I was in the arsehole of Ireland at a GAA game recently and both team sheets were in Irish.
What the fuck is this? I enquired of a bony-headed Blasket Island looking type.
Hah, he exclaimed, exulting in the discovery of an infidel in his people's midst. Can you not speak your mother tongue?
Can you not write the Queen's English? I replied, endearing myself to the entire club in a heart beat.
The GAA, their ideological hang ups and token Gaelic speaking.
Every sign on the club notice board and in the car park was written in English. Everyone was speaking in English. But when it comes to naming the teams everyone is fucking called, Angus Óg Mhureseahctachttagiscannell, who once played, invariably, for Éire Og.
Even the players don't know what they are called.
How do you pronounce my name, Paddy?
Fucked if I know, Mick.
And it doesn't stop there. For those of you familiar with match balls the GAA use O'Neill footballs. If you hold them up to you ear long enough after a fodder of Guinness they'll belt out a few bars of The Wolfe Tones or Foster & Allen.
Soccer usually uses Mitre footballs. As far as I can determine there is no difference between the weight and circumference of either ball.
Meantime, midway through watching 30 individuals in the pursuit of pure unadulterated muck savagery, they ran out of O'Neill's balls.
One footballer, a thoroughbred muck savage, had ballooned the only three of them out of the ground. It was a hat-trick of sorts.
Not content with having acres of space to fong the thing into, he langered it out over the stand onto the main road, three times. The bastard couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo.
He shouldn't have been let out without a guide dog – and he was their top scorer.
One of the sides threw on a Mitre football to get the game re-started but the ref, also called Angus Og Mhureseahcttagiscannell, picked up the ball, looked at it with the same expression you'd reserve for a zit on the end of your nose, and dropped it like a hot cake.
We're not using that, he said, folding his arms petulantly. He was aligning himself with the men of 1916 no doubt. Remember the Great Famine, Cromwell and Shakin Stevens.
Incidentally, Shaky disappeared off the scene for a few years back and the Viz comic ran a quiz asking readers to send it suggestions as to where he was. Some sly fucker wrote in suggesting he was "behind the green door" and won 20 quid. Bastard. Sometimes it pays to give the obvious answer.
Anyway, the game was held up for nearly 10 minutes until one of the O'Neill balls, a patriotic Irish orb, was retrieved.
Such is the carry-on at some GAA clubs on any given match day. However, GAA chiefs, whilst encouraging players able to dribble out of both side of their mouths simultaneously during post match interviews, are not as thick as they let on.
A few years back you couldn't get them to open the doors to Croke Park to those beastly foreign games, but these days the Jones's road venue is like a whore house.
The GAA have been sending out feelers to the IRFU and FAI for the last weeks letting them know that they will still be, cough, open for business even after the opening of the Aviva Stadium (revamped Lansdowne Road) next year.
And why wouldn't they be eager to keep their tenants on board? They've already made millions for basically handing over the keys to the front door.
The GAA have a big house. Their imposing Cathedral can hold 83,000 depraved muck savages. But the Aviva Stadium will only have a capacity for 50,000 when it is built. For the last number of seasons you will have noticed that every rugby international and most soccer internationals have been sold out at Croke Park.
Indeed, given the magnificent exploits of our rugby team, you could sell another 50,000 tickets on top of the above if you had the capacity. So, obviously, if you have a market for 83,000 – and more – you go away and build a capacity for 50,000, 33,000 less than the existing demand. It makes perfect business sense doesn't it?
It does if you've just had a full frontal lobotomy like most of the people in the IRFU, FAI and Bertie Ahern's government, who signed off on this debacle five years ago.
Meanwhile, a request has already gone in to the Oireachtas All-Party Committee on Sports for the IRFU and FAI to play their big matches at Croke Park because the Aviva Stadium will (obviously) be too small.
If the IRFU and FAI agree to that the Aviva Stadium will become a white elephant before it even opens its doors.
If I was a GAA man I'd be on my knees laughing.
Finally, Ireland, the Six Nations reigning champions, will soon have the smallest venue in the world – with the biggest demand for tickets.
Only in Ireland.
Six Nations Rugby Grounds and capacity:
Twickenham: 82,000
Stade de France: 81,000
Millennium Stadium: 74,500
Murrayfield: 67,000
Aviva Stadium: 50,000
Stadio Flaminio: 32,000 (It is reported that the Italians will soon move to the Stadio Olimpico which has a capacity of 73,000)
But Bock, won't the IRFU and FAI have some kind of contract with AVIVA that would stop them playing their games in Croker?
The GAA have got €36 million out of "foreign games" not bad, that'll buy a few more O'Neills balls.
36 million. Jesus fucking wept. I thought it was bad, but not that bad. The GAA are laughing all the way to the bank. This is that fucker Aherns fault also by the way.
Well yes it is a fucking joke,The Irfu and the FAI went for the big corporate image stadium with fine dining and underground parking for its directors.Now they are going to lose their arses on every game that is played there,what the fuck were they thinking and how did the irfu get it all so wrong when they have got everything else right in the last few years.
This means one thing and one thing only…….ridiculously overpriced tickets.This stadium is being built at a cost of e365 million,Thomond park was built for 40 million and what the hell is wrong with that stadium?I really dont understand how the aviva can cost almost ten times as much for just twice the capacity.Someone's dropped the ball somwhere.
Forget about Croke Park being used by the Irfu for a long long time,they have too many obligations to the corporate side of things and not just aviva in their new home,they're just gonna lose ridiculous money every game that is played there.
Yes indeed. Another complete screw-up by Ahern. Is there no part of the wreckage that doesn't bear that man's fingerprints? Just goes to show what happens when you put a skanger in charge of anything.
