GAELIC GAMES: SEAN MORANhears why there are no plans to move league finals out of HQ despite Sunday's poor attendance

THE RELATIVELY poor turn-out, 36,438, for Sunday’s league finals in Croke Park illustrates the recurrent concern about public interest in the latter stages of the competition. It had been hoped this year would buck the trend of underwhelming attendances for the climax of the spring competition.

Since the league moved to a calendar year in 2001 the average attendance at finals has been 25,759 and this despite the competition proving a far more accurate guide to counties’ championship prospects than had been the case in previous years.

The previous 11 seasons, 1990-2000, saw league finals with an average attendance of 5,000 greater than that.

The best attendance at a league final in recent years was in 2005 when 46,445 watched Armagh defeat Wexford at Croke Park although that was at a stage when Armagh were looking for a first title and were also All-Ireland contenders.

This year, with Dublin back in the final for the first time in 12 years, hopes were high that around 50,000 could be enticed to Croke Park for the match with holders and All-Ireland champions Cork.

Such hopes looked to have been well founded given the success of Dublin’s Spring Series which saw the county’s four home fixtures staged in Croke Park, three under lights on Saturday evenings.

Dublin’s final home match in the series, against Down earlier this month, attracted 35,264 – just slightly 1,000 fewer than were present on Sunday.

The figure strengthens the argument that the league peaks in terms of public appeal on the last Sunday of the season, the day when all promotion and relegation issues are decided, and that the divisional finals – apart from Division One – are largely irrelevant once the promotion places have been allocated in the lower divisions.

“It’s possible,” says the GAA’s head of games administration, Feargal McGill. “There wasn’t the attendance you’d have hoped for but in mitigation, it was a major holiday weekend and people have plans made.

“There are two schools of thought about league finals but I think people still want them and they remain a showcase for the game.

“Players and managers have over the years tended to hide from the consequences of a bad result by saying that it’s ‘only the league’ and I suppose that’s a tradition that’s built up over the years of the association.

“But in the overall context we’d be fairly pleased with the league even if 36,000 wasn’t great for a final with Dublin involved.”

The tepid response of the public to the match – plus the Division Two final between Donegal and Laois – may also be explained by the increased costs in getting to Croke Park for the travelling counties with the price of motor fuel having risen steeply.

Among the other options available for the concluding stages of the competition are simply awarding the title to the county that tops each division or reconsidering the use of Croke Park as a venue.

The former is an idea that has been floated but is unlikely to be realised now that this month’s congress has decided to reintroduce semi-finals in Division One of the football and hurling leagues, a move that McGill believes could enhance interest in the finals.

“Maybe we’ll see improvements when semi-finals are reintroduced because the finalists will have established some momentum by winning a knock-out match to get there.”

One of the innovations of the past two seasons has been the staging of the Division Three and Four finals at Croke Park on the Saturday evening despite the crowds being fairly modest. McGill says that there are no plans to move the matches out of the stadium for purely attendance reasons.

“The counties want it,” he says, “and players want it. Longford and Roscommon (the weekend’s Division Four final) don’t get to play Croke Park that often and last year Waterford and Limerick were extremely keen to play there.

“But there are no hard and fast opinions about this. Obviously if two counties in a final made no geographical sense we’d look at it but we’ll think about over the course of the year and the CCCC will talk to people about it.”