Good points Poolsturgeon . Fair point Ormond about putting the results on the screen . Anyway now that our rugby team have departed the scene there will be more time to go round . Time now to give the soccer boys their due.

Greengrass (Louth) - Posts: 6182 - 19/10/2015 13:34:44    1800181

Good post PoolSturgeon.

Sean Ogs show was very good (in the 1980s)...

bennybunny (Cork) - Posts: 3917 - 19/10/2015 16:34:39    1800276

Id much rather watch a dublin club football game on Tv rather than a poxy league of ireland game with 200 people in attendance !

northie_chap (Louth) - Posts: 69 - 19/10/2015 17:09:26    1800294

PoolSturgeon
Summed up nicely

seadog54 (Meath) - Posts: 2223 - 19/10/2015 19:32:17    1800356

Hey Northie Chap there was plenty of top class League of Ireland soccer up your end this year with average attendances of 3,500. I hope you got up off your a**e and went to see it .

Greengrass (Louth) - Posts: 6182 - 19/10/2015 20:50:30    1800396

On Sunday RTE decided that all but two County Finals didn't merit time on the 6.01 News and Sport. However on Monday the country's most read daily newspaper the Irish Independent devoted two full pages to the games that RTE wouldn't even give the results of. At least one media outlet understands how important County Finals are to the greater GAA community. Unfortunately our national broadcaster and its supporters don't agree. No surprise there.

mediaman (Antrim) - Posts: 355 - 20/10/2015 10:52:45    1800493

20/10/2015 10:52:45
mediaman
On Sunday RTE decided that all but two County Finals didn't merit time on the 6.01 News and Sport. However on Monday the country's most read daily newspaper the Irish Independent devoted two full pages to the games that RTE wouldn't even give the results of. At least one media outlet understands how important County Finals are to the greater GAA community. Unfortunately our national broadcaster and its supporters don't agree. No surprise there. The time on the news is limited for sport. You cant compare a newspapers coverage to what a tv channel can cover in a few seconds on a news programme.
plenty of match reports etc on rte website link

ormondbannerman (Clare) - Posts: 13473 - 20/10/2015 11:20:53    1800517

Bias occurs when one sport is treated less favourably than others. So let's compare last weekend. On Saturday's RTE 6.01 News and Sport showed highlights of 3 English Premier League matches lasting over 2 minutes. Nothing wrong with that. The highlights were followed by results/updates of the afternoon's 9 matches. Fast forward to Sunday. The RTE 6.01 News and Sport showed highlights of 2 County Finals for 20 seconds but couldn't give the results of the remaining 12 matches. Way the difference? RTE had time to show results of 9 soccer matches on Saturday but no time a day later to show results of roughly the same number of County Finals. Surely what's sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. Keep the excuses coming.

mediaman (Antrim) - Posts: 355 - 20/10/2015 20:34:40    1800754

It looks like mediaman has outed himself this evening - it appears he could actually be award winning sports journalist Ewan MacKenna! To be fair nothing MacKenna has said comes as a surprise to anyone with an idea of how these things work.
link

Soma (UK) - Posts: 2630 - 20/10/2015 21:08:24    1800760

@Mediaman

As much as I love the GAA it sounds from your description that the club finals got an appropriate amount of coverage on news relative to soccer.

There are a lot more people in the country interested in the Premiership than there are in the Kildare club football championship.

I think there are good points to the start of this thread. The rugby got too much coverage before the World Cup started, it was particularly bad given we were reaching the culmination of our season and the Ireland team were still only playing meaningless warm up games at the time.

I think we've lost the way of ourselves a bit now.
The club championships being on the news at all is impressive. Regional soccer and rugby leagues don't get that much exposure. I think it's right that the GAA does get more exposure at this level given the interest in it, but I mean we also have to have a bit of perspective. The county championship finals aren't elite level sport, where there's enough of a national interest to justify all the results being read on the national news.

Whammo86 (Antrim) - Posts: 4611 - 20/10/2015 21:19:27    1800763

I wouldn't doubt McKenna. A very good journalist. But there's no need to go into minute by minute and Rugby v GAA coverage analysis. If you're not happy do something about it. Set up a proactive Twitter page and bombard RTE with stuff. Boycott their sponsors if you get enough takers. But this RTE bad, Rugby bad, Soccer not great GAS fantastic line is going ngoing fast.

GreenandRed (Mayo) - Posts: 8174 - 20/10/2015 22:00:00    1800782

Lads, as I said this is a mute argument as RTE over time will lose the rights to rugby and then we will see things change.

But I have one question;

RTE have now lost the rights to the Summer rugby internationals, the famous tours down to the southern hemisphere, will we see the IRFU been grilled on SKY TV??

