Kildare League Fixtures 2013

Kildare County Board, hang your heads in shame.

No matter what way the game is marketed against Donegal, there'll be a shocking atmosphere. Dublin will bring most of the crowd, and if you think it's hard to get them out of a bar on a Sunday morning for the first of a double-header, try Saturday evening.

dublin v cork is saturday night game on 2 feb

fone wrote:

dublin v cork is saturday night game on 2 feb

And presumably Kildare v Donegal is the warm up game?

Kildare v Donegal 5:00pm
Dublin v Cork 7:00pm

can't see 60-70k making a great deal of difference to st conleths , it's well past the time for getting some plans together and proper costings of what it would take to make it a 12-15 k capacity with proper toilets and dressing rooms warm up area etc

Tail wagging the dog surely at county board level. Were there any plans in place to fix up Conleth's? Were they costed and was there a timeframe? Did they look to Fas? And suddenly some money thrown at them so they go back on a promise even though they don't know what the money can do. Just seems a mess and they are all over the place at the minute. There's this, no word on sponsorship, huge debts and so on...

Not happy about this and just wonder how the players feel? Have said I will go to these matches to support the team and still hope to but not sure who is taking us for a ride more the GAA our or own County Board!!!

According to the local paper last week they have volunteers willing and ready to start work on conleths. The issue was that they couldnt afford the matierials.60K would go a long way for just matierials i would think.

Depends what healthy and safety deemed unsafe. Anyone know?

What a shambolic situation we find ourselves in. And its not because we moved the game to Croker or because Conleths is in a state. We've moved games in the past and Conleths is in a state since the 90's. It's purely down to McEvoy and McMahon in recent times stating that our home games would be played in Conleths. The ink is not even dry on the newspaper print.

It reminds me when Brian Lenihan was stating to RTE we weren't getting a bailout from Europe, whilst he had already agreed the bailout terms. They have absolutely no Credibility.

All this about Croker conveniently released after the county convention whereby any position is already decided.

What's worse is this pillock McMahon was reelected by the Kildare GAA fraternity.

I can see the merit behind moving the games to Croker on monetary grounds but what a bunch of spinless, gutless liars and chancers we have in the County Board.

I'll go to the matches and support the players, but I'll be cancelling my Club Kildare no doubt about it. It's not worth paying membership to Club Kildare to have entitlements taken away from you.

The worse thing about all of this is that the actions of the county board seem to be irrelevant at a local level. It's like they can do what they wish and get away with it. Unanswerable to anyone in effect.

Johnny / how many club games do you go to during the year on your Club Kildare card ?

I would not go to as many club games as many on this site. But even I would have got full value from Club Kildare card during the year even with the movement of Senior County games during year away from Newbridge -

I still think Club Kildare is value for money.

And surely Club Kildare is not to blame for this debacle.

€60,000 would not fix the toilets up in Newbridge. We have been sold down the river. Another Shameful day in Kildare GAA.

From the Star last week;

GAA Spring a €500,000 leak

The GAA could lose out on €500,000 next year if they are unable to resolve their ongoing row with Kildare.

The Association wants the Lilywhites to play at least one of their Allianz League Division 1 games at Croke Park next season.

However, the Kildare County Board are determined to stage all of their home games at St Conleth’s Park in Newbridge. If they have their way it will threaten the 2013 Spring Series, which was due to see Dublin footballers based in Headquarters. Because the Dubs’ hurlers were relegated to Division 1B earlier in the year, they will play most of their home games in Parnell Park next season.

This means GAA fixture makers are looking for other attractive ties to stage as part of double-headers. One of these was due to be Kildare’s home clash with All-Ireland champions Donegal on the opening day of the campaign — Saturday, February 3. But with the Lilywhites digging their heels in, the Spring Series may have to be cancelled.

The first year the series was run was 2011, and this is also the most recent years that figures for GAA gate receipts are currently available. Dublin played four regular season home games at Croke Park, against Cork, Kerry, Mayo and Down. Those four games combined brought in almost €640,000 through gate receipts. This works out at €160,000 per game. The average take in the other 24 Division games in 2010 was €22,000.

The 2011 League final was also played at Croke Park and Dublin’s 2010 All-Ireland semi-final rematch with the Rebels brought in an impressive €250,000 in gate receipts. If Dublin are forced to play their home games at Parnell Park next year, they will only be able to fit in 9,000 spectators. Far fewer than that usually watch the Dubs at their Donnycarney home, and that would see the take on the turnstiles plummet.

This would hit Croke Park hard in the pocket, leaving them with a €500,000 million hole in their takings.

