I think that similar to changing the thread “one night in November” to “another northie thread”, this one should be changed to “another gaa bashing thread”
To blame the recent atmosphere on the ground is very lazy. The blame on the lack of atmosphere lies on the feet of the supporters.
Prior to the home venue being moved to croke park, the atmosphere in Lansdowne was quite poor. There hasn’t been a great atmosphere at a match since the Dutch game 7 years ago. Only the Israel and Czech republic game came half arsed close to it. In fact, the atmosphere for the 2 big games in the WC 06 qualifiers against France and the swiss was pathetic. The atmosphere at the Slovakia game in Croke park was comparable to Czech game in Lansdowne I thought. The Slovakia game showed that an atmosphere in Croke park could be created if the supporters bothered. It can be bettered to.
There are not enough supporters at the home games. There are far too many “entertain me-ers” !!! It’ll be a day too soon when I hear another “supporter” saying “ive paid €50 for his ticket and I deserve to be entertained better than this”. Cant see this changing too much when we move back to Landsdowne. I say its time to get a proper vocal group of supporters together in the same area at the game and let the atmosphere build from there.
The moaning of certain players in the team is also unacceptable. The abuse some get is not on. It doesnt help when a lot of it is spawned in the media. Give them a chance, most who get this abuse are only learning the international game at 20-22 years old..These lads want to play for their country and deserve our support if putting in the effort.
I conceed that some of the atmosphere can be lost with the distance from the pitch too the stands, but that cant be used. There are 100s of top football stadia worldwide that still maintain there atmosphere and yet have a olympic size running track between the pitch and stands. It cannot be solely blamed. In fact i think a lot of the stadia used in the euros this year had that, yet the atmosphere did not not seem to suffer (that came across on the on the tele).
Some of the comments on this thread are petty…
someone on here complaining about the traffic (and them not even going to the game!!!). if your are not going to the game while complaining about the match traffic, stay on the aa roadwatch website or the commuting section on boards.ie.. croke park is on a main artery out of the city northbound. Of course it will cause more delays than usual….although I have to say croke parks location is handy for me heading down from the north…It used to be hellish to get across the liffey some evenings for the games in D4(hopefully the new tunnel will make it easier when we get back to landsdowne).
As for terming croke park a “soulless bowl”, that I had to laugh at…Rarely does a stadium see such passion. It would be better to call the entertain me-ers the "soulless bores" in croke park…
As for terms referring the game as soccer/football/association football, I couldn’t care less. Some on here are trying to create division by denouncing those who refer to the game as soccer. During last nights coverage of the FAI semi, soccer and football was both referred on many different occasions…so fu4king what..I don’t see a problem…. I don’t care what programme name MNS is given…at least we are getting a weekly show on the LOI.
In regard to the stewards removing tri-colours with slogans written on them, I cant say im too opposed to it. Some of the stuff written on our national flag at games are highly embarrassing. Advertising pub names and putting your individual name on it (so to show your mates on tele

) on our flag is not on. A flag I have seen recently was something like “Denise and Sean on Tour”…what fu4king next??…”Denise loves Sean”!??!.
If making a banner, why not have an all green banner with white writing on it….And attempt a bit of humour instead of the usual “ballymuck on tour”…By all means take the tricolours, but save them from the usual scrall owners name/pub names etc on them…
Make a bit of noise and get behind the boys instead of making more noise on here…
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