Post others in the thread
🏴⚽ FA Cup, Jan 4-7
The FA Cup is the pure knockout tournament for English football clubs of all tiers. There are 64 teams left in it, so 32 matches those days. Arsenal-Liverpool on Jan 7 at 4:30pm local time is notable.
Games listed on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023%E2%80%9324_FA_Cup#Third_round_proper
Spoiler-free Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2023%E2%80%9324_FA_Cup&direction=prev&oldid=1192139800
🇪🇸⚽ La Liga
- Jan 3, Girona vs Atlético Madrid
🏴⚽ Premier League
Fixtures are thin because of the FA Cup. In fact there's just two, but they're both juicy:
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Monday 1st January, Liverpool-Newcastle United, 20:00 local time
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Tuesday 2nd January West Ham United-Brighton & Hove Albion, 19:30 local time
West Ham just beat Arsenal 2-0, are having a great season. Brighton are having a great few decades, were in the 4th tier in the year 2000, now 8th in the top tier. Liverpool are title contenders (it's one of the most competitive title races in this millennium). Newcastle have 1 win 4 losses in their past 5 league games, but are a strong team basically.
🥊 Vergil Ortiz Jr vs Fredrick Lawson, Jan 6
Should be easy for Ortiz, who has 19 fights and 19 knockout victories.
Card and other stats here: https://box.live/fights/ortiz-jr-vs-lawson/
Hot take: a defeat for Newcastle is a defeat for pay-to-win football, because Newcastle are the richest club in the world but haven't converted that into success on the pitch.
That's indeed searing.
Chelsea and Man City already bought trebles, that cat's been out of the bag for a decade.
Newcastle are already spending pretty close to the maximum allowed under UEFA FFP, and the way it's structured based on revenue gives a massive, massive advantage to old money teams.
In Gaelic Games:
Leinster Hurling:
- The Walsh Cup starts with games on Jan 4 and Jan 7: https://leinstergaa.ie/competitions/bord-na-mona-walsh-cup-s-h-2018/ The Walsh Cup is an early inter-county Cup before the main inter-county season.
Munster Hurling League, https://munster.gaa.ie/fixtures/munster-senior-hurling-league/:
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Limerick-Cork, Jan 7, Mallow @ 2pm
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Kerry-Waterford, Jan 2, Austin Stack Park Tralee @ 7:30pm
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Waterford-Tipperary, Jan 7, Fraher Field Dungarvan @ 2pm
Gaelic football on Sunday @187_Invitation@hexbear.net :
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The club football semi-finals are on Sunday: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023%E2%80%9324_All-Ireland_Senior_Club_Football_Championship#All-Ireland_semi-finals – This is clubs as opposed to county-v-county stuff.
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Castlehaven v St Brigid's (Throw-in 1.45pm). Micheál Ó Domhnaill presents live coverage of the opening AIB Club Championship All-Ireland Football semi-final. TG4 m3u8 link
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Kilmacud Crokes v Watty Graham's (Throw-in 3.45pm). Micheál Ó Domhnaill presents live coverage of the second AIB Club Championship All-Ireland Football semi-final. TG4 m3u8 link
Oh awesome thanks!
What are the premier GAA "leagues" for hurling and football? I'm looking to go to Ireland sometime and I am dying to see it in person. Everything is structured so differently than sports in the US its confusing lol
What you see depends on what time of year you visit.
There's two kinds of team: club and inter-county. Club games are normally 60 minutes; inter-county 70 minutes:
Most participants play for clubs. You drive around Ireland and see GAA clubs everywhere. Club competitions start in September (maybe late August) and run til December or January
Inter-county contest is more élite, more of a spectator sport. Higher quality but less participatory. The best players from each of Ireland's 32 counties compete in county-v-county matches. This is January to August. That's why in my first comment, we're seeing the club finals wrap up, and the first glimmer of inter-county season.
Aug/Sept-Oct is club county championships
The clubs compete to find who's the best club in each county. Examples of the format and timing –
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Tyrone_Senior_Football_Championship
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Dublin_Senior_Football_Championship
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Kilkenny_Senior_Hurling_Championship
Rarely be televised tbh, clubber.ie has videos and GAAgo.ie might have a few finals. Video production quality might not be what you're used to; filming sporting events is expensive.
Oct/Nov-Jan is club provincial and all-Ireland club championships
The champ-clubs of each county compete to win their provinces (Ireland has 32 counties, 4 provinces). And then the four provincial champions face off in semi-finals and the All-Ireland club final. (A complication: although Ireland has four provinces – Leinster, Munster, Connacht, Ulster – sometimes they get mashed together for GAA purposes. So Galway is in Connacht geographically but sometimes is in Leinster GAA contests.)
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2023–24 All-Ireland Senior Club Hurling Championship – 5 November 2023 – 21 January 2024
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2023–24 All-Ireland Senior Club Football Championship – 21 October 2023 – 21 January 2024
Gaago.ie would often have these .
Jan-April is inter-county Leagues
Leagues of inter-county teams, and a few other inter-county contests like the Walsh Cup I mentioned in my first comment.
- 2024 National Hurling League – 3 February-6/7 April 2024 – Wikipedia explains the format pretty well there. Another complication: while Ireland has 32 counties, the GAA recognises other 'counties' in the sense of teams that can compete, so London, Lancashire and Warwickshire are 'counties' for this purpose. You also see County New York or County Canada pop up sometimes.