Dublin’s home football games next year are against Cork on February 2, beaten All-Ireland finalists Mayo on March 2, Tyrone on March 16 and Down on March 24. So far their clash with Down in the only match scheduled for a Sunday afternoon, as all final round games have to be played at the same time. The only fixture due to be part of a double-header with the Dubs’ hurlers is on March 16, with the stick men up against Limerick.

To make for a more appealing package for punters, the GAA are keen to get other counties from Leinster involved in the Spring Series. They see Kildare-Donegal, a repeat of last year’s epic All-Ireland quarter-final, as an ideal pairing, with the Sam Maguire holders sure to bring a big crowd. Newbridge used to hold around 20,000 fans, but recent health and safety rulings have reduced this to barely 6,000.

Most counties are happy to play in Croke Park before the start of the Championship, in order to gain experience at the biggest stadium in Ireland. The Lilywhites are determined to play at St Conleth’s Park however. This may be sign of a protest against central GAA, who Kildare feel badly handled the controversial transfer of Seanie Johnston from Cavan.

Dublin County Board Chairman Andy Kettle says the Spring Series may not go ahead if the fixtures aren’t nailed down in the next week. He says tickets have to be put on sale as soon as possible, in order to capture the lucrative pre-Christmas market. Talks between Kildare and Croke Park are expected to take place this week.

So if this report is anywhere near accurate then the GAA are going to rake in a sizable amount of cash from the Spring Series going ahead, now we'll only be partaking in half of it but does just over 10% of the profit not seem a bit small to some people? If it's that valuable to the GAA then would it have been reasonable for us to look for a higher return on the profits?

€60,000 - €70,000 is still a decent chunk of cash for the county board given the level of debt. But surely any extra income generated would have previously been earmarked by the GAA / county board to helping service that debt rather than being spent on Conleths.

Bit of Devils advocate here, maybe by playing the two games in Croke Park the county board has taken the only chance it is likely to get to improve the ground and bring it up to more acceptable health and safety standards, possible long term gain for short term suffering and bad will with the fans? Although would any of us be surprised if another committee looked at things this time next year and decided again it was unsuitable for large crowds?

People won't travel, and they're fully entitled to take that standpoint, it's probably the only way to make the GAA and Croke Park aware of the feelings of many fans, it's doubtful the people they're making a stand against will care much though.

Imagine how well the shop in Whitewater would have done after matches against the All Ireland champs and Dublin? The pubs and shops would do a good trade too no doubt.

Surely though it's only a matter of time before the novelty of the Spring Series starts to wear off for the more casual fan, there's only so many times Aslan and Jedward and the likes can be rolled out during matches in a two thirds empty stadium with feck all atmosphere.

flourman wrote:

Johnny / how many club games do you go to during the year on your Club Kildare card ?

I would not go to as many club games as many on this site. But even I would have got full value from Club Kildare card during the year even with the movement of Senior County games during year away from Newbridge -

I still think Club Kildare is value for money.

And surely Club Kildare is not to blame for this debacle.

I agree wholeheartedly that Club Kildare are not to blame for it. But how else are fans to have a voice.

It's quite obvious that if the fans were deciding the Chairman position, McMahon would certainly not be there. It's fairly obvious that the current set up has no regard for the fans or indeed the people of Newbridge who could have done with the business after Christmas.

Again we'll not be told (its like this mythical health and safety report on Conleth that has never seen the light of day) but exactly what did the chairman do in his attempt to have these games played in Conleths Park.

Also they should have kept the mouth shut, not play lip service in the run up to the Convention and leave yourself with some sort of credibility.

So according to the Star report, Croke Park were going to lose out on €500,000 if they could not get Kildare to bend over and salvage the Dublins spring series. What do we do, settle for €60-70000, when we should have been looking for double that if we had any men with balls in charge.

The equation was simple for the GAA, Dublin +County X = money, without County X there is no money, so we had them for once coming to us looking for a hand. We should have said to them, we get €200,000 you get a €300,000 and everyone is happy. If you don't agree we still play our games in Newbridge and you get nothing. But what did we do, we let them off with a measly €60,000. A child could have seen they were in trouble with no Spring series and we had a large bargaining chip. Opportunities to turn the screw like that happen once in a decade. Amateur people for an Amateur organisation.

It just gets worse the more I read about it.

Couldn't agree more Mr O'Reilly.

To make things worse we are the only team conceding home venue for the spring series.

These are the lads currently negotiating a sponsorship deal for Kildare.

We surely must be considered somewhat of a joke in GAA headquarters.

When you think of what has went on in the county over the last year. From debts, bailouts, no stadium, conceding home advantage and Seanie Johnston playing hurling. You'd wonder have we any real leadership

Am I missing something here?

Lets say we have a capacity of 6k in Newbridge? Two games is 12k. Tenner a head is 120k. We've settled for 70k. Surely I've missed something.

