THE BREAKDOWN: FIFA Have Gone Too Far This Time, Is the Commonwealth Games Still Relevant, & Gaelic Football Madness (E30)

27:48What happens, do you think, for the next few weeks? Watch UEFA. Just watch UEFA. It's all going to be about UEFA. Nothing will happen on the FIFA side because they didn't want to announce this anyway. They're not ready yet. This is all going to be about Seferin. And if Seferin's proved anything during the whole European Super League process, he's quite a tough operator. He wasn't in the World Cup final. Well, apparently he snubbed it. That was with the briefing. So maybe he knew something that we didn't. Maybe UEFA knew about this already, right? Maybe they knew that they were about to brief out against this.

28:24They were going to let one week pass after the end of the World Cup and then bang, get out there and say, this is what FIFA are really trying to do. And maybe he knew about that, which is why he didn't want to be pictured at the World Cup final with Infantino. I definitely think if the rest of the world football needs anyone leading it right now, it kind of is Seferin. he's a hard guy when he has to fight a corner he fights it really hard he's a good politician so I'm going to be really interested and secondly of course speaking from our slot here in the UK not that you are at the moment but I am is obviously going to be very interesting to see what our own Darling Football Association think about it given that only recently they were saying how much they were desperate for Gianni to get re-elected they've been in general much more ameliorative towards Infantino than have UEFA.

29:16Anyhow, I think that's probably all that can be said about it for now. Over the next week, I don't doubt that there will be further developments, but I think it will be very much watching what the big football nations in Europe and Latin America say about this. Because when you think about the mechanics of what are happening here, it's that mostly TV revenues, which are generated by those nations playing against each other, are being pulled forward to be sold off to redistribute that money to a bunch of small nations. Really. That's the big scheme of what's happening here. Anyhow, moving on. What else have we got to catch up on, Chas?

29:57Well, exactly. That was a long catch up, wasn't it? Not really. It was. There, of course, has been more development in England cricket, hasn't there, recently? Well, in a way, lack of development, or let's say back to the future or back to the past. how to put it. Right, so let's frame this. Back in March, Richard Gould, the chief executive of the ECB, said, we're keeping the coach, Brendan McCollum. He's a great guy. That's the future. We're delighted to keep the captain, Ben Stokes. Brilliant future. And of course, our masterful head of elite men's cricket, Rob Key. Fantastic. Push, push, push.

30:31I'm making the difficult decision to keep all these guys because this is the future. So where are we four months later. Well, Stokes retired, McCollum fired, Rob Key invisible. There is no men's coach for the upcoming test series against Pakistan, which is just quite extraordinary. McCollum went almost a month ago now, but they still haven't gone. Why? Because it seems like they sort of thought, well, we'll get Andy Flower back. Now, this was pointed out by some people at the time, including us, I have to say, to be quite unlikely. Because would Andy Flower want to come back to be coach of England when Brendan McCollum was already doing half of the job, because he's been kept on as the one day coach?

31:13Was Andy Flower likely to come back when he was already under long term contract to a big IPL team on huge amounts of money, which would then mean he couldn't be here for half the time during test matches. But there's no doubt that's who the ECB went for. And Andy Flower turned them down. So now they're left swinging going, well, we're not quite sure let's go and speak to a few other people which means they don't have a test coach and they failed to appoint a new captain so apparently they're going back to ask Joe Root who was the previous failed captain to come back as interim captain despite the fact that not only was he a failed captain but also really badly affected his batting and he's our only reliable batsman so I think you can throw a banner over this entire thing saying what a shambles is that unfair no not at all I mean look you know we've said it and now I'm conscious it almost seems like you're bullying them because you just beat down on them all the time but not then there just never seems to be any improvement on the situation the only things you can ever talk about are how how has this happened this just it just looks like chronic mismanagement the Joe thing is it's just potentially I was thinking about it Charlie maybe one of the most damning things about the whole like four-year tenure was that in that amount of time despite having some fantastically talented players in that group not a single one of those players was nurtured to be the captain material that could follow on from us, Stokes.

