran MacNiallais, Colm McFadden, Connolly, David Moran and of course Cooper. Dublin in full flow can be a joy to watch, their propensity for attacking football not diluted yet by any greater commitment to resourcing their defence.

Can we really talk about a poor quality Championship with some of these snapshots in mind? It may not be popular to say it but the standard of some skills has never been better.

hill16no1man (Dublin) - Posts: 12665 - 04/08/2015 17:41:22    1763916

Look at the 6Nations. Dire up until the final round. But. What a finale.

plike (Kerry) - Posts: 569 - 05/08/2015 08:28:34    1764088

where else would the main competition of the season be totally knockout and the secondary competition have more games ie the league, league championships the only way to go way more structure to a champions league style approach too and way more time for club games
lots of great games in football this year just they not on telly and all the main pundits (clowns) concentrate on the good teams only.
two tier structure would kill football in the weaker counties, it would end up like hurling with seven or eight teams and of those seven or eight two would be competitive

hurlorhurley (Wexford) - Posts: 1660 - 05/08/2015 09:22:45    1764102

The championship is alive and well. We are going to see the best 6 Football teams in the country play it out over the next two months to see who is the best. Come the end of September we could be saying that it has been one of the best championship years ever.

If it aint broke....

So_it_is (Fermanagh) - Posts: 40 - 05/08/2015 09:51:05    1764118