These are worrying times for the championship when the biggest event in Killarney this weekend may not be the Munster football final but a charity cycle.
Tipperary’s shock win over Cork in the semi-final set up Sunday’s novel meeting with Kerry at Fitzgerald Stadium, although that certainly hasn’t transferred to ticket sales. According to county secretary Tim Floyd, the level of interest in Tipperary is particularly low.
Last year’s drawn final between Kerry and Cork in Killarney drew 35,651 – with the replay, at the same venue, attracting another 32,233. However the expectation now is that Sunday’s attendance could be less than half of that.
“You have to consider that for some of Tipperary’s football league games there could only be 400-500 in attendance,” says Floyd. “Now, we might expect to maybe get twice that to travel, but not much more, no. There just hasn’t been great support for Tipp football right now, that’s the reality of it.
Decent crowd
“You’d still expect Kerry to bring in a decent crowd. But you have to remember as well that the Tipperary hurlers are out the following Sunday, in the Munster hurling final (against Waterford, at the Gaelic Grounds).
“There’s certainly big interest in that game, at this stage, and we’d expecting maybe 20,000 Tipp supporters or more to travel to that. So that has to be factored in as well, for the supporters. It’s a question of economics, really . . .”
Indeed only 2,734 showed up in Thurles for Tipperary’s Munster football semi-final win over Cork on June 12th and a good half of those were actually from Cork. It is possible Sunday’s final will come close to the near-record low of 9,139 that attended the 2012 final between Cork and Clare, at the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick.
Under the counties’ prevailing home and away arrangement, they met in last year’s Munster semi-final in Semple Stadium, Kerry winning 2-14 to 2-8.
So, the biggest event in Killarney this weekend may well be the Ring of Kerry Charity cycle, which takes place this Saturday, and which will feature around 12,000 cyclists.
Worryingly for the Munster Council, perhaps, this expected drop in overall attendances comes on the back of a bumper year in 2015, when turnout increased by 24 per cent on 2014 (not including replays in either season).
Last year’s overall football attendances in Munster increased from 35,268 in 2014 to 57,573 in 2015, with hurling attendances up from 105,707 to 117,112 (again not including replays).
It meant the total Munster attendances in 2015, including the Kerry-Cork replay, was 207,918. Total attendances so far in 2016, with only the two finals to come, in football and hurling, stand at just 93,577.
Sunday’s football final also finds Tipperary bidding to win the Munster title for the first time since 1935, while Kerry are seeking a fourth successive success. They last meet in the Munster final in 1998 when Kerry, the then reigning All-Ireland champions, won by 0-17 to 1-10 in Thurles.