32:32Do you know what that is, Charlie? I've got a strong view on that. Why? You may or may not know what I studied at university. Do you know? Theology, yeah. Theology, yeah. And part of theology is you study cults and the character of cults. And the interesting thing about a cult is that the cult leader doesn't want to have any other leaders around him, really. It's very important that they only have followers, not leaders, right? Because otherwise a leader might one day say, we're going in a different direction. We're not going to drink this guy's Kool-Aid. We're heading off somewhere else. This cult was Brendan McCullum's cult with Ben Stokes as his willing accomplice.

33:12Okay. And those two guys did not want to have alternative leaders in the dressing room. That wasn't the style. The style was, we know what we're doing. The rest of you are just followers. follow us and you'll all be fine. Then the whole thing fell into a total shambles and it turned out that it wasn't fine and they got absolutely thumped and humiliated. The leaders of the cult then leave. But have you seen footage sometimes of when these cults get disrupted and you see the leaders being led away in handcuffs, the cult leaders? And then you look at the pictures of the cult followers who are just wandering around, just gazing into the distance, not knowing what to do.

33:52because they've been following the cult leaders for so long. And that's the situation that the English Test cricket squad is in right now, which is that in as much as any of them might ever have become leaders, that was never going to be encouraged in a situation where they were basically being told, this is not just how you play, but this is how you behave. You go out drinking, you go to nightclubs, you swing the bat, you bowl six bounces in a row, even if you're being hooked into the crowd for six all the time you just do what we say do what we do and everything will fall into place so it's no great surprise that there are no leaders to take their place but you know whether it's root or mccullum i think i said to you yesterday um very much thinking of organizations mostly in football because it's where you've seen it but the importance of succession planning and you know maybe the biggest danger to performance sport but increasingly performance tied to business etc now the biggest danger to sports organizations being significant change at the top of organizations.

34:52And surely one of the primary roles of a top executive, whether it be a chairman or a CEO of an organization, is to plan for that. I always remember Paul Barber, the CEO of Brighton, talking about one of the fundamentals of their model being they get the people in through the door. Would it compare Paul Barber to Rob Key? No. You can't imagine, my God, you can't imagine two less similar people to Barber and Key. I mean, you know, Paul Barber, for those who don't know, is the chief executive of Brighton and the Hove Albion, who has masterminded, obviously with Tony Bloom, the systematic rise of Brighton from lower league obscurity to the top of European football.

35:28They've done so through ruthless, disciplined, sort of systematic theories and strategies. So why it's the perfect example, because it's a model that works with brilliant succession planning and one that doesn't. But what they were talking about, right, what he was talking about was when you go into a situation where you know Moises Caicedo is going to leave the club, what you do is you bring Carlos Belieber in. And you know that change is coming and you've got to manage that process. Succession planning, he did the same with David. I think it was Dan Ashworth to David Weir on the technical side.

35:57Just multiple elements of unbelievably accurate succession planning. Peter Kenyon, I've mentioned on here before, his greatest frustration with Man United was the Alex Ferguson and David Gill departure in the same time, which left a huge chasm. The question I had to you is surely the main job of a top executive of a football club because things as we know in sport can change like that. This didn't change like that. This could have been spotted from a long time ago, even if Richard Gould had wanted to believe that he was making the right decision in keeping them. There had to be a moment there where they go, if this doesn't work, we have to have a fallback plan that could be literally enacted like that immediately.

36:33One would have thought so. One would have thought so. But I think that, well, first of all, you know, I was giggling a bit unfairly earlier on about the comparison between Paul Barber and Rob Key. you know the truth is that rob key is not a sports executive there is nothing in his career that would indicate that he is a sports doctor he was a middling to upper middling professional player who then became a media pundit and there's nothing wrong with that that's absolutely fine we don't mind middling players becoming good pundits it happens all the time and that's absolutely fine Certainly, he was quite well liked as a pundit.

37:13It's no problem whatsoever. There was absolutely nothing in his career up to the age of 40, which suggested that he had any of the attributes required to become a sports executive. It's a totally different trade. It's something which you learn through, dare I say it, going to conferences, watching other people, reading books, making your own mistakes at a lower level, learning from them, moving upwards, etc etc i probably learned more about being a sports executive from five or six hours i spent in ron dennis's company at mclaren in my late 20s than rob key will ever learn because when he was in his late 20s he was on the county cricket circuit going around provincial hotels and having a few beers after after play it's a totally different world so ultimately this goes back to leadership, right?

