McKenna Cup brings mid-winter bonanza to Ulster Council

Not that proof were needed by now that they think a bit different up north – but if it by any chance it was, a gander at this week's edition of Gaelic Life would bring down the judge's gavel.

Contained within the self-styled World's Greatest Gaelic Games Newspaper are "18 pages of interviews, statistics and analysis" of – wait for it – the Dr McKenna Cup. And maybe more remarkably, once you sat down to read through it all, it didn't even seem that excessive.

This, after all, is a competition that brings 45,000 people through the turnstiles last year. On this very weekend in 2015, Armagh versus Tyrone at the Athletic Grounds had to be delayed by half an hour to get everyone in . The final number clocked in at 8,463 – not bad for the first Sunday in January.

"There's a hunger there to see games," says Ulster Council chairman Martin McAviney. "People have been sitting in the house over Christmas, the weather has been bad, they're mad to get out and get a look at a game. The rivalry between the teams has been the basis for it and everything else has just been building on that. People started seeing it as a continuation of the championship just gone or a forerunner of the one to come.

“But it has even taken us by surprise at times. We got caught out last year in the Tyrone versus Armagh game. I don’t care what anybody says: nobody foresaw that big a crowd turning up that day. It came out of nowhere really. We thought there’d be a crowd at it alright, but we didn’t think it would be that size.”

Fabled match

Though nothing is ever likely to match the fabled 19,631 who turned up to see then All-Ireland champions Tyrone take on then Ulster champions Armagh in January 2006, there is undoubtedly an appetite for the Ulster pre-season competition that isn’t replicated elsewhere.

The McGrath Cup final last year recorded a crowd of 907. Granted, the O’Byrne Cup final drew a capacity 8,000 crowd to Newbridge for Kildare versus Dublin, but that was the biggest attendance the competition had seen in over a decade.

The visit of the All-Ireland champions to New Ross tomorrow isn’t expected to overly tax the turnstile operators.

But the McKenna Cup will hum from the first throw-in. With eight Ulster teams in top two divisions of the league – and five in Division Two alone – the rat race will be scurrying along at pace long before teatime. The fact that a lot of Ulster teams play to fairly rigid systems means that even a dozy McKenna Cup game can yield information to be used down the line.

"You definitely do gain a little bit from seeing what way other teams set themselves up and how they go about their business," said Cavan manager Terry Hyland during the week.

“That’s why the McKenna Cup is such a competitive competition compared to the O’Byrne Cup and the FBD and the likes. There’s always something at stake.”

Mid-winter bonanza

For the Ulster Council, the falling into their lap of an organic, attractive success story in the darkest mid-winter has been a bonanza over the past decade. When presented with something popular, they have had the good sense to mine it for whatever gold it might contain. All through December, they have been running ads to get the people out, calling the McKenna Cup the One Good Thing About January.

“We sort of identified that there were areas that we could improve on in terms of marketing,” says McAviney. “And there’s no doubt, the McKenna Cup was one of them. It coincided with a time when Ulster counties were doing well and were regularly meeting in big championship games, but also a time where nearly all of the counties had the infrastructure in place for it to be worth our while to market the games.

Good floodlights

“Everyone was getting good floodlights put in, so we were fit to put on games midweek. They were getting good, modern pitches, so fewer and fewer games were in any danger of being called off. There was going to be no point in us doing an advertising campaign if all these pitches were going to be waterlogged at the drop of a hat. Once we started to be more sure of games happening on better surfaces, then at least you had something there to go out and market.”

The Ulster Council have made a season ticket available for €25 (£20) to take in three group games, both semi-finals and the final. Six games before the league even starts for the price of a round of drinks. All of it goes into the pot.

“It really does help us financially,” says McAviney. “We don’t have huge revenue streams apart from the championship in the summer. People give out to us sometimes, saying it takes us a long time to run our championship off, and we are looking at possibly running off two matches in a weekend if there’s a new structure or timetable for us to deliver in the future. But there’s no doubt that the McKenna Cup is an important revenue source for us.”