Dublin Football

Is it just me getting a tiny bit worried as Kildare man, but yet another Leinster under-21 title last night and another team considered to be one of the best the county has produced. That's six out of the last seven Leinster senior titles, three of the last four Leinster under-21 titles and two of the last three Leinster minor titles. A lot of those underage titles are coinciding with the fact their monster sponsorship deal now means they can harness the talent within a massive population. It's a bit like a league with just Manchester United and the bottom half of the Premier League.

Sure there are Dublin clubs with more football coaches than Kildare GAA has. In fairness to them they're putting great work in and are very well organised, and players like Kilkenny would come through under any system, but the amount of money and resources being pumped in there is scary.
Hard not to see them continuing to dominate the Leinster SFC for a long time to come.

It is unfair though? Remember that idea to split them in two - I think that was born out of the GAA getting worried that financially and in terms of numbers and by extension on the field, most others don't stand a chance and it's monopolising the biggest provincial championship slowly but surely.

I said it before in another post. Clubs in Dublin have massive resources, setups and numbers. A lot of the bigger clubs have full time coaches. We cannot compete with the money Dublin are pumping in. We are trying and now we have finacial problems. The GAA has gone way too "professional " in my opinion and it cannot be sustained. My own club struggle to fund raise and to keep the bank balance in the black. Yet these super clubs in Dublin seem to have unlimited resourses. I am envious. I can see Dublin dominating Leinster for years with the odd blip.

i understand where yis are coming from lads but if money is what makes the success well why then have kilkenny dominated so strongly in hurling over the past. i dont see that they are pumping in huge resources of money. or that they have massive sponsors. i do believe alot comes down to the interest of the lads involved coupled with good coaching structures and facilities etc. what would stop kildare getting a major sponsor like dublin did. (reports are that gilroy organmised vodafone on his own). surely someone might gamble on a team, on the verge of the big break through. sometimes a manager might have to play other roles other than football related roles. might be something to look at. anyone any ideas of big money companies in the kildare area. alot of big stud farms owned by multi millionaire sheiks. we might be the next big spenders .

The Dublin team that won last night were taken the distance by the corresponding Kildare minor team in 2009 - we lost after extra time in the replay down in Carlow.

Obviously players develop at different stages and some lads fade away due to injuries and such but one has to question why there has been such a fall off in Kildare between minor and u21 in recent years. 5 to 10 years ago it was the other way around - good u21 results but poor at minor level. Great work has been done with regard to the development squads in Kildare recently but u21 is the most important grade after senior level and it is massively important for future progress that Kildare are consistently competitive at u21 level. Our recent poor performance at u21 level can't be solely down to poor management can it?

We've underperformed massively at U21 level. Basically we had a top class U21 manager for one year and we reached an All-Ireland final, with a team that wasn't as highly regarded as others that have flopped badly in Leinster. It's a shame that Glenn couldn't do it a few more years before eventually taking over from McGeeney. Almost every year for the past five or six we've had decent talent at U21 but he almost took us the distance in his only year while everyone else has failed.
To me U21 is the big test of all your underage work and the only one that ultimately has a bearing on your senior team. Most counties that are successful at senior are built out of some good U21 teams. That's why it's so worrying that Dublin have won three of the past four Leinster U21s.

I'm full of admiration and envy of the Dubs' setup at underage.

They were struggling big-time in this area up until about ten years ago when a strategic plan was put in place. Coaching structures, exposure to best practice in strength and conditioning, nutrition etc.
They adopted the development squads model, got the best qualified coaches involved at underage level (with specialist fitness/conditioning experts to assist/complement). They are reaping the rewards now and good luck to them.

For what it's worth, I think we are catching up in terms of having a similar system in place.

Money is undoubtedly a factor but I think they have had to fight harder for market share in Dublin too, in terms of player numbers and rival sports etc. We are guilty of being a little casual about this here in Kildare.

The clubs in Dublin are generally well run because they have to be. Having a well run club impresses parents who are making up their mind about which sport to send little Johnny on a Saturday morning.

was at de u 14 devolpment squad game , kildare v dublin in trim last year . couldnt believe how well dublin prepared . A guy up dere told me dat dey were after doin a full week in training camp in dcu .hard 2 compete with that

lollypop wrote:

was at de u 14 devolpment squad game , kildare v dublin in trim last year . couldnt believe how well dublin prepared . A guy up dere told me dat dey were after doin a full week in training camp in dcu .hard 2 compete with that

who won?

Yes the dubs are very strong at all levels at the moment especially underage. Yes it is worrying being in Leinster with them but all we can do is raise our own bar to compete with them.

Lets not stand back in awe at them.

We may be behind in terms of structures and sure, full credit to them, this is not a go at Dublin, just a look at the imbalance. Yes there may be slightly more competition from other sports and in these figures there may be a few non-Dubs in Dublin although when you consider Kildare it's probably all relative. But going to get increasingly hard to compete with a million euro of sponsorship money a year along with a population of 1.25million when you have maybe 150,000 or so (guesstimating that) to spend on 250,000 people. That's before we go near league gate receipts and this is taking Kildare, the sixth biggest county in the country into consideration, never mind a Carlow or Longford. So the natural advantage is there in terms of footballers because for every 1 Johnny Doyle, they should be producing five and if you've 10 times more money to get kids interested and then spend on coaching and development, that will only increased.

And sorry, that should read seventh biggest county although if you exclude half of Derry and more than half of Antrim, in terms of Gaelic population that could be fifth.