38:03Which is the key decision here really was the decision to appoint Rob Key, right? Because all of the other problems relate to having somebody in that particular position who doesn't even know what the job is, because he's never really seen that job before. He's never thought about that job deeply before. He's never gone on the circuit and spending time with people like Barbara and all these types of people saying, so what are your biggest challenges? Well, I tell you what, Rob, one of our biggest challenges is succession planning. Oh, succession planning. What's that? Well, what you'll find is, is this, this, this, this, and this, instead of which he's gone in there and he gone, well, look, my mate Baz, he can come in.

38:42He'll do a decent job. If I just leave him to it, I'll try not to get on his back too much. I'll just give a few nice interviews wearing a hoodie. Everyone will think I'm a nice guy because I am a nice guy. And I'll just set a bit of a vibe around the place that we're not all suits. We're all kind of like decent chaps. And if you go and slog it up and it gets caught, I'm not going to be there, you know, sort of giving shitty comments to the media. That is the extent of Rob Key's management, right? And the fact that Richard Gould and Richard Thompson have franchised out the management of elite men's cricket to somebody who is a genial beer after play cricketer, followed by a genial tell a few anecdotes media pundit, is quite astonishing.

39:22And every single thing that we're seeing now is the result of that, that problem. And that is a mistake that was made the very highest reaches of England cricket. So we get into space, we've got a home series. Something that slightly irritates me, Charlie, is people are always talking about the ashes. Well, it's all about what happens in the ashes in a year's time. Is it? As far as I'm concerned, we're playing Pakistan in a few weeks' time. So, I mean, at what point did playing Pakistan at home ceased to become an important thing? What are we saying that we just keep on losing series, but it's all okay in some way because we're planning for the ashes?

40:01Is that all it is now? I don't know. You tell me you're a cricket guy. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Seems to be the way in which people in English cricket seem to think, even pundits I listen to saying, well, you know, you can afford to throw the Pakistan series a bit. Really? Why? Sorry, I don't get that. We've just lost our first home series since 2012. surely every single fibre of English cricket's being should be we need to go and beat Pakistan 3-0. You know, not labouring the point, but I think again that's why as a fan I just felt so affronted by what happened in that final test at New Zealand because it just made a complete mockery of top level sporting competition.

40:37And, you know, when there was not just a test match but a test series on the line to win and you take the approach that was taken, turning it into, as I've said a few times, a testimonial really mid-match. I think it tells you everything you need to know about how some of these games are viewed. But I think you've hit the nail on the head there. What gives you the right to look ahead to a level of competition that right now is so far above your current station? It's like someone sitting in the middle of the Premier League table going, I only care about the Man City game or the Arsenal game. Or the Champions League.

41:06It's like somebody sat there as the chief executive of Crystal Palace saying, I'll tell you what, this Premier League thing is a bit dull. Let's talk about the Champions League. like, come on, Pakistan, Pakistan arrive, two or three weeks time, come on, let's start competing, let's start winning, let's start showing some leadership, let's start showing we care. And this is what professional sports leadership is about. It's about focus, it's about, you know, clarity, and, you know, coming back to your mention of Paul Barber, you know, everything that's done at Brighton, and they do make mistakes, but they just make fewer mistakes than other entities, everything that's done there, if you were to ask them three months later, can you explain why you did that, how you did that, that would be a very clear answer.

