Rugby now more popular than football AND GAA?!

Fair do's mate. I don't think the TV / pub explanation is that likely. I'd have been surprised if the pubs weren't full that night in November. Just a hunch. Maybe some of the rugger heads watched the GS game on BBC instead? But then again, maybe some Irish watched the Paris game on SKY (less likely).

I actually think I've been pretty balanced in these exchanges. I may come across as anti-rugby, which couldn't be further from the truth, but I think it was Jinxy who said many rugger types look down their noses at soccer, and some in the press certainly do. I agree, and this is what I'm reacting to, and why I say that the perception does not fit the reality.

But if I may say, you seem to be a bit of a single-issue-candidate. You seem to enjoy starting threads like "Why have the public deserted our soccer team?", when the answer was probably provided by Eamon Sweeney - they have always been up and down - and others here.

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Originally Posted by an_ceannaire

But might I suggest that one possible reason for the figures is this.
The France game was on a Wednesday, a school night. The vast vast majority of fans watched it at home so nearly every box in the country had it on.
The Rugby was on a Saturday. Nearly everyone watched it in the pub. So half the tv's in the country were switched off cos everyone was down the pub!

Fair Point?

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That might be true if the Figures actually counted 'every' TV. They just have random samples so no figures are exact but they disregard 'switched off tvs'. So if half the TVs they count are switched on, and half of them are watching the rugby, they'll say that half the country is watching rugby (as opposed to the actual quarter that was).

(and personally speaking its easier for me to get out for a point on a Wednsday night than it is a Saturday/sunday afternoon, but thats another story)

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

Fair do's mate. I don't think the TV / pub explanation is that likely. I'd have been surprised if the pubs weren't full that night in November. Just a hunch. Maybe some of the rugger heads watched the GS game on BBC instead? But then again, maybe some Irish watched the Paris game on SKY (less likely).

I actually think I've been pretty balanced in these exchanges. I may come across as anti-rugby, which couldn't be further from the truth, but I think it was Jinxy who said many rugger types look down their noses at soccer, and some in the press certainly do. I agree, and this is what I'm reacting to, and why I say that the perception does not fit the reality.

But if I may say, you seem to be a bit of a single-issue-candidate. You seem to enjoy starting threads like "Why have the public deserted our soccer team?", when the answer was probably provided by Eamon Sweeney - they have always been up and down - and others here.

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I cant deny it. To be honest I rarely post on things I approve of or if I agree with a point. I only ever seem to post on things I disagree with! Dont know why! Its like an episode of Liveline! If a fella came on and said "Rugby is deadly".....people who agree are not gonna wanna "talk to Joe" but people who disagree will be only to willing to come on and have a go! I think I am that soldier. Maybe daddy didnt hug me enough! :)

I think if I am brutally honest half the reason i do tend to wind some lads up on purpose is this. I am a soccer fanatic believe it or not! I and my family are steeped in soccer and particularly LOI and Junior Desmond League soccer. Gspain would back me up on that I would like to think.
So I came onto Foot.ie all those years back with the best of intentions. But as ye can tell I am also a reactionary eejit, and my all time Soccer Hero (apart from Al Finucane and Dennis Keehan) is Roy Keane. I have, nay, had serious Manlove issues with the boy!! Foot.ie for some reason was and still is completely disproportionatley to the national feel, anti Roy. This always annoyed me. I took the Saipan thing WAY too seriously! Only got over it recently! I hated everything Mick touched! I even bought a Sunderland jersey when the boy took the job! Yep I was one of those morons!!! God bless me!

Basically, I was never gonna be able to have a go at Mick in person, much as I wanted to! So this was the next best thing for me!! I loved it! Coming in here, winding fellas up. And it became a habit! To be honest, I stopped loving Roy and Hating Mick a long time ago. But my persona on here had reached a no going back stage with most lads! So I embraced it!

Confessions of a WUM eh!!!

I promise in future to behave myself and stop winding people up and i will be a good boy! Just give me a chance lads :)

Apologies for some atrocious spelling above lads! Am writing this in a rush before the boss gets back!!!!

