QuoteThe Australians will win the Women's series. The Men's is up for grabs . Given there are lots of Meath men in the team and Sean Boylan is in charge, this year Ireland won't be physically intimidated like they were last year.
The GAA have confirmed that all tickets for the 1st Test of the Coca Cola International Rules series between Ireland and Australia in Galway on October 28th are now sold. The capacity of the stadium on the night will be 30,000. The game will be preceded by the M Donnelly Interprovincial Hurling final between Connacht and Leinster.
Tickets for the 2nd test, which will be played in Croke Park on Sunday, November 5th at 2pm are currently available from the GAA website, www.gaa.ie, and through Ticketmaster outlets nationwide. The game will be preceded by the Hurling/Shinty International between Ireland and Scotland and over 35,000 tickets for this event have already been issued. Special Group Juvenile passes are available by contacting the GAA Ticket Office at 01 8658657.
from http://www.gaa.ie/plugins/newsfeed.c..._data_id=15399
better get those tickets need to see some serious thuggery
The Australians will win the Women's series. The Men's is up for grabs . Given there are lots of Meath men in the team and Sean Boylan is in charge, this year Ireland won't be physically intimidated like they were last year.
I had to laugh at the GAA moaning about the physical nature last year when their advertising slogan is "time to play....HARD.."
good man pete, any opportunity to add nothing ( related ) as usual.
i think its a bit silly ireland trying to match them in the physical stakes, however its good to see them picking more physical gaelic players, maybe they should have brought the ballyforan express aka, frankie "stonewall" grehan to the side.
will never forget mcgeeney grabbing the aussie ( captain at the time can't remember his name, he had hit dolan or someone previously )player by the balls and "pulling" him about 25 yards down the pitch in croker. yer man came back for him again and he(mcgeeney) elbowed him to the floor. pure quality.
I'm a bloke,I'm an ocker
And I really love your knockers,I'm a labourer by day,
I **** up all me pay,Watching footy on TV,
Just feed me more VB,Just pour my beer,And get my smokes, And go away
Does anyone really care about this. How contrived a 'sport' can you get.
The G Ah Ah would be better off trying to get an international series going with the american baseball league, seeing as though rounders is one of the sports it supposedly promotes.
And complaints about last year being too physical, sure people only watch it for the thumping.
I care about it, I think its great stuff, going to see it too in Croker. Two indigenous sports from either side of the equator coming together for an annual rough and tumble. Both individual games require the highest standards of sporting ability and dedication where the hard work and all effort is only rewarded in one country. With this hybrid game the Irish lads get to represent Ireland as well as the local parish, irish pride at stake alongside traditional GAA values. Makes for great conversation in the pubs with the ozzies. Pick up the mots along the way.
I don't understand how some people can disregard it, but yet maintain a love for another field sport with similar principles..
Wow ! That's a very impassioned plea, are you quoting from the GAA website ?Originally Posted by Colm55
"Highest standards of sporting ability". They have half a dozen goal posts for fúck sake so you 'score' by kicking the ball wide.
And as for 'hard work and effort, being only rewarded in one country', I'm sure the New York and London GAA councils would have something to say about that.......no wait, they're shiite, so you're right on that point.
"I just came in to buy a stamp"-Padraig Pearse, April 24th 1916
colm55 agreed, its flag waving jackeens that wouldn't understand though then again they might be bitter about something closer to home around tallaght
its a proper fcuken contest. having seen this in the flesh multiple times and having seen manys an EL game I certainly know which is more entertaing, enthralling and worth the extra few quid to see....
