There will be many who will lambast the SR management and staff and politicians for being overly positive about SR chances of overcoming international forces.
That would be to miss the point that the Management had to talk up Rovers’ chances in order to stand any chance of coming out of match with any credibilty with their Irish stakeholders and their international counterparts.
Whilst Irish opposition, such as the Bohs, may deride Shamrock Rovers pre-match comments as stupid and lacking any reality, it is to be noted that the Shamrock Rovers policy of talking up their chances has left them in a far better position than their North Dublin rivals.
It is clear that Shamrock Rovers who have gone through their period of upheaval and forced austerity have far greater credibility abroad with those in Serie A and elsewhere.
Being realists, Shamrock Rovers have quickly accepted the reality of their situation at the right time. They are now focussing their efforts on getting things right domestically so they will be ready for the reality of the post Juve world. This will of course further enhance their credibility both nationally and internationally and has been complimented by international experts such as Eoin Hand, Roddy Collins and Roberto Mancini.
Pulled on the green jersey.
Only game in town.
Judging by the bond market’s reaction this morning, they are not reading much into last nights result.
The evidence indicates that 0-2 was a CHARADE. Rovers really lost by 6 if you did a proper stress test. Please refer to Tull’s blog for more detailed analysis in a spreadsheet that you will not be able to access.
Moral victory! shows that Irish clubs could realistically expect to beat the Israeli/Swedish etc teams to get to this round on a consistent basis. That is, if they get their act together.
Apart from Bohs – all Irish teams went out to decent teams this year.
Clearly the way forward is to sell the SR forwards Don Cowan and and Graham Stewart .
They are unproductive in their current configuration, and the sale of these players, while reducing the team’s overall ability to play in the short run, may help pay down the loans for the SR grounds in the medium term, although with 9 first team players, they’ll of course have to play last man back, as we all did as children, which will make the 9 remaining players much more productive, and reduce competition between them also, an added bonus.
Re cracked looking glasses: if our football one day becomes as competitive as our art I will be very happy. In the meantime I’ll continue enjoying LoI football, and hopefully the League can continue to build on what the Derrys, Corks etc have achieved in Europe over the last few years.
At least our cricketer is doing well…
One contrarian guest commentator in the Irish Times has noted that 0-2 is a good lead to bring into the second leg.
🙂
Corriere della Sera’s judgment on the game:
“Partita vera, non un’amichevole estiva” –
“A real game, not a summer friendly”.
League of Ireland football is a very bad joke. Didn’t Bohemians get stuffed 4-0 last week by some low-ranking Welsh team that no one has ever heard of even in Wales? Is it possible to go lower than that? In fairness, Irish League football is even worse, the absolute pits of European soccer leagues. The only hope for domestic soccer in Ireland is to merge the two leagues and have one All-Ireland league, with about 10 teams. But the suits won’t wear it.
How many were at the match last night? A few thousand, I expect. There will be 80,000 at Croke Park on Saturday, myself among them, and close to that again on Sunday. The fact that there have been quite a few threads on domestic soccer on this site since it opened, while none at all on the GAA, despite the latter’s massively greater pulling power, is an indication that most Irish economists in Ireland come from a very narrow cross-section of Irish society. Still, its a good omen for Tir Eoghain on Saturday to see a Dublin team crumble when up against foreign opposition.
JohnTheOptimist, I’d join in with the bashing, but Bohs walloped my beloved Aston Villa last week.
As for the narrow cross-section comment, it’s not really a surprise that south Dublin males are over-represented in the sample of contributors. I’m not sure if their preference for foreign games has any effect on the quality of their economic analysis, though.
@JTO:
“Still, its a good omen for Tir Eoghain on Saturday to see a Dublin team crumble when up against foreign opposition.”
I know nothing about any of these sports, but I deduce from your statement that a Dublin GAA team will be playing a foreign team on Saturday. I had not realised that GAA was an international sport. bjg
The bottom line for Rovers this season is that they knocked out a team from a league ranked 17th in Europe. Not bad. And it sounds as though Fingal should really have won in Portugal.
Your comments about narrow cross sections reveal an amusing ignorance of everyday life in Dublin.
What cross-section of Irish society would you say follows domestic football JtO?
As opposed to, say, Kilmacud Crokes?
“Economists who post to this blog” are not a representative sample of the population. I know as many economists interested in GAA as in footie. I am tempted to name & shame them but out of consideration for their families I won’t.
@Kevin.
Is it my imagination or are you being uncharacteristically defensive today?
