The County Board Complaints Thread

[TonyCork80]

Look up the number of actual clubs again in Cork.
Some GAA clubs have as many as 3 registrations an underage, an amalgamation and senior are all registered and recorded as different clubs. Most clubs just register as 1.
This was all discussed in massive detail on PROC a couple of years ago. I believe the correct figure is somewhere around 150/160 clubs in Cork.

Think about it.. there are 60 odd clubs playing senior down to premier junior level .. about another 60/70 at Junior A/B level plus a few stragglers registered but only entering special comps or not fielding all the time. There are 20% more clubs playing football than hurling in Cork.

But sure that's the same in every county ffs. I know a fair bit about the Dublin scene and within that number you have clubs that haven't fielded a team in years, works teams and all sorts of things.

The best data we have is registered teams. This is from the GAA annual report for 2025. It's extremely unlikely based on these numbers that there are as many people playing gaelic games in Dublin as there are in Cork. How you choose to somehow translate that into Dublin being twice the size is up to you. Where Dublin does excel is in terms of central funding (in the past, less so now) and commercial income generation (and I'd say with 60,000 travelling up today Cork should be hoping to close that gap a bit anyway before long), and the advantage of not having a huge debt to service on their home stadium.

 

[TonyCork80]

The distinction between Cork and Dublin, regardless of the numbers, is Cork's playing numbers and clubs is made up of far more "traditional" rural clubs, compared to Dublin who have a smaller number of larger urban clubs.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Rural clubs get a much greater involvement from more of the their community than urban clubs.

However, larger urban clubs are economic powerhouses who generate major income.

Costs of running a large urban club in Dublin are crazy though.

Your members have insane expectations compared to what most of us would be used to. Everything costs a fucking fortune and as you allude to, you get far less involvement and free labour than you might in other parts of the country. For a lot of parents and families GAA is just another activity like piano or ballet lessons or drama or whatever and they expect a commercial level of service. And as JBS points out the costs being paid in rent and for land are nuts. The amount Cuala pay in rent to other clubs in Wicklow keeps those clubs afloat. Cuala are a superb club but buying land in their backyard is the most expensive in Ireland.

The DCB in their post Jim Gavin complacency is far more interested in building centres of excellence with 4 or 5 pitches either sides of the liffey in Spawell and Hollystown rather than what is actually needed which is 20 or 30 pitches along the motorway.

 

[JimmyBarrySmurph]

But sure that's the same in every county ffs. I know a fair bit about the Dublin scene and within that number you have clubs that haven't fielded a team in years, works teams and all sorts of things.

The best data we have is registered teams. This is from the GAA annual report for 2025. It's extremely unlikely based on these numbers that there are as many people playing gaelic games in Dublin as there are in Cork. How you choose to somehow translate that into Dublin being twice the size is up to you. Where Dublin does excel is in terms of central funding (in the past, less so now) and commercial income generation (and I'd say with 60,000 travelling up today Cork should be hoping to close that gap a bit anyway before long), and the advantage of not having a huge debt to service on their home stadium.

You are trying to make a case for a stadium that even Cork GAA said themselves this week is a flawed baseless one and also unaffordable.
That data is non sensical.. you are saying there is over 1000 underage clubs in Cork?
Look up the turnover numbers.

 

[Jukka]

That’s an astonishing statement. It was always clear since the late 1970s when Cork was effectively bankrupt after PUC1 and all the ways since then right through the planning and development phase of this new stadium that Cork couldn’t justify or afford this stadium, a fact proven over and over.

Nonsense. Clones is the home of Ulster GAA.
The GAA should be spending more money there. Casement is politics.


Nonsense.
Have you any clue at all as to the tens of millions that Cork have revived from the GAA HQ for PUC?
On top
Of that do you not know that Cork GAA in the last 10 years have received almost double the amount of stadium grants from the Munster Council than the rest of the Munster counties combined? €4m v €2m


And the Bank can then sell it to the IRFU or FAI for their €20m or even €1. How does that benefit Cork GAA and the people of Cork?

Your completely missing the point I'm making with what your coming back on there.

I'm not saying the stadium was a good or bad thing, or that we should be given a golden hand shake or a write off. I'm saying projects of this scale shouldn't be falling on County Boards at all, and the GAA should be taking ownership and responsibility for them. The GAA themselves created the environment of Keeping up with that Jones when it came to County grounds, whilst making life far easier for some Counties than others.

On the size thing - we could/should have built a 25-30K capacity ground. That would have meant giving up any chance of ever hosting a Munster final again. Bear in mind this was all back in the midst of the old format, where your capacity equaled a better chance of hosting matches. What would we have decided we needed if we knew we were looking at home and away league formats for championship in both hurling and football?

Without going over old ground, the biggest fuck up with the whole thing was that the design, especially the south stand, was totally predicated on the the rest of the ground just needing to be refurbished. As it happened, the whole place was knocked. Thay should have been identified at the start, and you could have come up with a much more efficient and cost effective design for a circa 40K capacity stadium.

 

[TonyCork80]

You are trying to make a case for a stadium that even Cork GAA said themselves this week is a flawed baseless one and also unaffordable.

I'm trying to make a case for what now?

That data is non sensical.. you are saying there is over 1000 underage clubs in Cork?

I'm not saying anything. The GAA are saying there are 1180 underage football and 1023 underage hurling teams registered in Cork. It may come as a surprise but there would be more than one underage team in each clubs. In fact, clubs often choose to grade underage players by age, so as we have under 9, under 13, under 16, minor or whatever. It's probably why you don't see so many 6 year olds togging off in the minor championship.

Look up the turnover numbers.

I haven't got them, but I'd say what you're alluding to is Dublin bringing in about 5 million a year in revenue compared to Cork bringing in about half that. Much of which is due to the 1.2million difference in commercial income I keep telling you about.

 

[JimmyBarrySmurph]

I haven't got them, but I'd say what you're alluding to is Dublin bringing in about 5 million a year in revenue compared to Cork bringing in about half that. Much of which is due to the 1.2million difference in commercial income I keep telling you about.

So you are accepting that Dublin is twice the size?
I’ll leave it at that

 

[TonyCork80]

So you are accepting that Dublin is twice the size?
I’ll leave it at that

Clearly I'm in playing chess with a pigeon territory here so yeah, let's leave it at that.

 

[JimmyBarrySmurph]

Clearly I'm in playing chess with a pigeon territory here so yeah, let's leave it at that.

Keep on drinking that Cork is bigger than Dublin… grandmaster T

 

[Henrys Fonda]

.On the size thing - we could/should have built a 25-30K capacity ground. That would have meant giving up any chance of ever hosting a Munster final again. Bear in mind this was all back in the midst of the old format, where your capacity equaled a better chance of hosting matches. What would we have decided we needed if we knew we were looking at home and away league formats for championship in both hurling and football?

How much would that saved on construction costs.
Also did we have over 50k travel to Croke Park today.

 

[West Cork Gaol]

How much would that saved on construction costs.
Also did we have over 50k travel to Croke Park today.

All 50k cork tickets purchased yesterday should have had a surcharge of € 20 and same again in 2 weeks . 2 million collected from cork people for our fabulous stadium and no need of going around with a begging bowl. We are all proud cork fans and proud to be