Former Kerry star Tadgh Kennelly has injected a little bit of a reality check into the debate around GAA players being recruited by the Australian AFL.
Kennelly is one of a very small number of GAA players who are currently playing Aussie Rules and he has made the point that rugby and soccer continue to be the Association's main competitors and of course he's right.
Those who are poached to Aussie Rules will for years to come remain the exception and only a very small number of elite county players have what it takes to compete at the highest levels of the Aussie game.
Rugby and soccer however, continue to compete for the services of our players even at the most junior level of our clubs.
Managers in the lower divisions of our sport often have to compete with soccer and to a lesser extent rugby when there is a clash between the sports at the weekend.
In my home county it is soccer which offers the most competition simply because the soccer leagues run relentlessly week in and week out while our players can wait weeks at a time for games.
This is a far more serious threat to the GAA than losing a couple of county stars a year to the Aussie game will ever be.
As an association we would be much better served ensuring our players have enough games to keep their interest in the GAA than fighting the 'bogeyman' of Aussie Rules.
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I agree. The Aussie Rules recruitment outcry is exaggerated. Soccer and rugby are greater threats and the the GAA doesn't exactly help itself, as you say here and in one of the other postings. I used to play club football in Meath and was exasperated every year by the fixtures mayhem, with games constantly postponed or delayed as a result of Meath's progress in the All-Ireland championship.
We should be able to organise our club leagues regardless of the progress of the county teams. Even the clubs most affected by county call-ups should be able to fulfil league games which are the life blood for the vast majority of club players who are not even close to county sides. However, in Antrim we are rarely involved in county competition beyond May/June yet we can't give our players more than a handful of games over the summer months when we have them with no competition from other sports.
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