GAA Hurling 2019

Great news for Waterford to finally get home championship matches again. Can only be good for promotion of the team in the city. 

flash the badge boy!

Dont have a season ticket but should get in somehow. 

Walsh Park is an absolute kip but it's our Kip! it's a millions times better than Dungarvan which is a special kind of Kip! one of the worst dressing rooms i have ever encountered. when we would be fixtured to play up there we would do our utmost to get it put off. makes Oriel Park and absolute palace.  

I'd agree that in Limerick for example building a 60k stadium instead of a 50k and a 25k stadium separately would make more sense. And it would be filled for a Heineken Cup Semi final or Munster Final occasionally but would get regular use with decent attendances between the rugby and hurling.

But for ennis there's no major soccer or rugby team to share the cost. So I'd say that it would make sense for Clare GAA to own their stadium. Waterford FC don't exactly attract big crowds so would they want to share a big GAA stadium with the dimensions way too big? They'd probably rather their own smaller venue. 

In Dublin you can easily justify Croker and the Aviva. In fact you could probably justify another 40k stadium for Dublin GAA and if the Aviva held 80k you could justify that too. 

But yes in a case by case basis such as Louth GAA and Dundalk FC sharing a stadium or in a limerick it makes sense. However I'd imagine most LOI clubs would rather not be playing their matches on a GAA pitch. It's just too big and the crowd is too far back. 

Offaly relegated into 2A, never thought I'd see us and Offaly in same division. 

Despite the scorline Laois performed well against the AI champions on Saturday but the wides were desperate. Defensively Laois did a great job but when you're clearing hard won ball up the field you want to see some kind of reward for your efforts.

Limerick are a serious outift though, big, strong and very well conditioned. Their movement and support play is as good as i've seen. Considering they started with only 6 or 7 of the AI winning team shows the strength in depth of the panel.

They were never in any danger so didn't have to go at full throttle but Laois did stay competing and physically they stood up to Limerick.

Following on from a very good performance against Dublin the league was decent enough and a few new faces introduced to the team. Defensively we've been good and it looks like the first 7 positions are settled on bar any injuries. Of the top 8 there's probably only 3 or 4 guaranteed starters so jersey's still up for grabs.

Rumours that Roddy King might be back in May (and we need more scoring forwards). Positively looking forward to championship now with the first game against Offaly who despite their woes can never be underestimated by Laois.

I've been a regular critic of our beloved CB (so has everyone else really), but this is one thing they have got more or less right, the proposed 16K capacity is plenty big. Cork are the only team that bring a large away crowd to every game that would test capacity, Tipp have a decent away crowd to a slightly lesser extent and at the moment, Limerick, but I wouldn't be betting much on their current level of support holding up over a decade- that is very much up a few levels due to the AI winning bounce at the minute. 

Essentially, we would be building a stadium for Cork to fill every second year. Our own support is vastly over-estimated, especially by those in this county- there was only 3371 there on Sunday V Galway in admittedly poor conditions, but that's about the scale of the hardcore support. Generally, this country has an edifice complex, more stadiums, and bigger ones, seems to be the answer to everything when its pretty clear that in most cases, they aren't needed. 

In this case, the money isn't there for a new stadium, either in the GAA centrally, the local GAA, the Government, and planning restrictions have seen to it that WP can't be made a whole lot bigger, but aside from a few fairweather fans missing a big game and away fans not being able to get all the tickets they require, it'll generally suit our own needs perfectly when completed. I'd say it's much the same story in Clare, though I'm not best placed to comment on that.