I'm a bloke,I'm an ocker
And I really love your knockers,I'm a labourer by day,
I **** up all me pay,Watching footy on TV,
Just feed me more VB,Just pour my beer,And get my smokes, And go away
yer like the rest.. soccer, soccer, soccer, soccer, there is more than one sport out there, as a soccer and sports fan which i'm very sure you are, surely you should appreciate all field sports which involve a high level of fitness and dedication. Or are you one of these types that disses sports because you simply don't like them ?? Broaden your horizons a bit in that case
So what if they have two ways to score points, thats what its all about right? getting more points than your opposition ? Whats so different between soccer and gaelic on the field of play? they both have the same aims, same ideals among the players, move the ball up the field and score points, to play at the top level, high fitness and sports ability are needed, soccer is on the ground, no hands - skill and mental ability come in, whereas GAA, aussie rules the use of hands is permitted, so its more physical, one could go all day and not get a score if it was just goals, so they introduce an alternative to 'goals'.
I'm not going to say GAA/Aussie rules is a better sport than soccer or vice versa, that would be ridicolous in my opinion, but we're all entitled to one i guess, no matter how much it frustrates someone else..
Enjoy your soccer, but remember that there are alternatives.
Interesting to see Mickey Harte poo-pooing the entire series today in the Irish Times. You've to have a paid subscription to see it online, so I wont bother with a link.
www.WalkTheChalk.com - Stats, Opinion & Bluster on Irish Club Football
i dont understand for someone from a gaelic background could do that, its the only time the "real" stars of gaelic football get a chance to shine and represent their country. as described by the aussie guys "its our baby", they should promote the bloody thing as much as possible.
the aussies love it. i spose the sport is pro over there though...
I'm a bloke,I'm an ocker
And I really love your knockers,I'm a labourer by day,
I **** up all me pay,Watching footy on TV,
Just feed me more VB,Just pour my beer,And get my smokes, And go away
Ian O'Riordan hears the Tyrone manager reiterate his numerous and passionate objections to the hybrid International Rules game
Stage-managed, over-promoted and over-hyped by vested interests. Does nothing to promote an international dimension to Gaelic games. Actually helps the Australians to poach Ireland's most talented footballers. And insults the GAA's one truly representative competition.
That's not being thrown out there for argument's sake. It's what Tyrone's two-time All-Ireland winning football manager Mickey Harte thinks of the International Rules. And he reckons he's not alone.
"I was never a fan of the game," says Harte, "I don't like it. I don't think it's any good. But that's an aside. I just feel it's been marketed to the last to make it seem popular to people. And much more than that, it's about the whole concept. It's about what are we doing here. We are engaging in a so-called international series, and yet it's not Gaelic games.
"Why should we pursue that when we have a wonderful product of our own that we could just as easily be developing worldwide? For me that's the criminal thing. Every day we pursue this we're postponing the day that Gaelic games could become truly international, because this thing just doesn't serve us at all in that regard."
Harte isn't trying to spoil the party in Galway this Saturday, and Croke Park a week later. He wouldn't attend either of those games even if he had to.
He spoke out against the series last year after the violent play that developed in Australia, but feels that criticism was interpreted as a sort of sourness in the moment. His disapproval in fact runs far deeper and he believes the whole GAA community needs to ask some hard questions.
"I think the authorities at the headquarters of the GAA need to step back and ask what are we promoting here. Are we promoting Gaelic games, or something that pretends to allude to it? Let's face it, that's what we're doing.
"Some people seem to think I'm anti-Australia, or that I'm too insular. It's not that at all. Quite the opposite. I would love for our games to be truly international. But this is not the way of doing it, because these players are not representing Ireland in Gaelic games. We seem to forget that.
"I think there is a much better way of doing this. That starts at club level, because there are teams in virtually every continent now playing Gaelic games at some level. Why can't they be brought together on the world stage?
"Even if it's at junior or intermediate level in Ireland, that they're the ones representing us. But that would at least start to build for the future, which maybe could become county level, and maybe even provincial level. And then we'd a have a truly international sport."
Tyrone footballers have played a big role in the series over the years. Seán Cavanagh is sure to be one of Ireland's key men this year, and so could Stephen O'Neill, one of the three standby players. Yet Harte makes it clear he'd prefer if they didn't go near the thing - although he understands why they do.