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

I think it was Jinxy who said many rugger types look down their noses at soccer, and some in the press certainly do. I agree, and this is what I'm reacting to, and why I say that the perception does not fit the reality.

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Actually, I'll give an example.

I attended a talk given by my old school alumnus (right word?) Conor O'Shea, at the Irish Club in London before Christmas. Conor is ex-Irish full back, ex-London Irish and currently Director of Rugby at Harlequins. It was full of D4 bankers, lawyers etc,. but that's no biggy. I was there because I'm a south Dublin white collar guy myself! Conor gave a good account of what it's like to live the dream of working in a sport you love, and the floor was opened and opinions were exchanged on the provinces etc. The IRFU and the provinces came out in very good light.

The "master of ceremonies", a self-satisfied D4 git, finished with a "you won't find any Saipans in our set up therefore" and laughed smugly to the crowd.

I wanted to scream. If the Irish rugby team turning up exhausted, underweight and allegedly in factions for a World Cup where they performed abysmally and only for the grace of God avoided defeat to Georgia, wasn't a Saipan, WTF was?

The organisation of Irish professional rugby around the provinces was well thought-out and executed, but the reality is that it was possible. A professional cross-border closed league with de facto franchise teams was possible in rugby. It just is not possible in soccer for many reasons discussed above. By all means applaud the rugby set-up, but the domestic soccer set up can not be knocked for being able to provide a product to compete with its English equivalent.

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Originally Posted by an_ceannaire

I promise in future to behave myself and stop winding people up and i will be a good boy! Just give me a chance lads :)

Apologies for some atrocious spelling above lads! Am writing this in a rush before the boss gets back!!!!

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There's actually some good chat on here a lot of the time. You might even enjoy it.

Spelling and grammar are no biggies, but girly-style multiple exclamation marks are a bannable offence, unless you're a girl.

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

There's actually some good chat on here a lot of the time. You might even enjoy it.

Spelling and grammar are no biggies, but girly-style multiple exclamation marks are a bannable offence, unless you're a girl.

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I will bare it in mind!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;)

Ive seen it all now stutts replying to himself :D How many pints this time?

I think im a bit like an ceannaire, ill argue here but argue against to other people of a different persuasion. I don't necessarily like arguing, but I don't like fitting in either, stutts never fitted in anywhere so he will sorta know what im talking about here. I suppose I like to play devils advocate and ensure people don't get carried away with themselves or start getting comfortable with a pariticular feeling/belief.

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

There's actually some good chat on here a lot of the time. You might even enjoy it.

Spelling and grammar are no biggies, but girly-style multiple exclamation marks are a bannable offence, unless you're a girl.

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Surely bannable and girl go together better, than bannable and not girl.

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

Actually, I'll give an example.

I attended a talk given by my old school alumnus (right word?) Conor O'Shea, at the Irish Club in London before Christmas. Conor is ex-Irish full back, ex-London Irish and currently Director of Rugby at Harlequins. It was full of D4 bankers, lawyers etc,. but that's no biggy. I was there because I'm a south Dublin white collar guy myself! Conor gave a good account of what it's like to live the dream of working in a sport you love, and the floor was opened and opinions were exchanged on the provinces etc. The IRFU and the provinces came out in very good light.

The "master of ceremonies", a self-satisfied D4 git, finished with a "you won't find any Saipans in our set up therefore" and laughed smugly to the crowd.

I wanted to scream. If the Irish rugby team turning up exhausted, underweight and allegedly in factions for a World Cup where they performed abysmally and only for the grace of God avoided defeat to Georgia, wasn't a Saipan, WTF was?

The organisation of Irish professional rugby around the provinces was well thought-out and executed, but the reality is that it was possible. A professional cross-border closed league with de facto franchise teams was possible in rugby. It just is not possible in soccer for many reasons discussed above. By all means applaud the rugby set-up, but the domestic soccer set up can not be knocked for being able to provide a product to compete with its English equivalent.

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Please tell me you wanted to shout and not scream? Especially after what you just said to an ceannaire.

