Danny was right..going up against Liverpool & Real makes no sense
DANNY HUGHES’ thoughts on the GAA going up against a Champions League final in 2011 remain as relevant now as they were then.
Hughes was part of the Down team that played Armagh in the preliminary round of the Ulster Championship that year.
The game threw-in at 7.30pm on a Saturday evening, just 15 minutes before Manchester United and Barcelona got underway at Wembley.
The Leinster Council moved the Offaly-wexford football game forward to 5.30pm to avoid the clash but their Ulster counterparts were widely pilloried for refusing the budge.
“I just can’t understand why they did that,” said Hughes. “Why take money off the gate? Why take people away from the game when there’s absolutely no need to do it? Why not let people go to the game at five o’clock and go home or go to the bars then?
“Economically speaking, from a financial point of view, it just doesn’t make sense.”
A combination of the fact that Down had competed in the previous year’s All-ireland final and that it was the first big game at the revamped Athletic Grounds meant that a healthy attendance of 13,000 still turned out for that tie seven years ago.
But Down versus Antrim this Saturday at 7pm, 45 minutes before the Liverpool versus Real Madrid Champions League final gets underway, needs all the help it can get.
This, after all, is a game between a team just relegated to Division Three and another that couldn’t get out of Division Four.
There are safety in numbers for the Ulster Council this time however. Despite setting a precedent in 2011, the Leinster Council has decided against moving its double-header in Tullamore.
The fact that there are two games, Westmeath-laois in football at 5pm and Offaly-wexford in hurling at 7pm, means there is less room for manoeuvre.
But, still, moving each forward by an hour would have allowed those who wish to see their county and the soccer later in the evening the comfort to do so.
The footballers of Tipperary and Cork, who walk in the shadow of their county’s hurlers as it is, meet at Semple Stadium on Saturday at 7pm. Their clash at the same venue on a glorious Sunday afternoon two years ago attracted just 2,734.
With their hurlers facing off at Semple Stadium on Sunday, moving the football on to that bill would have been prudent for a variety of reasons.
The Connacht Council, to its credit, has avoided a clash with events in Kiev by scheduling the Roscommon-leitrim game for 5.30pm. The rugby fixture-makers weren’t slow to act with the Leinster-scarlets PRO14 final moved back half an hour to 6pm. They didn’t lose face in doing so.
UEFA has fixed Champions League finals for Saturday evenings since 2010 and while that will always have some sort of impact on GAA attendances, it is particularly pronounced when Manchester United or Liverpool are involved.
Last year, a Facebook survey suggested that United has 170,000 supporters in Ireland, followed by Liverpool on 157,000.
If the Leinster Council saw fit to move a game seven years ago, the 13,000 differential in support between the two clubs is hardly sufficient reason to stick to its guns this time.
People’s sporting interests are more fluid than ever and while some GAA fixtures are strong enough to stand on their own two feet regardless of events elsewhere, that certainly doesn’t apply to any of Saturday’s games.
Being inflexible to that reality isn’t a show of strength.