"Sure that's a gimme," he says. "I mean who wouldn't like to be 'representing their country' - and put that in inverted commas - and travel to Australia, be well looked after in terms of getting loads of gear and expenses, and being covered for a good holiday?
"And of course the media see nothing wrong with that either, who have the same vested interest in it. There are those vested interests from various parts.
"I certainly think there are lots of people that share my feelings. It's just difficult to articulate it in as strong a fashion as those for it, such as the media. I mean lots of journalists see it as a good opportunity to write it up for the two weeks before, the two weeks when it happens, and maybe the week after. That's five or six weeks' work there, so I can fully understand why all the journalists like to promote it. But is that a true reflection of how we all feel? Or have these people taken the time to step back and ask what exactly it is we're engaging in here?
"And look, ultimately, the total insult to me is that while we're doing all this, and putting huge amounts of money and promotion into making this hybrid thing popular, we are burying the one truly representative game, the Railway Cup. It's pushed from pillar to post, on a Saturday evening to a Monday morning, from Killarney to Ballyshannon.
"And we saw players coming from International Rules training to play for their province. How insulting is that? And other players can't play in the county finals the weekend that it's on. And that's what saddens me most about this whole affair."
And Harte's criticism of the International Rules doesn't end there. He also believes it helps the AFL tempt the GAA's finest young talents to join their game: "People say we're losing a player here and there, that it's only a trickle, and they should be allowed the opportunity to go and do this if they so want - that it happens in soccer and rugby too, that people from our game go to those sports as well.
"But the big difference here is that we're not facilitating soccer and rugby to do that. We don't encourage them by way of playing a hybrid game with the rugby clubs or the soccer clubs, yet we're doing it with the AFL.
"And the other difference is they're taking the cream of our players. And to me one player we lose is one player too many. And they're going to a mediocre-enough sort of professional set-up, especially in terms of what professionalism is in sport nowadays."
Any repeat of the violent play could yet force the GAA's hand and end the series, and yet Harte is not holding his breath.
"You can stage-manage that too," he says, "and make sure it's not violent so that it will stay on for another year. And then if the interest is waning a little bit you get something in there to rip it up a bit again. Sure that's what's happened over time.
"When it wasn't violent enough and nobody was going to it they just introduced a little violence, and then when it got too violent people started to say that it would have to stop if it doesn't cool off. I just think all of that is stage-managed anyway."
In Trap we trust
yeah agreed, hybrid games are silly
and i always laugh when the Aussies kick ten lumps of sh ite out of the Gaa players, funny, since the Ga fellas always think they are so tough
Of all the Gaelic football matches you have gone to bennocelt, when did you honestly think the above??!?!?funny, since the Ga fellas always think they are so tough
eh ok, you didnt go to any so you can't answer it....but anyhow you might have spotted it once on the tele going face to face with another opponent, my god that never happens in soccer!!!! :8
I'm a bloke,I'm an ocker
And I really love your knockers,I'm a labourer by day,
I **** up all me pay,Watching footy on TV,
Just feed me more VB,Just pour my beer,And get my smokes, And go away
I went to it the last time it was here. I didn't think much of it. It's all about the money at the end of the day...
Making fun of the makeyuppies rules series is not knocking Gaelic football as its not well Gaelic football.
The irish lads clearly have all the advantage as the Aussie don't even have keepers in their sport.
I think secretly the GAA want players to emigrate to Oz as means they won't look to be paid at home.
I might cheer for the Aussies. If you don't like that then maybe you on the wrong website.
And how does that work
This is a football website, i don't go onto GAA sites maoning about them criticising real football.
I'll watch it and see how the 2 games develop. I like it when the GAA lads do well.
The beef I have with the hybrid game is that as a game it is going nowhere, the skill levels will never improve with 2 games every year and the rules are a dumbing down of the gaelic football skills.
Seen a little of yesterdays game & seemed very tame affair. I think this "play hard" stuff was false advertising.
btw why do Ireland not play in green?
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