Btw Ill never ever listen to anything COS(COK, why wasn't his name kane/keane or something) ever has to say, simply for that attitude he had that time he mis hit a clearance out straight into the 22 against England and didn't even care.

Stutts I hope like me you stood up for your principles, like the time I challenged Lenihan about US troops going out on the tear in shannon, even if he smugly made me look like an eejit...don't tell me you just crawled up into a ball kept schtum and then when you got home gave out to the wife and started an argument for her having moved your paper from your armchair to the couch.

Btw I never knew you and an_ceannaire were mates.

I will give up arguing for the rest of Lent so Stutts/POS :)

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Originally Posted by paul_oshea

Ceannaire i can admit it. I was giving reasons for it. Some just look to try and deflect and deny not all though. .

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And I'm his new BFF? "please an_caeannaire, I believe you, it's all the others who don't agree"

Point taken about the screaming though.

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

My only anecdote of Limerick is that my mate who lives minutes away from Thomond says that there is far more organised schoolboy soccer participation than rugby. I've no idea whether he's right or wrong, but he is certainly not biased, being an ex-player and huge fan of both sports, and his family being founders of Wexford Wanderers RFC.

an_ceannaire, is there still no acknowledgment that you were wildly wrong about the Paris versus Grand Slam viewing figures on RTE? Or do you just wait until your discredited "facts" become forgotten before reverting with more?

I have to say what Dodge says about the A-I finals on TV surprised me - although I used to live across the road from the Merrion Inn and watched EPL & SPL football there regularly, always to a full house. They never ever had the GAA on in the 1990s. But whether that's accurate or not is not the big issue here. The rest of Dodge's post was accurate and echoed what I have been saying: participation numbers of soccer are huge and the big English football teams are more popular than the big rugby franchises.

In fact I'd love to know how many Irish people a week travel to the UK to watch English or Scottish football, even now. Hundreds? Thousands? How many did up until 2007?

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I don't have a source but I recall a figure of 4,000 (not the same 4,000 every week obviously) people from the Republic of Ireland at each Man Utd home game. I know of quite a few Man Utd season ticket holders here. This was pre recession though.

Liverpool would probably have something relatively similiar taking into account the capacity of Anfield. Much much smaller for any other club though.

Football is very strong in many parts of Limerick city. There are also huge hurling strongholds ringed around the city but I would think rugby is number 1. I haven't seen any figures though and am out of touch with the junior and schoolboy scene in football or indeed in rugby.

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Originally Posted by gspain

This survey clearly shows that football is a much bigger participation sport. I think it is obvious to even the most diehard Airtricity League fan that the vast majority of football fans in this country support a British team.

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Have you conceded that you were incorrect about the definition of participation that the ESRI use in their survey. That participation includes a casual interpretation of sporting activity.

geysir, that's enough. Drop it.

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Originally Posted by gspain

I don't have a source but I recall a figure of 4,000 (not the same 4,000 every week obviously) people from the Republic of Ireland at each Man Utd home game. I know of quite a few Man Utd season ticket holders here. This was pre recession though.

Liverpool would probably have something relatively similiar taking into account the capacity of Anfield. Much much smaller for any other club though.

Football is very strong in many parts of Limerick city. There are also huge hurling strongholds ringed around the city but I would think rugby is number 1. I haven't seen any figures though and am out of touch with the junior and schoolboy scene in football or indeed in rugby.

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4,000 for Man U alone? Wow. Much higher than I expected if true.

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

Geysir,

I thought the Ballpark Figures report contradicted some of the Irish Sports Monitor

http://www.esri.ie/UserFiles/publica...BKMNEXT155.pdf

Of interest to me were Figures 5.2 (playing %), 5.3 (playing % male), 6.1 (volunteers) and 6.3 (attendance). When gaelic football and hurling are separate, soccer looks better. But the GAA attendance numbers mentioned in Ballpark Figures (and quoted above) absolutely hammer soccer, whereas in the ISM soccer is ahead of hurling but behind gaelic football. Maybe the definitions are different in each report.