As for 80,000 turning up on Sunday, this must be your first outing of the year if you think you will get a crowd that big. I hope this doesn’t taint your reputation for brilliant contrarian predictions!
@JTO – “Still, its a good omen for Tir Eoghain on Saturday to see a Dublin team crumble when up against foreign opposition.” So you finally admit that Tyrone is part of a foreign country??? No doubt that will make you very popular among the (perhaps) 80,000 in Croker.
The Leinster semi’s got 60,000 for two games. 30,000 a game.
If SRFC played in a large enough stadium they would have easily surpassed that!
The attendances in a lot of the other GAA matchs are not massive at all. It is only about a dozen or so big game that gets the crowds.
Kevin
Apples and ornages. SR v Juve 30k is a possibility. A marquee game in the GAA would get a multiple of that easily. The audience for LOI is pretty small. It is down there with Hare coursing and road bowling.
Wow – makes you wonder!
It’s a soccer game.
@tull
It is distressing how people are trying to pit one side against each other in this national debate. Creating division between soccer fans, coursing enthusaists and gaelic games fanatics is not helping matters. We are all comrades-in-arms in this sporting.
It is by no means a zero sum game as all increase in support for sports lifts the national spirit.
The inward looking 1950s protectionist mentality being espoused by some GAA supporters would have Lemass turning in his grave. It could have the effect of turning people off all the sports bodies involved therefore leading to an aggregate decline in sporting activities.
It is not clear whether this is an international phenomenon but it is noted that the influx of foreign sporting spectators has been limited to areas around Killarney and Tallaght over the last while. The prize money in Tallaght is not expected to remain in the country after the weekend. This means the Domestic Sporting Product may be distorted and Super Hoops Sporting Product may be a better measure.
EDIT – substitute:
“The prize money in Killarney is not expected to remain in the country after the weekend”
@Zhou
Agree. The nadir. Reduced to squabbling over this!!!!
Rubbish ! They are both KO competition matches.
The record shows that marquee games dont get multiples of 30,000 in excess of 2, until we get right up to the end of the season. And that is only four or five matches.
The munster senior hurling final got 35k in attendance, 22k for the replay. That is as marquee as you can get.
The average attendance of ALL championships matches is actually quite low (10,000-20,000) . For every Dublin Game there are three or four lower profile matches e.g Sligo V Roscommon, that would only draw about 10,000.
I am a hurling Fan first and foremost, but I deplore the ill informed rants levelled at Irish soccer
It’s probably worth pointing out the tasty little earner Rovers made on the 500 remaining tickets for the match – they sold them as (remainder of the) season tickets for 100 quid a pop! An extra 50 grand in the bank right there to add to the half a million or so they’ve already made from this European run.
Kevin,
I would’nt cross the road to watch a Munster hurling final & if a LOI game was being played in the front garden, I would close the curtains. Spare me the Heino Cup, now that is really makey up stuff, a club from Limerick called Munster and a club from south Dublin called Leinster along with the rugby playing wing of the UUP.
Zhou, spare me the claptrap. I just do not like Munster Hurling, LOI …is that ok. Road Bowling beats all, but not the Nordie version.
not even some Tour De France, with Nicolas Roche doing fairly well?
Fair enough, different strokes for different folks.
A tutti:
Facci sognare!
I am going to flick a coin now!
Anyone up for an argument about this next?
Could be an Irish coin, but perhaps not..
Comment threads are supposed to be arenas for intellectual pugilism!
@ Kevin
T de F =World Biotechnology Championship. Do you go for the tried and trusted EPO or take a chance with Micera- more difficult to detect but possibly not bio-equivalent.
you are forgetting the “not colliding with a dog”, “how many headbutts can you get away with” ,”not murdering your team mate” ,”zigzag through the sheep” and “changing your gears without derailing like an idiot” parts.
Loads of fun.
@Scorpio
So you finally admit that Tyrone is part of a foreign country??? No doubt that will make you very popular among the (perhaps) 80,000 in Croker.
No, I don’t. It is the same country. As I’m sure you are clever enough to have guessed, I was being sarcastic and taking the p*ss out of Brian Lucey’s comments last week. The only cultural deffierence between the Tyrone and Dublin fans today will be that all the Tyrone fans know the words of Amhran na bh
@zhou_en_lai
As for 80,000 turning up on Sunday, this must be your first outing of the year if you think you will get a crowd that big. I hope this doesn’t taint your reputation for brilliant contrarian predictions!
