Fans switch off as league suffers personality bypass

Maths wasn’t exactly a strong suit in the old school days, but one glance around Croke Park last Sunday afternoon seemed to offer fairly definitive evidence that the numbers just didn’t add up for what proved to be two perfectly enjoyable Allianz League Division 1 semi-finals.

By the time everyone clicked through the turnstiles, HQ’s bean counters had registered a crowd of 24,941 for what was a fairly attractive bill of fare and yet it was an attendance that represented a drop of almost 4,000 on the numbers who had turned up at the same venue 10 weeks earlier when Dublin and Kildare were again among the star attractions on the day the league opened its doors.

That seems, well, just plain wrong.