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You have to understand the definitions - the modalities used in each survey before you can begin to understand the importance of the figures.
The biggest change in the last 30 years is kids play a greater variety of sports in schools and they receive training in those sports. And surveys that follow and record that activity into their later years and weight the level of participation into accurate sub sections, is the type of meaty research that sports depts/planning can use.
One stunning stat that jumps out is from figure 5.4 , the low level of female participation in soccer. The reason why women's football is strong in Scandanavian countries is that it's considered normal to fund female participation in a sport.

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Originally Posted by Dodge

I’m speaking from experience. Can’t speak for all areas obviously, but I’m happy to stand by the claim. In particular I’d say in tallaght that the ONLY place to show the All Ireland hurling final in Tallaght would be Thomas Davis’ clubhouse. I know about 6/7 regular GAA attendees. Even these wouldn’t suggest Hurling has a national appeal 9as can be witnessed by the 25,000 who attend the Leinster hurling final last year)

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We get that you can't stand the GAA but you are coming across as being a bit mental.

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Originally Posted by Charlie Darwin

4,000 for Man U alone? Wow. Much higher than I expected if true.

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Whartons run several buses for every home Man Utd game. I know someone who uses them a lot counted 18 buses when I spoke to them after a trip a couple of years back. Sounds like hell to me.

http://www.whartonstravel.com/

Flights to liverpool, manchester obviously full but also Leeds, Birmingham etc.

I suspect the number is down a bit given the economic situation.

I'd never heard of Whartons and never noticed any of their adverts.

No doubt some pedant will pick me up the next time I use the term "barstooler" though.

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Originally Posted by geysir

You have to understand the definitions - the modalities used in each survey before you can begin to understand the importance of the figures.
The biggest change in the last 30 years is kids play a greater variety of sports in schools and they receive training in those sports. And surveys that follow and record that activity into their later years and weight the level of participation into accurate sub sections, is the type of meaty research that sports depts/planning can use.
One stunning stat that jumps out is from figure 5.4 , the low level of female participation in soccer. The reason why women's football is strong in Scandanavian countries is that it's considered normal to fund female participation in a sport.

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Thanks.

1 point & 1 question (well, series of questions):

When I was collating facts & figures last year the FAI admitted that female particiaption was low but that they were putting the ball in motion to increase it. They clearly hoped that the Girls in Green would have an impact.

How much govt. funding does the FAI get? Are they funded via the Irish Sports Council? I was speaking with the CEO of Triathlon Ireland recently and they were a rarity this year, a NGB that got an increase in ISC funding. This was down to the facts that participation numbers were ballooning, and because TI meets all of the ISC's governance best-practice markers. In fact the TI CEO is an Australian sports governance expert. This prompted that age-old question: has the FAI's governance improved since you-know-when and the you-know-what report? Is its funding dependent on meeting the ISC's governance markers?

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Originally Posted by gspain

Whartons run several buses for every home Man Utd game. I know someone who uses them a lot counted 18 buses when I spoke to them after a trip a couple of years back. Sounds like hell to me.

http://www.whartonstravel.com/

Flights to liverpool, manchester obviously full but also Leeds, Birmingham etc.

I suspect the number is down a bit given the economic situation.

I'd never heard of Whartons and never noticed any of their adverts.

No doubt some pedant will pick me up the next time I use the term "barstooler" though.

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I'd say that with Man U, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, and Celtic, as well as numerous clubs with smaller Irish followings, Leeds, Newcastle, Villa, Everton, Spurs, Man City, etc., there are probably 15,000-20,000 travelling over each week. It's a disgrace when there are maybe 6,000 or 7,000 in total at league of Ireland games each week.

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Originally Posted by peadar1987

I'd say that with Man U, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, and Celtic, as well as numerous clubs with smaller Irish followings, Leeds, Newcastle, Villa, Everton, Spurs, Man City, etc., there are probably 15,000-20,000 travelling over each week. It's a disgrace when there are maybe 6,000 or 7,000 in total at league of Ireland games each week.