41:48No one expects you to get stuff right every single time. I don't even think the most dedicated fan base is you may snigger and go, having been in some of those situations. But certainly my experience is, if there's a decision that is made and it can be explained properly and the fans can understand it and at least understand why something would have happened even if they didn't agree with it, you've got a far better chance of maintaining the relationship and the trust of those people than if you do everything behind this curtain in a way that is to the outside world very very careless and basically full of ill practice look let's let's move on we've covered it plenty um unfortunately it keeps on coming back and back and back and there we are there we are it is what it is there was a fresh thing as well um you know to talk about well a couple of fresh things actually that we'll talk about now the first of which is the commonwealth games being on because i have a very embarrassing admission considering the job that we have and particularly the show that we host um i'd say literally until the day before the opening ceremony i completely forgot the commonwealth games was on i don't know you you did better than me because i had to wait until the day after the opening ceremony i didn't even know the game the games were on um so what does that reflect charlie well does it still have a place in in the sporting calendar was my was my first thought that that's quite a dramatic start to this but knowing a little bit about uh what has happened with the commonwealth games over the last four years in particular should we say is why um i bring that up going back to to those of you that that may not know what's happened so we've just had well we're having the commonwealth games in glasgow but it wasn't actually meant to be in glasgow this year it was meant to be in victoria in australia and the state government of victoria pulled out of hosting the games in 2023 because of a rising or escalating should we say projected budget that they were going to need to invest to actually host the games now it was quite an ambitious plan that australia had to host these games they wanted to host it across five separate regions within victoria to do that would have required their own infrastructure to be built um in each of those places it would have required the extensive transport links to be upgraded and fully sufficient to be able to host that tournament the budget that they'd set when they went into the bidding process that they thought would be sufficient was 2 billion Aussie dollars.

44:062 billion. Just convert that roughly into pounds? 1 billion pounds. That then got revised to 7 billion Aussie dollars. So 3.5 billion pounds. At which point the state of Victoria said, that is too much money. We cannot host this. We need to pull out. There was a, as you can imagine, big scramble for the Commonwealth Games organizing committees to decide and try and find a place, a city, a country that would be willing and capable of hosting it. Glasgow became the best option under a very specific and actually smart, sensible hosting strategy that I think moving forward can and will be used by a number of host cities as these costs of hosting these types of games escalates.

44:53But Glasgow basically said, we will be able to host it. We will use existing infrastructure that we have. There's four basically stadium sites that they're using. it's all across an eight mile band not hundreds of miles and we will reduce the number of sports that are played from 19 to 10 basically putting a cap on it of reportedly about 150 million pounds there's no taxpayer money that's needed to fund this it will be able to pay for itself we're using the models of they had the uci cycling um world championships and an event there that they could model some of the pricing on a host of world championships you know like swimming world championships etc those generally cost about five million um a pop to host which i was quite surprised you know relatively controlled even in the costing there but actually when you think about it why surprising it's just in fixed venues that are already there unless you're going to build something so they they created a for the first time very sensible model around hosting these games but it also led me to think about you know australia's role to play in this and what actually happens if you do put yourself in a position because they've missed an estimate by 5 billion Aussie dollars, which is...

45:58Yeah, of course, that's astonishing. I mean, I don't know how that happened. I know the cost of construction of sporting facilities has massively escalated during the time probably between when they bid for it and when they would end up paying for it. And that's been reflected in our industry in the cost of building football stadia, which has probably gone up by 50 % to 60 % in the last decade in real terms, with inflation on top of that. So I suspect that's got something to do with it and then probably over-optimism in terms of some of the transport links. Often it's the transport links and these things which really cost money, Charlie.

46:35So your point about confining the games within a very tight space I think is a really relevant one. I just wonder if the bigger question here isn't really about is there really a place in the calendar for the Commonwealth Games anymore? So if we look at the history of it, it was first held in 1930 as the British Empire Games. So this is when Britain still had an empire, which over the following 35 years, Britain basically divested its empire. And those former territories became part of the Commonwealth, which is what it now is. So just remind people, particularly those listeners who don't come from the UK, Australia or Canada, that most former British colonies are part of the Commonwealth.

47:19So Australia is and Canada is and various other countries are. But for instance, America is not. I think India kind of is, but as an associate member, it's not a full member of the Commonwealth for various different sort of post-colonial reasons. So basically, it's a coming together of countries that used to be run by Britain. That's basically what it is, right? Now, all of those countries these days have their own continental games to compete in, right? So if you are in Australia, there'll be the Oceania games or the Pan American games. If you are in Asia, there'll be the Asian games. This was not the case in 1930.

