Quoteah come off it...........................when the kids have a chance to play a game it will always be football not GaOriginally Posted by Ireland4ever
i regularly see children playing football even on ga sites
to be fair..its not really a mystical relationship............brother Wilfrid and all that
ah come off it...........................when the kids have a chance to play a game it will always be football not Ga
i regularly see children playing football even on ga sites
His name was actually Brother Walfrid but it was a long time ago. Many foreign clubs were founded by Englishmen yet for some strange reason most English people support an English club.to be fair..its not really a mystical relationship............brother Wilfrid and all that
but Steve football is the biggest spectator sport in the country anyway. The problem we have though it is British football not our domestic league.You're wallowihng in your own obscurity now RT. That post just didn't make any sense.
There's a huge difference between participating in a sport and spectating it. Hence - quoting how many people like to swim or play golf is totally irrelevant to a discussion about the appeal of attending live Irish soccer matches versus other live spectator sports. I'm sure that swimming or golf would also be the highest rankiong participatory sports in England and Scotland, but what that would have to do with attendances at live football in those countries I know not.
Do you follow logic at all mate ?
Even take Northenr Ireland as an example. The GAA is by far the biggest local spectator sport. However nobody can claim it is the biggest sport when you consider they exclude 60-65% of the population.
How is it Gary ? How many people go from Ireland to England and Scotland to watch football oon a weekly basis - a few thousand maybe ? A couple of full houses in Croke Park would probably contain more than go to watch foreign football across a single season.
This appears to contradict your previous point. If GAA is by far the biggest spectator sport in the north - a traditional soccer area where just over half the population is to varying degrees totally anti the GAA - then it would be doubly or trebly the biggest spectatot sport in the Republic. But you claim that soccer is.
Gretna are a case study in how not to invest in a club. Mileson has drawn a line under his investment - so their finances are limited, they will be lucky to stay up this season, and their catchment area makes their existence as an SPL club completely unsustainable. Gretna will return to lower division obscurity soon, and they will thankfully remain there ad infinitum.Just watchingGretna beating Celtic 1-0They look to have made major improvments since the night Derry beat them in the UEFA Cup ! Goes to show i suppose what major investment can do.
A pure waste of money on an unsustainable vanity project by a bored millionaire. Hardly an appropriate model for the development of football anywhere.
Whatever about spectator figures or playing numbers i believe soccer is the sport which generates most interest in this country, be it in english soccer or wherever, so the comparison with scotland is not totally off the wall. However they do have a fully professional league with a long history and also if im not mistaken an almost fully professional division below it, something thats along way off here. Its all well and good saying we could be as good as them but until people start taking an interest in the league and going to games here we are going to stay the way that we are.
wow brother walfrid, big whooop, an irish man formed the american navy but yet i dont see thousands flocking to that,to be fair..its not really a mystical relationship............brother Walfrid and all that
how does anyone campare the leagues, two teams dominate and i mean DOMINATE, the joke that is the SPL, and other teams are trying to catch up thats why you will always have a team close to the top two, they are actually the best team in scotland, as the other two are on an unlevel playing field, two teams with 60,000 seater grounds the next biggest is aberdean with 22,000, sure from stats i have (sky sports) falkirk and gretna have under 6000 capacity grounds,
what is the attraction of it, its professional longer, so they should have something to go on in there history, the problem with the EL is that it isnt saturated in the medie with big explosions, and all this talk of loads of games on RTE was s***e, setanta showed the most now watch RTE take over, i think the FAI should be allowed to sell the rights of the internationl games to whoever they want, but, nwhoever gets it they have to show at least one game a week of the EL, tv isnt free anywhere RTE isnt free so why shouldnt they pay the FAI for the right to show games,
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Agree it is confusing. I was including tv and the barstoolers.
My point really is that football is by far the biggest sport in the Republic. It is the game played by far more people, followed by more people and watched by more people (tv and in person). However this does not translate into support for domestic football. However I see it as a huge opportunity for domestic football. The rise of Sunderland's popularity shows the opportunity too as people adapt and change allegiances which would be unusual in the rest of the world.