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Its embarrassing really, what do the lads on here who don't follow league of Ireland think? Do you see anything wrong with it?

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Originally Posted by peadar1987

I'd say that with Man U, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, and Celtic, as well as numerous clubs with smaller Irish followings, Leeds, Newcastle, Villa, Everton, Spurs, Man City, etc., there are probably 15,000-20,000 travelling over each week. It's a disgrace when there are maybe 6,000 or 7,000 in total at league of Ireland games each week.

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Your LOI figures are definitely off. Rovers alone have had more than 5,000 at both home games this season (though they were both big ones). I'd say around 12-13,000 a week between the two leagues.

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Originally Posted by Charlie Darwin

Your LOI figures are definitely off. Rovers alone have had more than 5,000 at both home games this season (though they were both big ones). I'd say around 12-13,000 a week between the two leagues.

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It was just a stab. According to Pineapple Stu's attendances thread from last season, the average across both divisions is 1,093, so with 10 games happening a week, that's just under 11,000. I suppose it could drop as low as 7,000 if Shams, Derry, Sligo, and Cork were all playing away, which could be what made me think of that figure.

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Originally Posted by peadar1987

I'd say that with Man U, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, and Celtic, as well as numerous clubs with smaller Irish followings, Leeds, Newcastle, Villa, Everton, Spurs, Man City, etc., there are probably 15,000-20,000 travelling over each week. It's a disgrace when there are maybe 6,000 or 7,000 in total at league of Ireland games each week.

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I think your figure is too high. Man Utd and Liverpool are far better supported imo than the others. I reckon their numbers would be in the hundreds.

Remmeber these are home games too so it is every other week during the season.

Celtic have good support here and also have coaches for some games at least.

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Originally Posted by gspain

I think your figure is too high. Man Utd and Liverpool are far better supported imo than the others. I reckon their numbers would be in the hundreds.

Remmeber these are home games too so it is every other week during the season.

Celtic have good support here and also have coaches for some games at least.

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Well it was just a guess, using the 4,000 for Man U as a starting point. I guessed an equal number for Liverpool, 5,000+ for Celtic, maybe 2,000 each for Chelsea and Arsenal, maybe 1000 for Everton, Aston Villa, Sunderland, Newcastle, Man City and Spurs, and then another few thousand randoms scattered about the other clubs, which gives just over 30,000 (over a two week period). As I said, complete guesswork though, I have no idea what the actual figure is, apart from the fact that it is too high, when our own league is struggling for support.

I think Newcastle would probably be fourth after Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal.

No room for poor little old Celtic? I think we must feature in the top 3 -no?

http://www.aicsc.com/ has circa 50 supporters clubs listed around the country. There will be plenty more not affiliated. Obviously most of these will not travel to every game but there will be plenty that do plus the indepdendent traveller.

I would estimate that maybe 2k or so attend the fortnightly home games at Celtic Park, it was probably double that when times were better in the early noughties. Just a guesstimate on my behalf but probably not wildly out. The cheap flights with both Ryanair and Aer Lingus to Glaswgow, Prestwick, Edinburgh all make it do'able and the Naohm Padraig bus leaves for every home game from the GPO.

Another point to make though, is that fans of SPL or EPL clubs may also support domestic soccer - I know lads who attend both Celtic games and Shamrock Rovers games.

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Originally Posted by Charlie Darwin

I think Newcastle would probably be fourth after Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal.

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If we go in tiers I'd say

Tier one; Man U, Liverpool (with Utd a fair bit ahead)
Tier one a; Celtic (less than above but not a mutally exclusive kind a support
Tier 2; Arsenal, Leeds
Tier 3; Everton, Villa, Spurs, Chelsea, Man City
Tier 4; the rest

I doubt anyone from Tier 3 down has more than 50 travelling for a game

Any links for that?

;)

No, because its my opinion. if I had've said "I heard" and then said I'd "Read" about it. Then you could have your links

on the participation issue, today's Independent has this article about rugby's increase in popularity worldwide: http://www.independent.ie/sport/rugb...g-2615101.html

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The study also looks at participation levels by country. The top ten nations in terms of participation in 2008 were the traditional Six Nations and Tri Nations sides plus Argentina. But this picture is changing as Japan, Sri Lanka and the USA all feature in the top ten for 2010.