In fact RTE are losing all their rugby bit by bit to SKY, but they are not objecting like they did with the GAA/SKY deal, this is were the true lack of fairness comes from.

witnof (Dublin) - Posts: 1604 - 21/10/2015 09:10:07    1800793

21/10/2015 09:10:07
witnof
Lads, as I said this is a mute argument as RTE over time will lose the rights to rugby and then we will see things change.
But I have one question;
RTE have now lost the rights to the Summer rugby internationals, the famous tours down to the southern hemisphere, will we see the IRFU been grilled on SKY TV??
In fact RTE are losing all their rugby bit by bit to SKY, but they are not objecting like they did with the GAA/SKY deal, this is were the true lack of fairness comes from. When did RTE ever last have the summer internationals?
If IRFU were to ever lose the 6 Nations to Sky then you would expect them to be grilled

ormondbannerman (Clare) - Posts: 13473 - 22/10/2015 11:00:56    1801184

I imagine the purpose of this thread was to attempt to answer the question Does the GAA get fair coverage on RTE. It has nothing to do with other sports being bad or good. I haven't seen anyone in this discussion saying the GAA is perfect. However it is the most popular in terms of match attendance. It is certainly more popular than rugby in terms of playing numbers and clubs. The fact of the matter is that rugby does get a disproportionate amount of time on RTE and that is fundamentally unfair. There have been numerous examples of this bias quoted in this thread none of which have been answered satisfactorily.It is reasonable therefore to question this policy of RTE. After all RTE is funded by the all licence payers not just a certain clique in Dublin 4.

mod (Mayo) - Posts: 859 - 22/10/2015 19:00:04    1801360

22/10/2015 19:00:04
mod
I imagine the purpose of this thread was to attempt to answer the question Does the GAA get fair coverage on RTE. It has nothing to do with other sports being bad or good. I haven't seen anyone in this discussion saying the GAA is perfect. However it is the most popular in terms of match attendance. It is certainly more popular than rugby in terms of playing numbers and clubs. The fact of the matter is that rugby does get a disproportionate amount of time on RTE and that is fundamentally unfair. There have been numerous examples of this bias quoted in this thread none of which have been answered satisfactorily.It is reasonable therefore to question this policy of RTE. After all RTE is funded by the all licence payers not just a certain clique in Dublin 4.Rugby is a professional sport unlike either hurling or gaelic so therefore there will be much more stories coming from the rugby teams. The professional teams in rugby cover very big markets so will get a lot of attention as media outlets can sell a lot to the fans of these sides and potential fans. That and the rugby season is 8 plus months long of competitive and full on games with each pro side getting 20 plus games. That isn't the case with inter county GAA.
If you consider what coverage rugby gets is disproportionate then what in your opinion would be correct amount of coverage for rugby

ormondbannerman (Clare) - Posts: 13473 - 22/10/2015 21:03:55    1801393

Yes it does and especially so if you add in TG4 and SS. Don't be paranoid lads! It gets coverage at all levels, all competitions and both sexes. In fact it is on too much resulting in less people going to club games. it wins all day.

Redslayer (Westmeath) - Posts: 100 - 22/10/2015 21:24:34    1801401

So what will he do about changing that? I'm beginning to agree that there's a disproportionate coverage in media not just RTE of rugby in proportion to GAA though it's not a huge gap. Even if the rugby and GAA season dovetail with each other I think Mackenna raises valid points. But I think some is down to rugby marketing being savvy and putting a good spin on everything, having a helpful oldboy network of rugby journalists can't harm them. But there's a fair network of GAA old boys too that should be put to better use. An article next Sunday from Brolly agreeing with Mackenna would bring a bit more attention to this than a few of us posting here and having no proactive ideas on what to do about it.

I have to admire the way IRFU managed to get a beaten team kissing babies at the airport on the front pages.

GreenandRed (Mayo) - Posts: 8174 - 22/10/2015 22:00:20    1801407

Rugby is a professional sport unlike either hurling or gaelic so therefore there will be much more stories coming from the rugby teams. The professional teams in rugby cover very big markets so will get a lot of attention as media outlets can sell a lot to the fans of these sides and potential fans. That and the rugby season is 8 plus months long of competitive and full on games with each pro side getting 20 plus games. That isn't the case with inter county GAA.
If you consider what coverage rugby gets is disproportionate then what in your opinion would be correct amount of coverage for rugby

RTE is a national broadcaster and its content is for the people of this island, it is very unlikely they will be selling stories internationally therefore the argument re selling to fans is irrelevant. Also re the professionalism we are talking about an Irish broadcaster in an Irish market, the amount of GAA stories would dwarf that of the rugby (whether they all warrant braodcast is a separate debate) and I would also take issue with the statement re competitive, there are some horrendous mismatches in rugby (Like GAA) and the competitiveness only comes in during the last games of the eurpoean pool stages and after the six nations is out of the way and teams field there full strength teams.