Yes Hawker you missed a big issue.

The Gate for National League games goes to Central Council

The Home team gets a Ground Rent of 10 or 15%, and of course when you take out Club Kildare, Season Tickets, Kids, all the Teams, staff, stewards from the 6,000 capacity, lucky if 3,500 pay so the Rent from that is only around €5 or 6,000 per game, do an extra 50,000 is in question.

I still believe Ke should have stayed in Newbridge but then as a BIFFO, its not for me to shout that loud.

Baba O' Reily wrote:

So according to the Star report, Croke Park were going to lose out on €500,000 if they could not get Kildare to bend over and salvage the Dublins spring series. What do we do, settle for €60-70000, when we should have been looking for double that if we had any men with balls in charge.

The equation was simple for the GAA, Dublin +County X = money, without County X there is no money, so we had them for once coming to us looking for a hand. We should have said to them, we get €200,000 you get a €300,000 and everyone is happy. If you don't agree we still play our games in Newbridge and you get nothing. But what did we do, we let them off with a measly €60,000. A child could have seen they were in trouble with no Spring series and we had a large bargaining chip. Opportunities to turn the screw like that happen once in a decade. Amateur people for an Amateur organisation.

It just gets worse the more I read about it.

Baba the €500k was based on Dublin playing in Croke Park on 4 occassions. We're down to play twice. That cuts the profit in half so we're down to €250k. In addition to that you're forgetting about Cork and Donegal. If we got a 25% share of the double header and a 50% share of the stand alone game (even though our support won't be as big as that of the Dubs) that would give us €93,750.

If the figure that's been reported here as being €60k - €70k turned out to be inaccurate (because that's what I'm hearing) and was in fact higher than the €93,750 I've calculated above, would that cause you to revise your opinion of the County Board ?

No, because after all their talk about keeping the games they waited to after the Convention to announce it. This decision has not been made in a week, they must have been on going talks and none of them had the guts to come out and tell the truth.

As for your numbers, I as an ordinary Kildare supporter will never know how much they got. I highly doubt they will be getting €100,000 and I even doubt they will get €60,000 in the end. What I do know is they had 30 pieces of silver lying around and have used it accordingly to betray the Kildare support.

The least they can do is apologise, but we won't even get that. They may take down the Kildare GAA flag in Newbridge and just put up a flag with two fingers on it.

I take your point about them talking about keeping the games in Newbridge before Convention and now doing a uturn. However, you can't have it both ways. You can't accuse them of not negotiating strongly enough on one hand and then selling out for "30 pieces of silver" on the other.

As an ordinary Kildare supporter too I can assure you that we will find out how much they're getting. It will be reported at Convention, the same way we were told that Kildare only got €12k this year from the Tyrone fixture.

Fear An Geata wrote:

I take your point about them talking about keeping the games in Newbridge before Convention and now doing a uturn. However, you can't have it both ways. You can't accuse them of not negotiating strongly enough on one hand and then selling out for "30 pieces of silver" on the other.

As an ordinary Kildare supporter too I can assure you that we will find out how much they're getting. It will be reported at Convention, the same way we were told that Kildare only got €12k this year from the Tyrone fixture.

I presume the 'never, never' talk was negotiation. You don't come out and say, 'ah yeah, no bother' and take the first offer. Seems to have worked if they got at the least, more than double per game what they got last time and maybe four times if Fear is correct?

I understand the disappointment but this talk of, why didn't they make it all-ticket and won't someone think of the gods is a bit rich. All-ticket at 6,000, there'd have been a lot of disappointed kids.

Sometimes you have to piss people off short term to make long term gain. The fact is that maybe a few thousand people that would have tried to get into all-ticket home games won't see them in Croker, but Kildare will be anything from €60,000 to €100,000 better off. Of course some of those few thousand people mightn't have managed to get tickets anyway, but at least now they'll get to see the game on TV, while some not-so-disappointed kids will get to visit Croker, Kildare will get to play in Croker and the county board will have gotten a big boost in bid to dig itself out of the mire and maybe ensure that St Conleth's Park gets back in a position to facilitate 10,000 people coming in the gates.

But as I said, I do understand the disappointment of those that genuinely cannot afford to go to Dublin.

Wasn't expecting any other comment from you Ogie.

Like all the other local journalists Callaghan, McNally, O'Brien you all seem to tow the party line and not ask any real hard questions of the lads at the top.

It's all very nicely nicely to get the interviews post training and post big games.

You'll not fall out of the circle with that post, rest assured.

Johnny Maher - with a post as harsh as that it has to be said you picked an appropriate name for the forum..............

Reports irish independent the dublim game could a friday night game