In 2008, almost 71,000 attended the Tyrone v Dublin quarter-final, the same stage as today’s match. And, it poured torrential rain all day. Plus, the match was seen in advance as a ‘no contest’ which may have kept the crowd down, with the RTE panel of ‘experts’ voting unanimously by 10 to 0 on the morning of the match that Dublin would win easily and that Tyrone were wasting their time turning up. Tyrone won 23-9.
Regarding contrarian forecasts, today’s contrarian forecast is tomorrow’s mainstream forecast. This time last year the Dept of Finance, ESRI and the Central Bank all forecast that GDP would fall by 3pc in 2010. I forecast that it would rise by 2.8pc. That was seen as contrarian at the time, but no longer. Now, all three have moved their forecasts to GDP growth of near 1pc in 2010 (the Central Bank just yesterday), so they’ve almost caught up with me. By, the end of the year they will have.
@Kevin O’Rourhe et al
With regard to domestic soccer, I am not against it, I sometimes go to see Derry City play. I would like to see a decent soccer league in Ireland. But, the truth is soccer league football on the island of Ireland is abysmal. Even tiny Cyprus (population 400k) got a team into the Champions League this season and they did well, running Chelsea close in two games. My opinion is that most domestic soccer followers and administrators on the island of Ireland have an ultra-partitionst mentality, which is the root cause of why league soccer in Ireland is so abysmal. There is a golden rule with regard to sport in Ireland: those sports that are organised on an All-Ireland 32 county basis are extremely successful, both in sporting terms, in terms of attendances, and financially – for example: GAA, rugby, golf, horse racing, boxing, even cricket is doing well; but those sports that are partitioned have an abysmal record in terms of sporting success, attendances and financially – for example: soccer, athletics. The obvious solution is that the gvernments north and south should only put money into sports that are organised on an All-Ireland basis.
Since this is an economics website, we could look at the impact of the various sports on the economy. Through the success of the northern teams in recent years, the economy south of the border is raking in millions. I reckon 50,000 will travel from north of the border to Dublin today to follow Tyrone and Down. Not all will go to the match, some will just be up for the craic afterwards. But, if we assume reasonably a 100-euros average spend on all items (tickets, meals, petrol etc) by each of those 50,000, that is 5 million euros in services exports earned by the economy south of the border today, purely because of the quarter-finals. Were Tyrone and Down to win, that 5 million in services exports would be repeated in a few weeks time at the semi-finals stage. So, the economy south of the border would benefit by Tyrone and Down winning today, which factor will I hope be taken into consideration by the referees. In fact, since 2000 I reckon the econonomy south of the boeder has earned about 100 million euros in services exports from Tyrone and Armagh fans alone coming to Dublin for big matches. In contrast, domestic soccer makes no contribution to the economy south of the border. In fact, its responsible for a massive drain. Because of the failure to organise a decent domestic league on the island of Ireland (for the reasons I outlined above), most soccer fans follow English teams and travel in their thousands to London, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham ever week. I’m not criticising them, as I do that myself occasionally. But, if there was a decent domestic league on the island of Ireland, far fewer would travel to England at weekends and there would be a far smaller drain on the economy.
Oops, I clicked too soon when typing Amhran na bhFiann. Rather ruined the point I was making in that sentence. Must be pre-match nerves.
Wasn’t even one of Big Jack’s winning draws either.
go on the youths!
Ah sugar. I wanted to post a link re: housing bubble but there’s no point burying it alive in this wundrous thread.
Maybe tomorrow. . .
🙂
@JtO
I don’t have the exact figures but I think we’ll have to give you a mulligan on the weekend attendances at Croker! Great to see the Dubs are only two games away from Europe 🙂
@tull
You should get in touch with your small-farmer roots and head down to Clonmel for the first Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of February.
Zhou,
I have been to Powerstown Park many times for racing under rules and between the flags and for the doggies. Hopefully, I will go again unless the Watermelon Party bans another raft of field sports.
Commiserations to JTO on Tyrone’s well-deserved defeat. He can always cheer for Down now, I suppose.
@ Zhou
I think it’s more correct to say the Dubs are two games away from being World Champions. Baseball has the World Series, maybe we’re too parochial in labelling it the All-Ireland (don’t we let London and New York play?)
As Des Bishop might say, can there be anything more silly than shouting “Up Down” at a match…
The guards expected about 200,000 to attend the Dun Laoghaire world cultures thing, in line with 2009. I haven’t seen the final numbers. Kinda dwarfs the sporting events, really.
Over on the sporting front, about 25,000 went to the last day of the golf and 17,000 to the each of the first two days of the Galway Races.