[quote="ChopperDalton"]

lollypop wrote:

was at de u 14 devolpment squad game , kildare v dublin in trim last year . couldnt believe how well dublin prepared . A guy up dere told me dat dey were after doin a full week in training camp in dcu .hard 2 compete with that

who won?[/quote



Dublin did, can't remember the score, they were fast and strong, had some very talented players right up the middle, and this is only guys picked from dublin south!

in fairness to our lads, think this may have been our first blitz, think it may be the same two squads that are playing each other this Monday, so should be interesting to see how we get on.

[in fairness to our lads, think this may have been our first blitz, think it may be the same two squads that are playing each other this Monday, so should be interesting to see how we get on.quote]

Your right Ban go leir It was the lads first blitz i think they were only together 3 or 4 weeks when that blitz took place ,was at that match myself Kildare were winning by two pts till the half then Dublin took over if i remember .In fairness to the lads though Kildare were swapping lads in and out even some of the stronger lads .Kildare went on to win out the Leinster blitz in Ballykelly in the end.Being Dublin there gonna be strong so the game should be a cracker ,the kildare coachs have been doing great work for the last few months with the team.

Vodafone will have a field day when he sees this!

Taibi wrote:

Vodafone will have a field day when he sees this!

The Title of the thread says it ALL

Your dammed if you do

Then there are exceptions for thoses here who can post a thread of this nature when it suits

Back to the Thread , We are fortunate in UNMENTIONABLE in some regards , sponsorship been the for most , and the amount of coaching available , but it levels out once you hit intercounty senior grade

How though? If you have a bigger choice of players and have the money through sponsorship and gate receipts to coach all those extra players, then logically for every one player another county produces, then you will produce a lot more. And also, for every star that didn't come through coaching, for every one that springs up in another county, again you will have more. It's logic.

Ohtoohtobe wrote:

We've underperformed massively at U21 level. Basically we had a top class U21 manager for one year and we reached an All-Ireland final, with a team that wasn't as highly regarded as others that have flopped badly in Leinster. It's a shame that Glenn couldn't do it a few more years before eventually taking over from McGeeney. Almost every year for the past five or six we've had decent talent at U21 but he almost took us the distance in his only year while everyone else has failed.
To me U21 is the big test of all your underage work and the only one that ultimately has a bearing on your senior team. Most counties that are successful at senior are built out of some good U21 teams. That's why it's so worrying that Dublin have won three of the past four Leinster U21s.

This is spot on. Kildare have produced players in the last four or five years but have found way not to win Leinsters at minor and U21 over the last three years despite being the best team in the province. That's nobody's fault but Kildare's.

Kildare won Leinster titles at u14 and 16 last year, thankfully young Kildare footballers are not in awe of all this money being spent on Dublin. It never ceases to amaze me how many people see the grass greener on the other side all the time. I can assure you that Kildare development squads are well looked after and well coached. Preparations for NEXT years minor panel starts tonight with an u17 trial in TMH and this will continue for the next few weeks, when this is complete the players selected will begin strength, conditioning and coaching programmes before being handed over to minor management in October. Kildare do have a plan all that's need now is a break through

Exactly, that's what I'm saying BAllyboy. The coaching, teh system has produced the players, we have seen them. But the U21 has been one massive underachievement since 2009 onwards, and the minors of two years ago absolutely blew a Leinster, or it was blown. There could have been a Leinster in 2009 as well.

Wasn't the point I'm making though. I'm simply stating as the fifth biggest county in Gaelic games, even we cannot compete or won't be able to down the line on the simple basis, if a county of well over one million now has money and is getting richer by economies of scale to coach all those kids, then naturally they will produce more players of a higher calibre. Which Kildare will struggle with but how in the name of God or Longford or Carlow ever supposed to compete with.

I see your point TK, they have a greater population, and can pump more money into coaching at underage, but can the same not also be said for other codes around the capital. A child growing up in lonford, will not have the same amenities around them than a child growing up around the city. The child from dublin, has numerous other big clubs i.e soccer, rugby looking for them to play. The opportunities for a talented 14/15 year old to play soccer in Dublin would be a lot greater than other counties.

I was at the U15 blitz in hawkfield on Monday! I thought the standard between ourselves and the dubs was staggering. Don't know why, if they were just caught out or missing many players, or how serious they took the game but they couldnt live with us in the first half, it was about 10mins before they even mounted a serious attack. This same development squad beat our lads last year! They use to have a county player involved, they don't now! Our guys have been together for a full year, with the same management team, we have improved, hard to tell how much, but we are definitely going in the right direction! As other posters have said, all we need is to turn this development squad effort into minor and u21 silverware! Hopefully Saturday will be the start of this!

was also in hawkfield on monday an was amazed with the difference in class , got chatin to a dub and he said soccer had taken at least 4 starters from dere team . they hoped to get dem back at some stage if de soccer didnt work out . also said de rugby was huge in de schools up dere as well

You compete or you die. You improve with each new innovation, you keep pushing the bar. That's elite sport. If you don't, you die. That's why GAA has been a professional sport now for about ten or 15 years. Longford, Carlow, Waterford, Wicklow and co haven't been competing at that level - the elite top level, which is I presume what you're talking about Tommy - for many, many years, so there'll be no change. Kildare have competed but not actually won at the top level with any consistency since the early part of the 20th century. I would imagine it will be the same, try and pick up the odd title here and there but Tyrone are the proof that a new county can break through and win All-Irelands at minor, U21 and senior. Money is needed in the modern game and that's what Club Kildare and the financial committee of the county board is there for. They're the realities