48:00This was an opportunity in 1930 for athletes from those types of countries to compete in a major games outside of the only other competition they compete in, which was the Olympic Games at the time. It just feels to me like it slightly lost its place and its purpose. And we're trying to keep the patient alive on the trolley without really having any particular hope that it's ever going to become anything of great relevance again. Am I being unfair? No, I don't think you are. that's certainly how I feel as a fan because I don't and I you know look we're again target audience right we love our sport I love the Olympics I really enjoy world championships probably track and field side if I'm being honest you know not across sport but let's say the athletics world championships I haven't watched the Commonwealth Games for a very long time and therefore just if I can do a self-assessment piece as someone that should be watching it does it does it still fulfill a purpose now the kiwi won the 100 meters last night women but does it matter when you're missing the key competitors or or you know like what's what's the point do you really feel like you've beaten the world's best which surely you know when you're going out to compete at the level of international athletics championships and swimming and all of the other sports that's what you're there to do that's what you want to do you want to beat the best in the world you don't just want to beat the best that were part of a former empire um that still has a game it's so random charlie like there are some there are some sports in which the commonwealth countries are very very strong and then there are other sports where they're very very weak so for instance in swimming you might say well okay we've beaten if you're a british swimmer you say i've beaten all the australians australia being probably the strongest swimming swimming nation if you haven't beaten the americans so are what are you really saying here that you know you're better than the australian i just look i i think it's anachronistic i'm not i'm a massive traditionalist i'm a conservative person small c conservative person by heart i like keeping things alive wherever i possibly can but sometimes the patient needs to be put out of its misery and it just feels to me like the commonwealth games has reached a point of indifference and irrelevance even to people like you and me i mean it's it's always normally on the BBC in this country, the national free-to-air broadcast, and now it's got on pay TV.

50:26So, you know, got to ask questions about what the audience number is going to be like because I'm not watching it. You're not watching it. Gone to TNT. Yeah, gone to TNT. First time it's been pay. But also, Charlie, I mean, I'm looking at the budgets and the competitive budgets that the pay TV channels have and the amount that they have to bid for. Now, I was just surprised that that was something that, you know, TNT would have gone for, to be quite honest, because I don't think that's going to drive subscriptions i'm not getting tnt sport because i'm desperate to watch commonwealth games most likely at scale um so yeah i i think i think they're all fair points so anyway look the long and short of it is it's happening glasgow has found a way of making it work economically um it's going to india i think next um so let's see let's see how that goes the infrastructure bill there they'll likely have to spend a lot more money around transport links there so again you know you probably get a situation where costs are going to go up interestingly one final point what reportedly they are using the games for is the test run for a 2036 olympic bid so yeah they see it as an opportunity to that's interesting out there capabilities to host major tournaments that could be one of the values for some of these countries but we speculate um do we want to squeeze in a quick g yeah i think so so charlie questions to Charlie Jr.

51:46Oh, no. Charlie Jr., after a frenetic summer of sport, and with you by this point down on the El Dorado set in Marbella, you may have missed the answer to this question. What was the biggest sporting event in the British Isles last weekend? Gaelic football final. The Gaelic football final. The Gaelic football final was contested on the weekend. And as is always the case, at a sold-out Croke Park, 82 ,000 people. So pretty much the same number of people that watched the World Cup final live, give or take, watched the Gaelic football final in Dublin on the weekend. And the result, Charlie, was that Mayo, County Mayo, because Gaelic football is played on a county basis, okay, County Mayo beat County Kerry.

52:41County Kerry being almost like sort of the man's city of Gaelic football. They've won the top titles there many, many, many times. But County Mayo have not won the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship final since 1951. And it's been the subject of one of the most famous myths in sport of the last century, which is this. This is the myth. And this is what's made the big news all around the world. And by big news all around the world, some of the most famous people in the world were tuning in to watch this game. We'll come on to why in a moment. So County Mayo last won the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship final in 1951.

53:22And it was alleged, not long afterwards, actually, so this myth has been going on an awful long time, that on the way back from winning that final, the team came across a funeral in County Mayo. And they didn't stop to pay their respects at that funeral. and the priest at that funeral put a curse on the county mayor players saying, may Mayo never win the All-Ireland Championship final again whilst you guys are still alive. And quite extraordinarily, the final remaining player from that side died about four years ago, a man called Paddy Prendergast. And it was quite interesting, really, an interview he gave not long before he died about the story.