Just think, if we got €1,000,000 from each and every one of those Galway punters we could just about eliminate the 2010 exchequer borrowing requirement.
@JTO – why so defensive?? – did you not get my sarcasm? Sorry to see Tyrone loose actually.
@zhou_en_lai
I don’t have the exact figures but I think we’ll have to give you (JTO) a mulligan on the weekend attendances at Croker!
The attendance at Croke Park on Saturday was 62 thousand. This was less than the 80 thousand I thought would be there. But, what I was totally unaware of at the time, and totally failed to factor in, was that the Aviva Stadium opening also took place on Saturday afternoon, and the match there attracted 35 thousand. If it hadn’t been for the Aviva match, which many wanted to attend as it was the first ever at that stadium, a good chunk of those 35 thousand would have been at Croke Park. In total, 97 thousand attended matches within a mile of the GPO last Saturday afternoon, which is pretty huge for a country Ireland’s size. There should be 80 thousand for the Dublin v Cork semi-final, although I will certainly not be among them. More significant from the economy’s point of view, I see that attendances at Galway races were up by 6pc last week.
@JTO
I would be surprised if the opening on new LR took much more than a fw hundred off the gate at Croker. North Dublin & nationalist Tyrone and Down do not do Rugby very much. Great to see the moaning minnies from Kerry and Tyrone going out. Mcikey & Jack will probably et a gig on RTE now or perhaps they could be guest moderators on this site.
The attendances in Galway were up 5% as you say but betting was down 1% over the Tote and the Bookies to 13.1 million euros ( that is millions Hugh). We have reached a form of stability.
@tullmcadoo
The attendances in Galway were up 5% as you say. We have reached a form of stability.
It might be advisable to see the increased attendances at Galway races in a wider context, one of increasing confidence in the economy. Latest KPMG survey just out. Confidence, optimism, and expectations for output in Ireland’s services sector the highest in EU. Has all the hard work of David McWillimas and Morgan Kelly been in vain?
perhaps when the helicopters return to Ballybrit we can say definitively that the ecoonomy is booming. Suffice to say for now that things are not getting any worse. Let us wait and see what the Exchequer numbers bring.
@tull mcadoo
Suffice to say for now that things are not getting any worse.
I’d say ‘not getting any worse’ is a resonable description of the current state of the domestic economy. Apart from car sales which are increasing rapidly, consumer spending is growing only slowly. Retail sales (excluding car sales) rose 1pc in Q1 and rose another 1pc in Q2. Nothing to get excited about. So, your ‘not getting any worse’ is a reasonable summary of the domestic economy. However, exports are a different matter. The May merchandise exports figures published last week, the Q1 service export figures, and this KPMG survey all point to exports roaring ahead. I can’t for the life of me see that the Central Bank forecast last week of just 3.3pc growth in exports volume in 2010 is remotely plausible. Its looking far more like 10pc now. This will scupper their GDP forecast of just 0.8pc GDP growth, even if consumer spending remains subdued. Their 3.3pc forecast for export volume growth in 2010 looks likely to win the ‘Worst Forecast of 2010’ competition, pipping my own forecast that Tyrone would beat Dublin by 17 points into second place.
@tull mcadoo
Suffice to say for now that things are not getting any worse.
I’d say ‘not getting any worse’ is a resonable description of the current state of the domestic economy. Apart from car sales which are increasing rapidly, consumer spending is growing only slowly. Retail sales (excluding car sales) rose 1pc in Q1 and rose another 1pc in Q2. Nothing to get excited about. So, your ‘not getting any worse’ is a reasonable summary of the domestic economy. However, exports are a different matter. The May merchandise exports figures published last week, the Q1 service export figures, and this KPMG survey all point to exports roaring ahead. I can’t for the life of me see that the Central Bank forecast last week of just 3.3pc growth in exports volume in 2010 is remotely plausible. Its looking far more like 10pc now. This will scupper their GDP forecast of just 0.8pc GDP growth, even if consumer spending remains subdued. Their 3.3pc forecast for export volume growth in 2010 looks likely to win the ‘Worst Forecast of 2010′ competition, pipping my own forecast that Tyrone would beat Dublin by 17 points into second place.
54 replies on “Shamrock Rovers 0 Juventus 2”
There will be many who will lambast the SR management and staff and politicians for being overly positive about SR chances of overcoming international forces.
That would be to miss the point that the Management had to talk up Rovers’ chances in order to stand any chance of coming out of match with any credibilty with their Irish stakeholders and their international counterparts.
