Originally Posted by runwiththewind

It is/was an idea put forward, to hold a European Grand Prix races there to make up for the lost of rental money from rugby and soccer. It's certainly worth considering. These Grand Prix are huge events and attracts huge sponsorship and all the top athletes. Big money to be earned for them but blocked I believe, by Athletics Ireland.

I think it's too late for schools as most of them are build on a postage size grounds, consequently there is no space, and to give new schools top class sporting facilities, well you know how that will end up. Besides not enough male teachers today, female teachers have no interest in sport. Lets face it, the GAA are the only sporting organization that can run anything in this country. 68m profit in 2010 compared to 40 m for soccer and most of that went on repaying their share of Aviva.

I was under the impression that the FAI have a deficit of around €64 million!

Originally Posted by Dylan2010

I'd say the GAA's parish rule would need to go if they got involved with other sports.

Sure, whatever is needed. I use it as a starting point for a young athlete. First make your club team, and then county, province, country. It's the competitive element that would be available at an early age.

Track and field are basically individual sports so the rule wouldn't be so restrictive like in a team sport. But you get the gist of what I'm saying.

Originally Posted by birthday

I was under the impression that the FAI have a deficit of around €64 million!

It was SR who gave me that number. I didn't question him as he is a big League of Ireland fan and soccer fan.

Originally Posted by Dylan2010

I'm dubious of schools playing a bigger role in sports, I tend not to take the sports my kids do in school seriously, the quality of the teaching can be ropey and if the whole class do a particular sport the quality will be crap. you need to find the sports that individual kids and their parents are prepared to invest in and this in most cases will need clubs not connected to schools (while they might on occassion use a schools facilities).

As an example, how far is the nearest soccer club, boxing, rowing, cycling, athletics club from your home in comparison to the nearest gaa club? Not asking for names, just miles.

Originally Posted by rockofcashel

with the rep.?

What's the "rep".. as for New Zealand being a world leader in rugby.. we're world leaders in Gaelic Football and Hurling.. it's not our fault that other countries never bothered to play those sports as well. And let's be brutally frank.. being world leaders in rugby, means they are the best team out of maybe 5/6 genuine contenders to be world leaders.. and I'm not knocking rugby, I'm a big fan.. but it's still a fairly minor sport in terms of global participation

the rep is a abbriveation of the republic (as of ireland).this obviously is unacceptable to your tiny mind that alleges ru (i'll spell it out ,rugby union)is not a major internatonal sport.you fail to address the issue of nz(new zealand) perfoming vastly superior to ourselves.you go on about gaelic games ,what % of the world plays them.you can take the bog from the man but..........

Originally Posted by runwiththewind

As an example, how far is the nearest soccer club, boxing, rowing, cycling, athletics club from your home in comparison to the nearest gaa club? Not asking for names, just miles.

I live in Dublin D4 so probably as good as it gets in Ireland for general access to facilities. I'm not sure what your point is but you need to balance ease of access with getting the numbers who are interested. Clearily getting every primary kid in a particular school to do athletics or gymnastics is a waste of time likewise in rural areas having an athletics club in every "parish" will mean poor facilities for training

Originally Posted by Dylan2010

I live in Dublin D4 so probably as good as it gets in Ireland for general access to facilities. I'm not sure what your point is but you need to balance ease of access with getting the numbers who are interested. Clearily getting every primary kid in a particular school to do athletics or gymnastics is a waste of time likewise in rural areas having an athletics club in every "parish" will mean poor facilities for training

So Dublin 4 has all these facilities purely because it has a greater proportion of interested individuals? unlikely. While facilities in every parish might mean these facilities are not top class, for underage or club level they dont need to be. What is critical is to get young people participating in a variety of sports at a young age and then have the individuals in place who can identify those with potential.

I think the GAA is welll placed to do this. it has the land and clubhouse facilities in place, it has a great netowrk of volunteers who are interested in sport, not just in GAA. Any GAA folk here who think it could work?

Originally Posted by langrishe

So Dublin 4 has all these facilities purely because it has a greater proportion of interested individuals? unlikely. While facilities in every parish might mean these facilities are not top class, for underage or club level they dont need to be. What is critical is to get young people participating in a variety of sports at a young age and then have the individuals in place who can identify those with potential.

I think the GAA is welll placed to do this. it has the land and clubhouse facilities in place, it has a great netowrk of volunteers who are interested in sport, not just in GAA. Any GAA folk here who think it could work?

dont get me wrong, it makes sense to leverage existing facilities but even in Dublin I doubt there is any dedicated gymnastic facilities, there are a few clubs that run on a shoe string using school halls where thay have to seup up and takedown their equipment after each session.
Even living near town we still have to do an inordinate amount of driving to get to my kids sports.

Originally Posted by patfitzbally

the rep is a abbriveation of the republic (as of ireland).this obviously is unacceptable to your tiny mind that alleges ru (i'll spell it out ,rugby union)is not a major internatonal sport.you fail to address the issue of nz(new zealand) perfoming vastly superior to ourselves.you go on about gaelic games ,what % of the world plays them.you can take the bog from the man but..........

What a really stupid post..

1. rep. might have computed in my mind as Republic (sic.) if you had bothered to use a capital R when abbreviating it, and if its use have made sense in the context of your original post, but you didn't and it didn't, so why are you surprised I asked you to spell it out.. no pun intended.

2. I never alleged that Rugby was a "minor" international sport.. I simply pointed out that in terms of being the "best in the world" at it, New Zealand are simply the "best amongst" 5/6 teams at most. NZ, SA, England, France.. that's it in terms of possible winners of the World Cup, with potentially Wales getting lucky once in a century.. No US, China, India, Russia, Brazil etc etc etc ... so being World Champions in Rugby, is about as much of an achievement as the US being the world champions in baseball.. who'd probably get a decent game off Cuba or Japan etc etc ..

3. I don't "go on about Gaelic Games".. I simply point out the fact that they are one of the main reasons Ireland doesn't perform as well as other countries of similar size, in terms of "field" sports, because we play Gaelic Games so extensively. I think there is no doubt we'd have a better soccer and rugby team in terms of international competition, if there wasn't the same competition from GAA as we have.

Do I have a problem with this ? Not at all.. I am hugely proud of the GAA and what they have achieved, and what they do in the community.. fair play to them. So what if they don't have an international dimension, I am proud of their "Irishness"...

Finally, if being proud of the GAA makes me a "bog man".. I am a soccer coach, and am hugely proud of the fact that my local rugby team has gone from being a lowly junior team in the last few years, to getting to the Third Division of the AIL this season..

I love all sports.. but I wouldn't denigrate one sport to talk about another..

Nor would I make a facile comparison between the sporting "success".. or lack of it.. between one country and another

And so far, NZ have won 7 medals in these games.. but 5 have been in rowing..

Ireland could also conceivably win 5 medals.. boxing could deliver 3, possibly even 4, sailing is still very much a possibility, and so is showjumping.. so don't knock Ireland just yet

Originally Posted by Dylan2010

dont get me wrong, it makes sense to leverage existing facilities but even in Dublin I doubt there is any dedicated gymnastic facilities, there are a few clubs that run on a shoe string using school halls where thay have to seup up and takedown their equipment after each session.
Even living near town we still have to do an inordinate amount of driving to get to my kids sports.

I take your point. The location of such centres depends on the nature of the sport as well: GAA clubs could certainly incorprate track and field i think; Gymnastics could be done within schools; swimming obviusly requires pools which may be trickier to provde just because of cost; rowing and cycling could be done with some investment. The greatest requirment would be time and voluntray help