GAA is clearly the biggest local spectator sport in the RoI and NI. I don't have the figures for NI but logic would dictate that given the GAA exclude 60%+ of the population that it couldn't be the biggest sport there. Irish League attendances are well behind those of our league so again it's cross channel football that is the attraction
Rugby has seen a huge surge in popularity in the last couple of years. It looks like the England game this year will be the most watched sporting event on tv. This will be the first time ever that rugby has achieved this. it has been a football International for something like 15 of the last 17 years. However there are still huge areas of this island where it has little pentration.
hmmm, when was this? 1890 or something? Stop living in the past. I'm sure there was some relationship with some Irish guy and Velez Sarsfield back in the day but you dont see busloads of idiots heading to south america every weekend do you?to be fair..its not really a mystical relationship............brother Wilfrid and all that
I must compliment Celtic plc on their fabulous marketing though. Convincing thousands of people to trek from all corners of Ireland to spend their euros at Celtic park wearing the latest replica kit and then drinking in the bars singing mildly sectarian songs with their buddies waving tricolours after watching their heroes beat kilmarnock 1-0. They must make an absolute fortune off these tw@ts.
it is a club which was formed by an Irish priest to generate funds for the impoverished immigrants form Ireland who settled in the Glasgow area following the famine. The club has retained it links with the Irish diaspora for well over a hundred years. If you have lived overseas, or have children born overseas, the link is much more clear. A high majority who support the club would be either Irish or claim genuine Irish ancestry.
Do not confuse Celtic supporters with genuine Irish 2g/3g links to the IRA/Sinn Fein supporting 'fans' who parade around the streets of Drogheda/Dulblin/Navan and throw stones at Orangemen in Dublin. Those who confuse wearing a Celtic jersey with supporting the IRA. Apples and pears.........
I go to Terryland every second week, I go to Irish International soccer matches, I watch local Galway local soccer matches, I keep up to date with the juvenile soccer in Galway. I am a soccer supporter.
If Galway get to the All-Ireland final in either football/hurling I go to that too. If you asked me to name the Galway football/hurling teams from 1-15 I would probably know about 10 on each team.
The bottom line is that there are many so-called GAA supporters like me who swell CP toward the business end of the season.
Soccer is a bigger sport in terms of interest and playing figures than the GAA.
However, your point about soccer being the only game in scotland is true. Even apart from spectators, who are generally cross-sport anyway, the real problem/dilema is with players. A country of our size could only hope to excel at one sport, be that, Rugby or Soccer. I firmly believe that the reason so many of our top level soccer players are on the smaller size is the the bigger guys have gone off to play GAA or Rugby. Top level sportsmen like Paul O'Connell, Brian O'Driscoll, Darragh Ó Sé, Kieran Donaghy, Dan Callaghan would probably excel at any sport they happened to concentrate on from an early age.
The didn't choose soccer and have excelled in their chosen field. It is a fact of life I'm afraid.
While we are a country close in size to Scotland we will never hope to have continous success at international level as we play too many sports!
the irish disapora had completely different experiences to the english who emigrated, as you should know
the point was that it isnt a myth, there is a relationship between celtic fc and ireland, whether you like that or not
american navy? yeah funny!
Scotland may have a population only 20% higher than ours, but what people seem to forget is this. Professional football as we know it, was invented by Scottish people and the first paid players in England were imported from Scotland. So they have a tradition going back to the 19th Century.
Thanks partly to The Football Trust in the UK Scottish grounds gained a lot of state aided investment to improve their facilities in the 1980's and 1990's.
I think there are two different strands in those who '' support'' cross channel football in this country. Those who actually go, are not in my view the biggest problem. You stand a better chance of getting them to go to one or two ELOI games in the summer than the other grouping. The many thousands who think ''supporting'' their team consists of buying a replica shirt and shouting at a TV screen while swilling pints..... THEY ARE THE REAL PROBLEM! They don't go to games in either England or Scotland, never mind Ireland. And they are the biggest non attending so called expert critics of the domestic product.
Mind you, as I have said before in other fora... when your Chief Executive Officer of your Football Association is a fan of a foreign club, and your Prime Minister is too, what chance do you have?
The Chief Executive of the SFA has not to my knowledge ever confessed to supporting Sunderland.
Nor is Scotland's first minister a huge fan of Rosenborg Trondheim !
Quick question for those here that say they support celtic because of the "Irish connection". Why not Hibs?
Last edited by Hibs4Ever; 09/10/2007 at 10:01 AM.
Because Hibs are crap
Also, correct me if I'm wrong but you're not as likely to get sectarian sing songs out of the Hibs fans as the majority of them are Protestant??
See, no fun whatsoever
Because Hibs are crap
Also, correct me if I'm wrong but you're not as likely to get sectarian sing songs out of the Hibs fans as the majority of them are Protestant??
See, no fun whatsoever
If you're not gonna give a normal response why bother at all
I genuinely hand on heart think that those are the two main reasonsIf you're not gonna give a normal response why bother at all
And I'm sure a lot of people would agree with me.
Do you honestly think if Hibs had the 239 titles or whatever it is that Celtic would still be the bigger club with the Oirish??
So your answer is gloryhunters then?
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