Whilst Irish opposition, such as the Bohs, may deride Shamrock Rovers pre-match comments as stupid and lacking any reality, it is to be noted that the Shamrock Rovers policy of talking up their chances has left them in a far better position than their North Dublin rivals.
It is clear that Shamrock Rovers who have gone through their period of upheaval and forced austerity have far greater credibility abroad with those in Serie A and elsewhere.
Being realists, Shamrock Rovers have quickly accepted the reality of their situation at the right time. They are now focussing their efforts on getting things right domestically so they will be ready for the reality of the post Juve world. This will of course further enhance their credibility both nationally and internationally and has been complimented by international experts such as Eoin Hand, Roddy Collins and Roberto Mancini.
Pulled on the green jersey.
Only game in town.
Judging by the bond market’s reaction this morning, they are not reading much into last nights result.
The evidence indicates that 0-2 was a CHARADE. Rovers really lost by 6 if you did a proper stress test. Please refer to Tull’s blog for more detailed analysis in a spreadsheet that you will not be able to access.
I blame the regulator.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/business/25view.html?_r=1&ref=economy
Moral victory! shows that Irish clubs could realistically expect to beat the Israeli/Swedish etc teams to get to this round on a consistent basis. That is, if they get their act together.
Apart from Bohs – all Irish teams went out to decent teams this year.
Clearly the way forward is to sell the SR forwards Don Cowan and and Graham Stewart .
They are unproductive in their current configuration, and the sale of these players, while reducing the team’s overall ability to play in the short run, may help pay down the loans for the SR grounds in the medium term, although with 9 first team players, they’ll of course have to play last man back, as we all did as children, which will make the 9 remaining players much more productive, and reduce competition between them also, an added bonus.
Re cracked looking glasses: if our football one day becomes as competitive as our art I will be very happy. In the meantime I’ll continue enjoying LoI football, and hopefully the League can continue to build on what the Derrys, Corks etc have achieved in Europe over the last few years.
At least our cricketer is doing well…
One contrarian guest commentator in the Irish Times has noted that 0-2 is a good lead to bring into the second leg.
🙂
Corriere della Sera’s judgment on the game:
“Partita vera, non un’amichevole estiva” –
“A real game, not a summer friendly”.
League of Ireland football is a very bad joke. Didn’t Bohemians get stuffed 4-0 last week by some low-ranking Welsh team that no one has ever heard of even in Wales? Is it possible to go lower than that? In fairness, Irish League football is even worse, the absolute pits of European soccer leagues. The only hope for domestic soccer in Ireland is to merge the two leagues and have one All-Ireland league, with about 10 teams. But the suits won’t wear it.
How many were at the match last night? A few thousand, I expect. There will be 80,000 at Croke Park on Saturday, myself among them, and close to that again on Sunday. The fact that there have been quite a few threads on domestic soccer on this site since it opened, while none at all on the GAA, despite the latter’s massively greater pulling power, is an indication that most Irish economists in Ireland come from a very narrow cross-section of Irish society. Still, its a good omen for Tir Eoghain on Saturday to see a Dublin team crumble when up against foreign opposition.
JohnTheOptimist, I’d join in with the bashing, but Bohs walloped my beloved Aston Villa last week.
As for the narrow cross-section comment, it’s not really a surprise that south Dublin males are over-represented in the sample of contributors. I’m not sure if their preference for foreign games has any effect on the quality of their economic analysis, though.
@JTO:
“Still, its a good omen for Tir Eoghain on Saturday to see a Dublin team crumble when up against foreign opposition.”
I know nothing about any of these sports, but I deduce from your statement that a Dublin GAA team will be playing a foreign team on Saturday. I had not realised that GAA was an international sport. bjg
The bottom line for Rovers this season is that they knocked out a team from a league ranked 17th in Europe. Not bad. And it sounds as though Fingal should really have won in Portugal.
Your comments about narrow cross sections reveal an amusing ignorance of everyday life in Dublin.
What cross-section of Irish society would you say follows domestic football JtO?
As opposed to, say, Kilmacud Crokes?
“Economists who post to this blog” are not a representative sample of the population. I know as many economists interested in GAA as in footie. I am tempted to name & shame them but out of consideration for their families I won’t.
@Kevin.
Is it my imagination or are you being uncharacteristically defensive today?
@Mick: why would I be?
defensive? over bog ball?
@JtO
It will be a lot easier to get tickets for Croke Park on Saturday and Sunday than it was to get tickets for the Rovers Juvé match!