54:07and he was recalling the journey back from that 1951 file. I guess we were all in a truck together heading from Dublin to Mayo. And I do recall there being a group of people outside the church. We were on the truck. We couldn't get off the truck. It wasn't that we did anything deliberately or anything like that. So it's never quite been clear whether this story is true, made up, or a bit made up, whatever it might be. But what is not in doubt is that they lost, in the meantime, time, I think 11 finals, 11 defeats and 11 finals between that victory in 1951 and what happened on the weekend. So, and it provokes an astonishing outpouring of joy, not just in County Mayo, where pretty much the entire county, I think there are about 150 ,000 inhabitants of County Mayo.

54:57And it seems like pretty much the entire population of County Mayo turned out to welcome the players back at their home stadium, but also such famous people from around the world with County Mayo antecedents, Joe Biden, the former US president, the Gallagher brothers, who were wearing Mayo shirts, etc. This is a big deal, right? This has gone around the world. What have you taken out of it, Charlie? Embarrassment at my lack of appreciation for actually how important this is to a country and a sporting heritage culture. And, you know, from what I've seen as well, like really good sport to watch and enjoy.

55:34Great sport. Do you know what sport it's sort of closest to? Aussie rules. Australian rules. Yeah, it's really close to Australian rules football. So one of the players, I think one of the star players was part of the commentary was, oh, they worry that they'll lose them to the AFL. So clearly close enough. And why might that happen? Why might they lose players to the AFL, Charlie? Well, the second part that was fascinating is this is an amateur sport. So you have 82 ,000 thousand people packing out crow park reportedly charlie i i you'll you'll be able to tell me better but i mean it was they said 132 million euros generated right by the gaa which is gaelic football and hurling i think so it's a bit more than that actually and that's i think that's kind of where we need to start right so the gaa is the gaelic athletic association and it was founded 125 years ago, maybe even more.

56:27And it was really to promote Gaelic Irish sports, but also Irish culture. So the GAA devotes part of its revenue to promoting Irish music, dancing, and this type of stuff. So this is a cultural organization and the sporting elements of it, which obviously dominate its revenue base and dominate in reality the vast majority of what it does. You've got obviously Gaelic football, but also you've got hurling, which is a very big sport in Ireland. You've got Gaelic handball. You've got Gaelic rounders. All of these sports are taking place and being funded or supported by the GAA. So they've taken all their revenues from their big spectator events, which is the Gaelic football and Tredegu the Hurling, And then they spread that revenue through supporting basically Gaelic culture broadly, but particularly sporting culture throughout the island.

57:31And the way they do that is by not paying the players. So the money that would normally go to paying the performers instead goes to supporting the whole infrastructure of these sports. and where that spins through to in terms of the Gaelic football is it's played on a county basis and as you say on an entirely amateur basis so a top Gaelic footballer will play for his county and they play against the other counties in the National Football League and then from the National Football League if they do well and they qualify through to the All-Ireland Senior Football championship, which is for the top counties to then play off against each other.

58:17And then that in turn is what County Mayo has just won. So it's almost a bit more like an American sports system where you end up with the playoffs, where the big matches happen and the final then happens. Now, of course, that amateur status, which is pursued pretty relentlessly, but the players do get paid expenses. They do get helped out, obviously, with certain allowances, and, you know, travelling and maybe some accommodation and all this type of stuff. But fundamentally, it is still strictly amateur. So some of those who excel at it at an early age have been transferring across to play Australian rules football in Australia.

59:02I mean, even looking at it like without, you know, transfer systems and all players just play for their counties and understanding why it is structured the way it is was really interesting because, you know, again, it throws out the piece of, well, you know, when you do start to generate that amount of money, regardless of whether you want to stay amateur or not, you know, you have players that create even more value, should we say, from a kind of social element and what it brings to regions and these counties and how they can leverage it, but you're not paying the key contributors. In fact, maybe even worse than that, I think I saw, and again, could be wrong, but it actually costs, I mean, they're net down about€5 ,500 a year, these players, just to compete in it.

59:38but you know it's really funded by that whole system which means that everyone is volunteering whether it's the pitches and the facilities and all of this so you know the the costs completely change the dynamic of the sport completely changes if you professionalize it we all know what happens when that comes in at a stage where maybe there isn't the right structures in place to manage it properly so you just lose complete control they've got a big advantage Charlie right which is leaving aside um the very small number of players who decide to travel to the other end of the world to play in Aussie rules football, unlike in most other sports, they don't face immediate competition, right?

