Club finals crowd holds up really well
FOR us they were special. The club finals on St Patrick’s Day. More so than the parades and attendant drowning of the shamrock, they defined the day. Without them Paddy’s Day just won’t be the same. The question was without Paddy’s Day would the club finals be the same? The two just sort of went together, complimenting each other perfectly. After a relatively short period of time it had established itself as a firm tradition. Changing it was fraught with risk. Would it be the same? Could it be the same?
After the first experience of a January All Ireland senior club finals double-header last Sunday, can we say that it was? Maybe not quite. It didn’t hold the nation rapt in quite the same way as it would have done on St Patrick’s Day, especially a weekday St Patrick’s Day.
The senior hurling final clashed with Munster’s dead-rubber fixture with the Ospreys and the senior football final clashed with Liverpool’s latest Premier League victory, this time over the old enemy from Manchester.
All the same people voted with their feet. The crowd on Jones’ Road last Sunday afternoon far exceeded Croke Park’s expectation of around 20,000 fans when almost 26,000 people turned up to Headquarters.
That’s actually really bloody respectable when you consider it wouldn’t have had the same Paddy’s Day walk up crowd. It goes to show just how powerful a draw these competitions have become. They’re a brand in their own right, a tradition in their own right outside of Paddy’s Day. Which is not to say that something hasn’t been lost, but more has been gained than lost. It was lunacy waiting until March to play these finals, holding clubs in an artificial limbo to hit the March 17 date.
It makes a hell of a lot more sense for these competitions to be out of the way before the National League gets underway too, players whose clubs are successful are no longer going to be disadvantaged because of it.
We do wonder though how much further the GAA can squeeze the calendar and what benefit they stand to get from it. There are moves afoot to get these competitions played off the in the calendar year, which to our mind risks cheapening them and doing real damage for very little return. The move to January has worked a treat. The GAA shouldn’t push its luck any further.