I expect most of the Thomas Davis crowd would have been there cheering on the Hoops otherwise. 🙂
As for 80,000 turning up on Sunday, this must be your first outing of the year if you think you will get a crowd that big. I hope this doesn’t taint your reputation for brilliant contrarian predictions!
@JTO – “Still, its a good omen for Tir Eoghain on Saturday to see a Dublin team crumble when up against foreign opposition.” So you finally admit that Tyrone is part of a foreign country??? No doubt that will make you very popular among the (perhaps) 80,000 in Croker.
The Leinster semi’s got 60,000 for two games. 30,000 a game.
If SRFC played in a large enough stadium they would have easily surpassed that!
The attendances in a lot of the other GAA matchs are not massive at all. It is only about a dozen or so big game that gets the crowds.
Kevin
Apples and ornages. SR v Juve 30k is a possibility. A marquee game in the GAA would get a multiple of that easily. The audience for LOI is pretty small. It is down there with Hare coursing and road bowling.
Wow – makes you wonder!
It’s a soccer game.
@tull
It is distressing how people are trying to pit one side against each other in this national debate. Creating division between soccer fans, coursing enthusaists and gaelic games fanatics is not helping matters. We are all comrades-in-arms in this sporting.
It is by no means a zero sum game as all increase in support for sports lifts the national spirit.
The inward looking 1950s protectionist mentality being espoused by some GAA supporters would have Lemass turning in his grave. It could have the effect of turning people off all the sports bodies involved therefore leading to an aggregate decline in sporting activities.
It is not clear whether this is an international phenomenon but it is noted that the influx of foreign sporting spectators has been limited to areas around Killarney and Tallaght over the last while. The prize money in Tallaght is not expected to remain in the country after the weekend. This means the Domestic Sporting Product may be distorted and Super Hoops Sporting Product may be a better measure.
EDIT – substitute:
“The prize money in Killarney is not expected to remain in the country after the weekend”
@Zhou
Agree. The nadir. Reduced to squabbling over this!!!!
Rubbish ! They are both KO competition matches.
The record shows that marquee games dont get multiples of 30,000 in excess of 2, until we get right up to the end of the season. And that is only four or five matches.
The munster senior hurling final got 35k in attendance, 22k for the replay. That is as marquee as you can get.
The average attendance of ALL championships matches is actually quite low (10,000-20,000) . For every Dublin Game there are three or four lower profile matches e.g Sligo V Roscommon, that would only draw about 10,000.
I am a hurling Fan first and foremost, but I deplore the ill informed rants levelled at Irish soccer
It’s probably worth pointing out the tasty little earner Rovers made on the 500 remaining tickets for the match – they sold them as (remainder of the) season tickets for 100 quid a pop! An extra 50 grand in the bank right there to add to the half a million or so they’ve already made from this European run.
Kevin,
I would’nt cross the road to watch a Munster hurling final & if a LOI game was being played in the front garden, I would close the curtains. Spare me the Heino Cup, now that is really makey up stuff, a club from Limerick called Munster and a club from south Dublin called Leinster along with the rugby playing wing of the UUP.
Zhou, spare me the claptrap. I just do not like Munster Hurling, LOI …is that ok. Road Bowling beats all, but not the Nordie version.
not even some Tour De France, with Nicolas Roche doing fairly well?
Fair enough, different strokes for different folks.
A tutti:
Facci sognare!
I am going to flick a coin now!
Anyone up for an argument about this next?
Could be an Irish coin, but perhaps not..
Comment threads are supposed to be arenas for intellectual pugilism!
@ Kevin
T de F =World Biotechnology Championship. Do you go for the tried and trusted EPO or take a chance with Micera- more difficult to detect but possibly not bio-equivalent.
you are forgetting the “not colliding with a dog”, “how many headbutts can you get away with” ,”not murdering your team mate” ,”zigzag through the sheep” and “changing your gears without derailing like an idiot” parts.
Loads of fun.
@Scorpio
So you finally admit that Tyrone is part of a foreign country??? No doubt that will make you very popular among the (perhaps) 80,000 in Croker.
No, I don’t. It is the same country. As I’m sure you are clever enough to have guessed, I was being sarcastic and taking the p*ss out of Brian Lucey’s comments last week. The only cultural deffierence between the Tyrone and Dublin fans today will be that all the Tyrone fans know the words of Amhran na bh
@zhou_en_lai
As for 80,000 turning up on Sunday, this must be your first outing of the year if you think you will get a crowd that big. I hope this doesn’t taint your reputation for brilliant contrarian predictions!