1:00:15So let's just say for the sake of argument that as well as the amateur league in Ireland, there was a professional league in Scotland, right? What you would find is that all the top players in Ireland went to play in the professional league in Scotland. But the absence of there being that competition enables the GAA to carry on with doing what probably all of us would dream of doing really as sports administrators, which is taking in all the revenues and running a cracking business and being able to distribute those revenues to the development of the sport more broadly and not having to pay the performers.

1:00:50But if we were to try that in football, then obviously those footballers who are good enough to be paid elsewhere would move elsewhere and the same with other sports as well. So it's a huge advantage it being a sport which is only played really in one country. this is probably one of the reasons i love doing this show more than anything else because it takes you into places that you don't necessarily expect to go and one of our um loyal followers on sub stack tom clark has been literally begging us uh to take a look at this and it probably you know warrants well it does warrant you know a far deeper conversation um i would i would encourage everyone though just for this based on your first exposure to the sport to just go and check out some of it if there's one job that we have you know opening people's eyes to things they may not have seen before i think it's a really good one this is something that you would be really interested in from a sport and it's a fascinating sport and it's you know we mentioned obviously that the grand final got 82 000 but you know county mayo who as i said of a population of about 150 000 people their home stadium which is mckale park the capacity of mckale park is 28 000 So about 20 % of the entire county can fit into McHale Park, and they sell it out regularly.

1:02:07I mean, it's quite extraordinary. 28 ,000 capacity stadium. That's about the same size as Crystal Palace. County Mayo is selling out for Gaelic football their home stadium on a very regular basis. This is the biggest sport in Ireland. Spectator football isn't anywhere near that. I do think there's something absolutely amazing about the county system because the roots that that gives people, there are two things which I think we've lost from the English sporting infrastructure in the last 30, 40 years during your lifetime is, first of all, we used to have a strong county rugby championship. and the final of that which was played at Twickenham used to be a very very big event and would pack out Twickenham you know if you had Cornwall playing against Suffolk or something that was a massive event and was set out Twickenham and give people a real reason to follow their county all over the country because they'd know the players they'd know the backstories the families and all that type of stuff and that was an amateur event and then the other thing we've lost is is the big one-day county championship finals at Lourdes, the Benson and Hedges in particular, which again used to pack out Lourdes for Gloucestershire against Northamptonshire or whatever it might be and gave those counties that don't necessarily have a Premier League football team, don't necessarily have a top, you know, sort of sporting infrastructure, but for that particular thing, gave the whole county a reason to travel up to London as a county and some of the atmospheres at those finals were better than for any England game.

1:03:39It was absolutely unbelievable. I think we sort of slightly lost our sense within our sporting infrastructure in England of that county rootedness. And I know you're a Londoner, so it's a little bit different, but I'm entirely from Oxfordshire and anything to do with Oxfordshire, I would follow. And yet there's nothing really I can follow Oxfordshire in. This is kind of beautiful full circle to finish it off with, because really, as sport gets bigger, as it becomes more of a business, as more money comes into it, it's very hard to retain a lot of sometimes that feeling and those structures. You know, when you look at the upset around FIFA, whatever it is, you know, it's just another element of business and money coming in to usurp some of the values that people may hold.

1:04:23Charlie, it's quite interesting. Just to, yeah, I get all that and I understand it, but sometimes be careful what you wish for. I've actually been really enjoying watching The 100. I'm currently I'm watching it every evening at the moment it's really convenient, it takes the right length of time for me to watch during the evening but I will note that the crowds at the 100 currently would be rather lower than would have been the case in the Benson Hedges County Tournament of 20-30 years ago so you know sometimes newer is always better but what the GAA are demonstrating is that you can actually have a massive spectator sport which is still rooted in what has always been the case.

1:05:04The traditionist in me loves that. It's time for us to pop over to Substack and chat a bit more football, most notably about the Premier League, the EFL and the old football regulator plus the crazy transfer market. So if you want to come and join us on that, please do. It'll be a great conversation. But if not, we'll see you next week. Thank you so much, Charlie. Sorry to stick you on camera again as I continue to try and get a suntan to match you in the studio.

1:05:33See you then.

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