Counties contesting the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship (yellow), All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship (blue), or both (green); however almost all counties contest both the National Football League and the National Hurling League

A Gaelic Athletic Association county is a geographic region within the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), controlled by a county board and originally based on the 32 counties of Ireland as they were in 1884. While the administrative geography of Ireland has since changed, with several new counties created and the six in the north-east superseded by 26 local government districts, the GAA counties have remained largely unchanged.

However, the GAA county does not always and everywhere cover precisely the same territory as the traditional county. Particularly in the first 50 years of the Association but also in more recent times, there are many examples of clubs based in one of the administrative counties being allowed to participate in the leagues or championships of a neighbouring county. There are also instances where the official county boundary does not coincide precisely with the GAA county, for example where a club is based on a parish that crosses the county border. While in most cases the name of the GAA county is the same as that of the current or former administrative county, there have been exceptions: Derry has never used the official county name of Londonderry, and the Board of the county then officially known as Queen's County changed its name in 1907 to Leix and Ossary, later becoming Laois. Each county board is responsible for organising GAA club fixtures within the county, and for the promotion and development of Gaelic games and the other objectives of the Association.

The GAA county can also refer to the inter-county teams fielded by each county board. While in general any GAA county, and only a county, is eligible to compete in the provincial and national championships and leagues, and almost all do so, again there can be anomalies: in the National Hurling League, for example, a team representing Fingal - a sub-region of the GAA county of Dublin, corresponding to the modern administrative county of Fingal - competes against GAA counties.

Since the inception of the county system, there have been changes to the respective regions of control of the overseas units. In Ireland the concept of the county is very strong and changing the county boundary is extremely controversial. In 2002 a proposal to divide Dublin in two was quickly and strongly opposed.^[1]

Gaelic Athletic Association 'counties' overseas[link]

Gaelic Athletic Association counties outside Ireland cover large geographic non-traditional areas which are not considered as counties in any other context. For example, Scotland is a county for GAA purposes, while the remaining counties of Great Britain cover wider areas than their names suggest. The Hertfordshire County Board, for example, oversees clubs in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire; Gloucestershire GAA reaches into South Wales, Warwickshire GAA includes Staffordshire and Birmingham, and so on. There are also 'county boards' for Australasia, Canada, the rest of North America, Europe and Asia, while other overseas GAA regions such as the Cayman Islands operate with their own structures not including county boards.^[2]

See also[link]

• GAA county colours and flags
• List of GAA county nicknames

References[link]

Mick Brennan (born May 17, 1952 in Salford) is a retired English professional footballer. He played as a forward or a midfielder.

In 1977, Micky Brennan is listed with the Cleveland State University men's soccer team.^[1] He is then listed as having played for the Cleveland Cobras of the American Soccer League in 1978.

References[link]

External links[link]

• [1]

Richard Alan Murray is an English businessman and the former chairman of Charlton Athletic F.C.

Murray founded Avesco plc, the specialist services provider to the entertainment & sports industry in 1984, where he was Chairman for almost 20 years; he is the Chairman of Investinmedia plc and has other non-executive directorships which include Welsh Industrial Investment Trust plc and Medal Entertainment and Media plc.

Murray first started watching Charlton Athletic F.C. during the 1980s when the club was playing its home games at Selhurst Park as the club's ground, The Valley, had been forcibly closed. He joined the board of Charlton in the early 1990s and is credited with helping the club return to The Valley in 1992. He became chairman of the plc board at Charlton in 1995, after which he appointed Alan Curbishley as the club's sole manager (Curbishley had previously been joint manager with Steve Gritt). The first twelve years of Murray's tenure saw two promotions to the Premier League and seven seasons in the top flight, the club's most successful spell since the years preceding and after World War II.

Since 2005, Murray has attracted headlines over his relationship with Crystal Palace Football Club counterpart Simon Jordan. This relates to incidents between the two which occurred when Charlton relegated Crystal Palace from the Premier League in May 2005,^[1] and a year later when manager Iain Dowie moved from Palace to Charlton,^[2] when Jordan felt Dowie had agreed to take over at Charlton before leaving Palace.^[3] At the subsequent court trial, the verdict was that Charlton had not interviewed Dowie before he left Palace.^[4]

The club's fortunes on the pitch declined after Curbishley's departure from Charlton in 2006, suffering relegation from the Premier League in 2007. In early 2008, a re-organisation at the club meant Murray was moved to become chairman of Charlton Athletic Football Club Limited, thus taking greater responsibility over football matters. He was replaced as plc chairman by Derek Chappell. However, a poor 2008–09 season saw Charlton suffer a second relegation in as many years. Chappell resigned in 2009 and Murray returned as plc chairman.

Over a period of several years—in 2007,^[5] 2008^[6] and 2009^[7]—Charlton were linked with a series of takeovers. These were actively encouraged by Murray as a means of solving Charlton's increasing financial problems; former Chief Executive Peter Varney was tasked with identifying potential owners. In the summer of 2010, a restructure of the club saw the plc effectively wound up with the club's assets transferred to a company controlled by Murray.^[8] In December 2010, it was announced that the club had been sold to Charlton Athletic Holdings Ltd, a Swiss-registered company owned by Michael Slater and Tony Jimenez; Slater immediately replaced Murray as chairman.^[9] Murray remains a director of Charlton Athletic, and retains a ten per cent ownership of the club.^[10]

References[link]

External links[link]

• University of Greenwich profile on Richard Murray

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