Ireland figures at fourth in the list, behind England, South Africa and France, and ahead of New Zealand. (Ireland has 153,080 registered players at all ages, versus 137,835 in New Zealand and 2,549,196 in England.)

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First of all, more registered players than New Zealand is astonishing, given the relative popularity of the game here and there.

Are there any figures from the FAI on registered players in the country?

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Originally Posted by tetsujin1979

on the participation issue, today's Independent has this article about rugby's increase in popularity worldwide: http://www.independent.ie/sport/rugb...g-2615101.html

First of all, more registered players than New Zealand is astonishing, given the relative popularity of the game here and there.

Are there any figures from the FAI on registered players in the country?

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That's a spectacular statistic about our reg players v New Zealand's. And they don't have the sort of competition we have with other sports.

New Zealand has a population of 4.4 million people whereas I assume the Irish figure includes registered players both north and south, so within a population of about 6.2 million people. For a better comparison, about 2.4% of the Irish population are registered as players whilst about 3.1% of the New Zealand population are registered as players, although you might still expect that to be a bit higher considering it's their national sport.

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Originally Posted by DannyInvincible

New Zealand has a population of 4.4 million people whereas I assume the Irish figure includes registered players both north and south, so within a population of about 6.2 million people. For a better comparison, about 2.4% of the Irish population are registered as players whilst about 3.1% of the New Zealand population are registered as players, although you might still expect that to be a bit higher considering it's their national sport.

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Well I'd say the figures are island-wide as the IRFU is an all-Ireland association.
Nice take on the figures Danny.
Still, though as their national sport it's bizarre. Maybe kids are tired of breaking their balls all the way to senior grades only for clubs and NZRU to nick some lads from Tonga et al.

Some New Zealanders get quite upset when you assume that they all love rugby. They're big into the cricket and soccer too and sailing is big among the richer classes. It's also possible they record players differently, or that the sport is so much more accessible that players don't need to join a club to play. League is also a very popular working class sport there - I'm not sure if that's factored in.

I studied some alternative maps of Europe a few months back, where people from particular countries would rename the others according to their national stereotype. Most countries called us "Guinness" or "potatoes" but, interestingly, the Italian map called us "rugby."

Proper football fans in New Zealand too much n=better than their neighbours. Experienced both on comsecutive days during the world cup. Aussies queueing for beer with their backs to the game for most of the first half. Kiwis much smaller in numbers but louder, passionate and much more into the game. They take their shirts off for the final ten minutes as a message to rugby fans that football is a 90 minute game. Not a rugby shirt in sight too in the Kiwi support but too many in the Aussie fans.

Sounds about right. Pal of mine covers NZ games for the media (sorry, no links Dodge), but if helps, most of Kiwis I've experienced (through playing soccer) love both sports, but football first.

Though on visits have encountered locals, mainly the older generation or 'man mountains', who described soccer as, erm, a poof's game. Make of that what you will.

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Originally Posted by gspain

They take their shirts off for the final ten minutes as a message to rugby fans that football is a 90 minute game.

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Ha ha funny but in reality the physical 'abuse' a body takes over a rugger match is well in excess of either Gaa or football. I think this could be a major problem in their game in years to come. We are only now starting to see players reach the end of their career who have played rugby entirely in the professional era i.e. what condition are these lads going to be in by the time they are 50. Genuniely think it is a serious issue for their game. Look at American football for example and how crocked many ex players and even more seriously the long term effects concusion has had on them.

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Originally Posted by gspain

They take their shirts off for the final ten minutes as a message to rugby fans that football is a 90 minute game.

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Fair enough, when football introduces "time off" for hold ups and injuries.

Okay so the atendances for the home games have been pretty poor lately but how about fans travelling to the away games. I haven't been to one since Bari which is a while ago now. Any regular travellers think it's dipped much if at all?