On a Gaa forum it is natural to expect some slagging of other sports it is part pride in your own sport allied with some insecurity, (If you ever read the rugby comments sections on the BBC it is filled with Rugby league and soccer fans having a pop at union, it happens) I find your resolute defence of anything rugby quite strange considering it is a gaa forum and I get you are probably equally as proud/insecure of rugby as the people on here are of GAA but it is ok for people to criticize rugby it is not perfect by any means and still has a long way to go in terms of inclusiveness and that is not to disparage any efforts being made currently.

The criticism has always been that a broadcaster for the people of this island seem to give an inordinate amount of coverage to what is a smaller sport in terms of playing numbers, clubs compared to GAA and soccer, the articles highlighted and some (not all) posts by mediaman do capture the essence that there is a favouring by the broadcaster of one sport and unfortunately as much as you might fight and argue the point it will have very little effect it is rte who need to be defending their coverage not you.

duckula20 (Antrim) - Posts: 175 - 23/10/2015 09:56:06    1801433

Ducula

On a Gaa forum it is natural to expect some slagging of other sports it is part pride in your own sport allied with some insecurity, (If you ever read the rugby comments sections on the BBC it is filled with Rugby league and soccer fans having a pop at union, it happens) I find your resolute defence of anything rugby quite strange considering it is a gaa forum and I get you are probably equally as proud/insecure of rugby as the people on here are of GAA but it is ok for people to criticize rugby it is not perfect by any means and still has a long way to go in terms of inclusiveness and that is not to disparage any efforts being made currently.

Excellent post Duckula.

bennybunny (Cork) - Posts: 3917 - 23/10/2015 10:04:17    1801434

Rugby is a professional sport unlike either hurling or gaelic so therefore there will be much more stories coming from the rugby teams. The professional teams in rugby cover very big markets so will get a lot of attention as media outlets can sell a lot to the fans of these sides and potential fans. That and the rugby season is 8 plus months long of competitive and full on games with each pro side getting 20 plus games. That isn't the case with inter county GAA.
If you consider what coverage rugby gets is disproportionate then what in your opinion would be correct amount of coverage for rugby
23/10/2015 09:56:06 duckula20
RTE is a national broadcaster and its content is for the people of this island, it is very unlikely they will be selling stories internationally therefore the argument re selling to fans is irrelevant. Also re the professionalism we are talking about an Irish broadcaster in an Irish market, the amount of GAA stories would dwarf that of the rugby (whether they all warrant braodcast is a separate debate) and I would also take issue with the statement re competitive, there are some horrendous mismatches in rugby (Like GAA) and the competitiveness only comes in during the last games of the eurpoean pool stages and after the six nations is out of the way and teams field there full strength teams. RTE regularly sells stories elsewhere. It has to. It needs to.
Would the number of GAA stories dwarf rugby?
The rugby sides train every day, the provinces have a minimum of 28 games a season and then the international side have about 11 games on top of that. The amount of stories that can be produced is huge. The rugby players are pro and therefore available for media work much more than the amateur GAA players. To say competitiveness only comes in during the last games of European pool stages and after the 6 nations shows you as not knowing or not watching much rugby
23/10/2015 09:56:06 duckula20
On a Gaa forum it is natural to expect some slagging of other sports it is part pride in your own sport allied with some insecurity, (If you ever read the rugby comments sections on the BBC it is filled with Rugby league and soccer fans having a pop at union, it happens) I find your resolute defence of anything rugby quite strange considering it is a gaa forum and I get you are probably equally as proud/insecure of rugby as the people on here are of GAA but it is ok for people to criticize rugby it is not perfect by any means and still has a long way to go in terms of inclusiveness and that is not to disparage any efforts being made currently.
The criticism has always been that a broadcaster for the people of this island seem to give an inordinate amount of coverage to what is a smaller sport in terms of playing numbers, clubs compared to GAA and soccer, the articles highlighted and some (not all) posts by mediaman do capture the essence that there is a favouring by the broadcaster of one sport and unfortunately as much as you might fight and argue the point it will have very little effect it is rte who need to be defending their coverage not you. I don't read the BBC website and news website comments sections cant really be compared to webforums. They are quite different..
Rugby is far from perfect. Its what some people criticise it for which is what annoys me.
Most soccer numbers come from pub leagues. My home area North Tipp has dozens of soccer "clubs" but the vast majority are 1 team clubs based on a pitch very near to a local pub and it varies year to year if the club will play or not. They are pub social teams.

ormondbannerman (Clare) - Posts: 13473 - 23/10/2015 11:21:43    1801482