Should we give up football?

Baldrick wrote:

It’s funny most of the people I know from Ireland away trips are regulars at supporting their league of Ireland team.

What’s funny about that?

oldbilly wrote:

most of the “green army”, ie the pisshead sex tourists that follow the national team around, and delight in sl*gging off our own clubs at home while professing undying love for some Brit corporate entity which is owned by some shady billionaires, gave up on Irish football years ago.

challenge for LOI fans: try to go 24 hours without exposing your embarrassing superiority complex

Its that tine of the month again where we should consider withdrawing from international football

Pied Piper to: Baldrick, Brendan 88, 9Fingers, Borussia and more...

97.6% chance this post will be replied to by Baldrick (source: PWC)

Best country in the world at Gaelic football, hurling, camogie, rounders, handball and road bowls. Maybe rugby as well.

oldbilly wrote:

most of the “green army”, ie the pisshead sex tourists that follow the national team around, and delight in sl*gging off our own clubs at home while professing undying love for some Brit corporate entity which is owned by some shady billionaires, gave up on Irish football years ago.

English dumb f**k

No offence to anyone else

Edited by Englishborn - 14 Oct 2023 at 5:57am

Had me thinking last night the contrast between where we are in rugby , competing to be world champions versus where we have sadly fallen in football, the most played sport in the country.

I don’t buy into some of the sh*te out there that football is not as popular and rugby is taking over, but sadly at international level it does start to feel like that and it comes down to we are at the top table in rugby in but in football we are down the back of the room at the minute.

Years of mismanagement are really hurting us.

I’d say if you were to take the top 100 Rugby U12 players in the country and put them beside the top 100 u12 soccer players and then compare the level of coaching and investment that is going into them it would be night and day.

We may as well give up or at least stop expecting to compete nearer the top if we don’t start to nurture our top youngsters even more. I know has gotten a bit better in recent times with the LOI clubs but it is nowhere near enough and we are not reaching our potential because of it

Ireland might be out of the rugby world cup in 12 hours time, but if they were to go on and win it out it will undoubtedly impact on playing numbers for both sports in the coming years. Success breeds success, and sadly the football community has gone down the wrong road which has led to failure.

Most of the takes I'm seeing to fix the issues involve spending non existent money for some kind of complete structure overhaul, so likely to just lead to further failure to be honest.

It’s easier to be nearer the top at rugby of course. But again in the 8-9 countries that are good, we seem to be doing as good of a job at underage to produce players as the rest of them. Many of the ex players from the likes of England and the southern hemisphere are pointing to the Irish set up and have it on a pedestal.

It looks like it’s going to continue for the foreseeable future.

We can no longer rely on England to nurture our best young talents and if anything we are likely to fall further behind without drastic change in the short term.