By the way Shaky hasn't totally vanished, he was behind the green door of a courtroom in Ballymena last week accused of blattering a photographer with a mic at a Xmas do in a hotel. Meanwhile the norths feeble sports and political elite have thrown out the chance of building a big state of the art stadium at the Maze opting instead to cobble together 3 smaller sheds for the punters, we don't need Bertie to mess things up, we've a whole team of skangers operating El Norte.
Bock, you can insult the Catholic Church and Fianna Fail. But when you mock the third pillar of Irish decency then you Sir have crossed a line.The GAA is like a religion to some of us. Each night i turn in the direction of Croker, take out my hang sangwiches wrapped in tin foil and hold aloft my signed Pat Spillane autobiography and recant the sacred words of Eamon Grimes from that 1973 speech. Issue a retraction for every bad word you have said against the GAA or face your house being bombarded with O Neills footballs and sliotairs.
It wasn't me. It was Mr Out.
Pheas, here's the lads on Apre Match doing Spillane, just to make your day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc7LkllDNmQ
It would be funny only for the millions the taxpayer gave for the Aviva stadium. Well over €100m I think, from memory. Ahern behaved very strangely and uncharacteristically when it came to his stadium projects, the slimy doublespeak (or nothingspeak) was nowhere in evidence. He gave more of a shit about stadiums than he did about most things. I wonder what was in it for him? some peoplle thought it was about ego, legacy, etc, but I suspect it was something more tangible, something you can touch, feel. Something you can count.
Seconds Out, you have crossed a line. Pat the Bollix Spillane (as he is known in certain parts of Cork, Dublin, Meath and most of Ulster) is a sacred institution in this great land.
Why the decision to re vamp Lansdowne road is beyond me. Dublin contains an 84,000 capacity stadium. In a small country like Ireland, more pressure should have been put on by the government to force organisations that receive taxpayer funding to share resources. Limerick has the Gaelic Grounds and Thomond Park, does a small city need 2 sports grounds when both of them spend most the the time empty (other than Heineken Cup matches). If the FF government had any balls at all, they would have told to IRFU, FAI and GAA to either fund their own stadiums or get together and agree on one shared venue.
We've always had a Holy Trinity of Fianna Fail, Church and GAA here Mr Pheasant. I could never see FF challanging the GAA on that basis, logical an all as it is.
Soccer footballs and Gaelic footballs are the same size but are not the same weight:
FIFA's regulations stipulate a weight between 410-450g.
GAA's regulations stipulate a weight between 480-500g.
May not sound like a lot but here's something to try out … get someone go about 50 yards away kick a soccer ball towards you in the air … and head it back to him … repeat the same trick with an O'Neill's … you'll soon see the difference …
In fairness to the G.A.A, they had a stipulation that all playing gear, footballs etc would be of Irish manafacture. Were it not for this I'm sure O'Neills would have closed down years ago and all teams would be wearing gear made in some Chinese or Indian sweatshop. This rule has kept a lot of Irish jobs. With regard to the Aviva stadium, after the allocation of corporate and premium tickets, there will only be 37,000 tickets available for the plebs at probably huge prices.
GAA. arse. come.
"The GAA are laughing all the way to the bank."
The GAA are going to the bank with a extremely relieved look, more like.
A few years ago their debt was about €100million. Imagine what it would
have cost just to service that debt. €2.5 million a year at the very least.
They have since got it down to €15 million, which is much more manageable.
but you have to remember that the Croke park is going to need a refit
in the next ten years. That wont be cheap.
On a GAA ticket revenue basis only Croke park actually is loss making.
It only has about6 or 7 big games a year , when it need about 20.
Of course there is the concerts and corporate events ( like FAS oppurtunites), but with the Aviva coming soon, and the downturn in the economy, these revenue streams are only going to diminish.
"This is that fucker Aherns fault also by the way."
Damn right it is
@pauleire
"they’re just gonna lose ridiculous money every game that is played there."
How do you figure that ? They wont have to pay rent to anybody? They only need to sell 15,000 or so seats to break even…How are they going to make a loss?
@pheasant
"Why the decision to re vamp Lansdowne road is beyond me. Dublin contains an 84,000 capacity stadium."
I agree with the rest of your statement – A single munical stadium in each city is the way things should have been done all along. There is too much of an obsession with bricks and mortar in the GAA ( several high profile GAA people have said the exact same thing over the past few years)
But I have to take issue with that first line. when it was opened up in 2006, It was made clear by the GAA that it would only be a temporary measure. The IRFU and FAI has not realistic alternative to revamping Landsdowne road.
My point Big Dave is if they had spent the money on a 80000 capcity stadium they would be able to sell 30000 more tickets, they will lose all this revenue from not being able to maximise their seating potential, that is obvious.
The idea they would have been able to secure the finance and the planning permission for an 80,000 capacity is farfetched. There was enough trouble getting planning permission for what they have now.
The authorities refused them the right to have anything more than a single tier at the Havelock Tce end.
you have to remember there is a big difference in the cost in building stadia. There isnt a fixed cost per seat.
the marginal cost per seat probably increases, once you get past 35,000!!
Wembley stadium cost of £827 million!!!!
Comparing costs to smaller stadia like Thomond park is a fallacy.
"would be able to sell 30000 more tickets" – only if there was enough of demand – on a consistent basis.
You have to remember that , for Rugby, we only play France and England at home every second year. The other games get good crowds, but wouldnt necessarily sellout. Wales should be a sellout for the foreseeable future – but I wouldnt be suprised if there are still tickets going on the day for the other two games this spring.
As regards Soccer – we got some good oppostion this time around, but that might not be the case in the future, particularly if we go back to being second seeds. We might potentially draw Croatia and Slovakia.
They wont fill Croke park.