2024 National Football League (Ireland)
Why do we have two inter-county contests, you may ask? One Jan-April and then another one? Bloody good question. Nobody can make sense of it. Maybe so that Mayo can win something lol. You hear podcasters and people talk about scrapping the League, focusing on the actual All-Ireland
April-July/Aug is the big one
All-Ireland Hurling: the Liam MacCarthy Cup
- The 2023 Hurling All-Ireland ran 22 April–23 July.
First, the group stages: five teams play in the Munster group, and six teams play in the Leinster group stages. Each team plays each other team in their group once.
So remember I was saying the four geographical provinces don't always correspond to the GAA provinces? That applies here. Only Ireland's 11 best county teams are in the contest, and split into 2 provinces rather than four. There are no Connacht or Ulster groups. What about the other counties? They're in lower tiers like this:
Tier 1: Munster Championship, Leinster Championship Tier 2: Joe McDonagh Cup Tier 3: Christy Ring Cup Tier 4: Nicky Rackard Cup Tier 5: Lory Meagher Cup
After the group stages, the finals. This is when everybody starts watching, it's all on telly:
Preliminary quarter-finals (winners advance to the quarter-finals): * 3rd placed Munster team (five Munster teams compete) * 3rd placed Leinster team (six Leinster teams compete) * Joe McDonagh Cup champions * Joe McDonagh Cup runners-up QUARTER-FINALS are contested between: * Leinster runner-up * Munster runner-up * Two preliminary quarter final winners SEMI-FINALS are contested between: * Leinster champion * Munster champion * Two quarter final winners AFTER THE SEMI-FINAL IS THE ALL-IRELAND FINAL
This format of finals means champions have a 2-match path to victory, runners-up have a 3-match path, 3rd-placed teams and 2nd-tier (Joe McDonagh Cup) have a 4-match path
All-Ireland Football: the Sam Maguire Cup
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_All-Ireland_Senior_Football_Championship was 8 April – 30 July 2023
Connacht:
Has 7 teams. Six randomly play each other in three matches.
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Then the three winners plus the luckiest of the 7 play in quarter-finals.
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The two finalists both go to the All-Ireland group stage, as 1st and 2nd seeds.
Leinster:
Has 11 teams. Six randomly play each other in three matches.
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Then the three winners plus the luckiest 5 of the 11 play in quarter-finals.
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The two finalists both go to the All-Ireland group stage, as 1st and 2nd seeds.
Munster:
Has 6 teams. Four randomly play each other in 2 matches.
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Then the 2 winners plus the luckiest 2 of the 6 play in semi-finals.
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The two finalists both go to the All-Ireland group stage, as 1st and 2nd seeds.
Ulster:
Has 9 teams. Two randomly play each other.
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Then the winner plus the luckiest 7 of the 9 play in quarter-finals.
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The two finalists both go to the All-Ireland group stage, as 1st and 2nd seeds.
All-Ireland Championship:
Group stage has 16 teams = 8 described above + the winner of the Tailteann Cup, a 2nd-tier championship of teams that did not make a provincial final + 7 from the League.
These 16 form four groups of four. Each play each other once, so you play 3 matches. The winner of each group advances to the Quarter-finals and has a path of three knockout games to victory. The 2nd-places and 3rd-placed (8 teams) go to the Preliminary quarter-finals and have a four-game path to victory.
They (the governing body of the GAA) also keep changing all this, so the competitions and formats might be different if anyone's reading this comment after 2024.
Sorry for the short answer lol.
No I appreciate the length. This helps make sense of it and I'll go back and reference it when I figure out when I go. Still confusing but I like how different it is from other sports leagues. The billions that go into US sports can really take the fun out of it.
Now I need to find which clubs to support (not Mayo apparently). Exciting!
Also what does the luckiest teams mean?
I mean it's a random draw.
Say you have seven teams: A,B,C,D,E,F,G
The next round requires whittling that down from 7 to 4.
Six get assigned to playoffs by a random draw, maybe it's
G versus D A versus E C versus F
The 3 winners of those go through. But also team
B
goes thru, just from the random draw.Ah okay that makes sense :)
My dad says he really liked Cork when he went so I will support Cork. Not the most creative choice but I'm lazy.
You could find out where your name is from here: https://www.barrygriffin.com/surname-maps/irish/
I'll have to talk to my family next time I see them. My grandparent was adopted before coming to the US so I'm not sure if the last name changed or not. But since my dad liked Cork so much I'm going to assume they were from there :)
Awesome. I like how they got the name. It feels good to support them for having it for a cool reason :)
Thanks for answering all the questions!
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Apparently West Ham beat Brighton earlier in the season and had 22% possession
🇮🇹⚽ Coppa Italia, round of 16, Jan 2-4
Numbers in brackets are the league-tier they play at
2 January 2024 AC Milan (1) v Cagliari (1) 3 January 2024 Atalanta (1) v Sassuolo (1) 3 January 2024 Roma (1) v Cremonese (2) 4 January 2024 Juventus (1) v Salernitana (1)
Maidstone, the only 6th-tier team in the last 64... they dun it.... they dun become the only 6th-tier team in the last 32
Story about it: https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/67894600
I'm tired Robbie. Season is over before December. Arteta is just Wenger 2.0
Girona-Atlético is a crazy game
Replay here if you want some top entertainment: https://footyfull.com/la-liga/girona-vs-atletico-madrid-03-01-2024/
Liverpool-Arsenal in the FA Cup also very good: https://footyfull.com/fa-cup/arsenal-vs-liverpool-07-01-2024/