In 2008, almost 71,000 attended the Tyrone v Dublin quarter-final, the same stage as today’s match. And, it poured torrential rain all day. Plus, the match was seen in advance as a ‘no contest’ which may have kept the crowd down, with the RTE panel of ‘experts’ voting unanimously by 10 to 0 on the morning of the match that Dublin would win easily and that Tyrone were wasting their time turning up. Tyrone won 23-9.
Regarding contrarian forecasts, today’s contrarian forecast is tomorrow’s mainstream forecast. This time last year the Dept of Finance, ESRI and the Central Bank all forecast that GDP would fall by 3pc in 2010. I forecast that it would rise by 2.8pc. That was seen as contrarian at the time, but no longer. Now, all three have moved their forecasts to GDP growth of near 1pc in 2010 (the Central Bank just yesterday), so they’ve almost caught up with me. By, the end of the year they will have.
@Kevin O’Rourhe et al
With regard to domestic soccer, I am not against it, I sometimes go to see Derry City play. I would like to see a decent soccer league in Ireland. But, the truth is soccer league football on the island of Ireland is abysmal. Even tiny Cyprus (population 400k) got a team into the Champions League this season and they did well, running Chelsea close in two games. My opinion is that most domestic soccer followers and administrators on the island of Ireland have an ultra-partitionst mentality, which is the root cause of why league soccer in Ireland is so abysmal. There is a golden rule with regard to sport in Ireland: those sports that are organised on an All-Ireland 32 county basis are extremely successful, both in sporting terms, in terms of attendances, and financially – for example: GAA, rugby, golf, horse racing, boxing, even cricket is doing well; but those sports that are partitioned have an abysmal record in terms of sporting success, attendances and financially – for example: soccer, athletics. The obvious solution is that the gvernments north and south should only put money into sports that are organised on an All-Ireland basis.
Since this is an economics website, we could look at the impact of the various sports on the economy. Through the success of the northern teams in recent years, the economy south of the border is raking in millions. I reckon 50,000 will travel from north of the border to Dublin today to follow Tyrone and Down. Not all will go to the match, some will just be up for the craic afterwards. But, if we assume reasonably a 100-euros average spend on all items (tickets, meals, petrol etc) by each of those 50,000, that is 5 million euros in services exports earned by the economy south of the border today, purely because of the quarter-finals. Were Tyrone and Down to win, that 5 million in services exports would be repeated in a few weeks time at the semi-finals stage. So, the economy south of the border would benefit by Tyrone and Down winning today, which factor will I hope be taken into consideration by the referees. In fact, since 2000 I reckon the econonomy south of the boeder has earned about 100 million euros in services exports from Tyrone and Armagh fans alone coming to Dublin for big matches. In contrast, domestic soccer makes no contribution to the economy south of the border. In fact, its responsible for a massive drain. Because of the failure to organise a decent domestic league on the island of Ireland (for the reasons I outlined above), most soccer fans follow English teams and travel in their thousands to London, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham ever week. I’m not criticising them, as I do that myself occasionally. But, if there was a decent domestic league on the island of Ireland, far fewer would travel to England at weekends and there would be a far smaller drain on the economy.
Oops, I clicked too soon when typing Amhran na bhFiann. Rather ruined the point I was making in that sentence. Must be pre-match nerves.
Wasn’t even one of Big Jack’s winning draws either.
go on the youths!
Ah sugar. I wanted to post a link re: housing bubble but there’s no point burying it alive in this wundrous thread.
Maybe tomorrow. . .
🙂
@JtO
I don’t have the exact figures but I think we’ll have to give you a mulligan on the weekend attendances at Croker! Great to see the Dubs are only two games away from Europe 🙂
@tull
You should get in touch with your small-farmer roots and head down to Clonmel for the first Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of February.
Zhou,
I have been to Powerstown Park many times for racing under rules and between the flags and for the doggies. Hopefully, I will go again unless the Watermelon Party bans another raft of field sports.
Commiserations to JTO on Tyrone’s well-deserved defeat. He can always cheer for Down now, I suppose.
@ Zhou
I think it’s more correct to say the Dubs are two games away from being World Champions. Baseball has the World Series, maybe we’re too parochial in labelling it the All-Ireland (don’t we let London and New York play?)
As Des Bishop might say, can there be anything more silly than shouting “Up Down” at a match…
The guards expected about 200,000 to attend the Dun Laoghaire world cultures thing, in line with 2009. I haven’t seen the final numbers. Kinda dwarfs the sporting events, really.
Over on the sporting front, about 25,000 went to the last day of the golf and 17,000 to the each of the first two days of the Galway Races.
Just think, if we got €1,000,000 from each and every one of those Galway punters we could just about eliminate the 2010 exchequer borrowing requirement.
@JTO – why so defensive?? – did you not get my sarcasm? Sorry to see Tyrone loose actually.
@zhou_en_lai
I don’t have the exact figures but I think we’ll have to give you (JTO) a mulligan on the weekend attendances at Croker!
The attendance at Croke Park on Saturday was 62 thousand. This was less than the 80 thousand I thought would be there. But, what I was totally unaware of at the time, and totally failed to factor in, was that the Aviva Stadium opening also took place on Saturday afternoon, and the match there attracted 35 thousand. If it hadn’t been for the Aviva match, which many wanted to attend as it was the first ever at that stadium, a good chunk of those 35 thousand would have been at Croke Park. In total, 97 thousand attended matches within a mile of the GPO last Saturday afternoon, which is pretty huge for a country Ireland’s size. There should be 80 thousand for the Dublin v Cork semi-final, although I will certainly not be among them. More significant from the economy’s point of view, I see that attendances at Galway races were up by 6pc last week.
@JTO
I would be surprised if the opening on new LR took much more than a fw hundred off the gate at Croker. North Dublin & nationalist Tyrone and Down do not do Rugby very much. Great to see the moaning minnies from Kerry and Tyrone going out. Mcikey & Jack will probably et a gig on RTE now or perhaps they could be guest moderators on this site.
The attendances in Galway were up 5% as you say but betting was down 1% over the Tote and the Bookies to 13.1 million euros ( that is millions Hugh). We have reached a form of stability.
@tullmcadoo
The attendances in Galway were up 5% as you say. We have reached a form of stability.
It might be advisable to see the increased attendances at Galway races in a wider context, one of increasing confidence in the economy. Latest KPMG survey just out. Confidence, optimism, and expectations for output in Ireland’s services sector the highest in EU. Has all the hard work of David McWillimas and Morgan Kelly been in vain?
http://www.businessandleadership.com/news/article/24703/leadership/confidence-in-service-sector-in-ireland-is-highest-in-eu-kpmg-survey
@ JTO
perhaps when the helicopters return to Ballybrit we can say definitively that the ecoonomy is booming. Suffice to say for now that things are not getting any worse. Let us wait and see what the Exchequer numbers bring.
@tull mcadoo
Suffice to say for now that things are not getting any worse.
I’d say ‘not getting any worse’ is a resonable description of the current state of the domestic economy. Apart from car sales which are increasing rapidly, consumer spending is growing only slowly. Retail sales (excluding car sales) rose 1pc in Q1 and rose another 1pc in Q2. Nothing to get excited about. So, your ‘not getting any worse’ is a reasonable summary of the domestic economy. However, exports are a different matter. The May merchandise exports figures published last week, the Q1 service export figures, and this KPMG survey all point to exports roaring ahead. I can’t for the life of me see that the Central Bank forecast last week of just 3.3pc growth in exports volume in 2010 is remotely plausible. Its looking far more like 10pc now. This will scupper their GDP forecast of just 0.8pc GDP growth, even if consumer spending remains subdued. Their 3.3pc forecast for export volume growth in 2010 looks likely to win the ‘Worst Forecast of 2010’ competition, pipping my own forecast that Tyrone would beat Dublin by 17 points into second place.
@tull mcadoo
Suffice to say for now that things are not getting any worse.
I’d say ‘not getting any worse’ is a resonable description of the current state of the domestic economy. Apart from car sales which are increasing rapidly, consumer spending is growing only slowly. Retail sales (excluding car sales) rose 1pc in Q1 and rose another 1pc in Q2. Nothing to get excited about. So, your ‘not getting any worse’ is a reasonable summary of the domestic economy. However, exports are a different matter. The May merchandise exports figures published last week, the Q1 service export figures, and this KPMG survey all point to exports roaring ahead. I can’t for the life of me see that the Central Bank forecast last week of just 3.3pc growth in exports volume in 2010 is remotely plausible. Its looking far more like 10pc now. This will scupper their GDP forecast of just 0.8pc GDP growth, even if consumer spending remains subdued. Their 3.3pc forecast for export volume growth in 2010 looks likely to win the ‘Worst Forecast of 2010′ competition, pipping my own forecast that Tyrone would beat Dublin by 17 points into second place.
http://www.shamrockrovers.ie/images/stories/article-images/delpiero%20is%20a%20hoop.jpg