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Tyrone say they are comfortable being favourites but they are trying to be cute hoors about it.
Heres their chance to state their confidence unequivocally.

Kerry players threaten RTE boycott

Kerry footballers prior to their Munster SFC tie with Tipperary
17 June 2010


Kerry's footballers are considering boycotting RTE in protest over what they regard as unfair treatment of Paul Galvin on 'The Sunday Game'.

According to the Irish Independent, the Kerry players are furious with what they see as the scapegoating of Galvin, who has decided to accept his eight-week ban, and may withdraw cooperation with RTE for pre and post-match interviews. However, a senior Kerry player told Newstalk Radio this morning that it was the first he'd heard of any such action.



The Kerry camp is blaming 'The Sunday Game' for covering the incident involving Galvin and Cork's Eoin Cadogan so extensively that it led directly to the CCCC proposing the ban for the current Footballer of the Year.

Referee Pat McEnaney took no action during the game, but reacted once he was asked to review the incident.

"If RTE think they can act as judge and jury on a player, yet continue to get cooperation from his team-mates when it comes to interviews, they're living on a different planet. They can't have everything their own way," a Kerry source said.

Kerry are particularly angry with panellist Anthony Tohill who described the incident as "unacceptable". And there has even been suggestions that Galvin and a number of Kerry players will boycott the International Rules series later this year as a result of the Ireland manager's comments.

I think this is an interesting development. The scrutiny on Paul Galvin last Sunday was ridiculous with cameras on him all the time and lads yapping about him taking on water during the warm up. People say that Paul Galvin should "control" himself but with the Cork players obviously targetting him from the get go (especially that gobshite Cadogan) and the crowd booing him and every pair of eyes and every camera watching his every move its obvious that something was bound to happen. He has to put up with more pressure and provocation than any other player in the history of Gaelic games. The dirty little truth here is that everybody (except Kerry folk) WANT him to do something for their own selfish reasons whether it is the opposing team who want to see him sent off, RTE so that ratings will go up or Neutrals who just love the controversy.

There is a worrying commercial interest here.How many people watched that game last Sunday...I'd hazard a guess that the ratings were probably more than any other game this year, also , I'd say alot of people would stay tuned in once they saw Paul Galvin was playing. RTE have a strong commercial interest in keeping any Paul Galvin controversy going and they have a direct means of influencing the CCCC to protect their commercial interests. This is not an acceptable situation.

I'm fairly neutral on the pay for play issue. I wouln't like to see it but I can see where the players are coming from......but when it comes to RTE I am coming to the conclusion that the players should screw the D4 bastards for every penney they can get  if they (RTE) want access to them.

Also, I dont think that the manager of the International rules team should be making money commentating on the championship. There is a long summer ahead of us and he has already alienated some potential players. If he is consistent (and by god, he'd better be consistent) then it is highly likely that he will alienate more players from other counties. This is hardly the preparation that you want before a series.

[The latest NFL Fair Play Index sees Limerick's impressive disciplinary record maintained, while the CCCC's bans on Tyrone have dropped Mickey Harte's men to the foot of the table.]

http://www.hoganstand.com/ArticleForm.aspx?ID=124228

The latest NFL Fair Play Index sees Limerick's impressive disciplinary record maintained, while the CCCC's bans on Tyrone have dropped Mickey Harte's men to the foot of the table.
Limerick picked up three yellow cards in their win over Carlow but having a perfect record from their opening game against London means they maintain their position at the top.

Monaghan, who were joint top last week have dropped into the bottom half on foot of eight yellow cars picked up against Galway.

Tyrone, mid-table after four yellows in round one, have dropped to the bottom to the pile after three of those yellows were changed to red by the CCCC and Joe McMahon received a straight red in the loss to Mayo last Sunday.

Further proof that Mickey Harte and his evil dwarves are intent on ruining our great game with their thuggery.

[Wexford looking to host Dublin clash]

 http://www.herald.ie/opinion/columnists/frank-roche/has-to-be-croker-for-the-dubs-1925296.html

..and, from reservoirdubs.com

Wexford looking to host Dublin clash

Wexford county board chairman Ger Doyle is to formally request that next year's Leinster SFC quarter-final between Wexford and Dublin be played at Wexford Park.

Jason Ryan's team were drawn first out of the drum against the five-time Leinster champions, which means that the Model County are the home side for the fixture.

However, the GAA may wish to fix the game for Croke Park as the Dubs' involvement is sure to see a huge demand for tickets from the capital.

"We were the first out of the drum and if we had been with, say M**th, we would have been entitled to a home draw," said Doyle.

"Dublin have had all their home games in Croke Park, but a precedent was set when they had to travel to Pearse Park in Longford a few years ago to take on the home county.

"We have a 30,000 capacity, so definitely we are looking towards having the game played in Wexford Park."

the arrogance ! its a home draw for Wexford ffs, why is this even in question.

Well, we know the Tyrone lads are feeling a bit down today so I think we should cheer them up a bit. We all know how much they love their beard jokes (wild and crazy guys that they are) so I suggest we find images that they might appreciate....



Tyrone man the next time they win an All-Ireland




The "made it halfway beard" aka the 2-in-a-row



The "I drowned my sorrows too much in copper faced jacks and woke up beside this" beard



..and of course, last but not least, the "has anybody seen Sam, I cant find Sam" beard

I think that Cork might upset the odds on Sunday. Not to worry, a few easy games against weaker counties like  Monaghan, Armagh and Tyrone will see us right.

Whats interesting though,  is how Cork will become team of the decade if they win. One of my fellow countymen pointed out this interesting fact...Tyrone cheated, cough, I mean, beat us in 2003, 2005 and 2008. Cork beat us in 2002, 2006 and 2008.  Now we all know that the number of AI won in the decade does not determine the team of the decade and its only head-to-head games against Kerry that count. Therefore if Cork win then they are team of the decade

I'll bet he has a theory on who shot JFK (and JR) as well.....McEneaney has lost it...

Monaghan boss fears anti-Ulster conspiracy
14 January 2009


Monaghan senior football manager Seamus McEnaney believes the GAA's new experimental rules could be interpreted as being anti-Ulster.

Banty is of the opinion that, were they to become permanent, the trial regulations will have a particularly adverse effect on Ulster teams, who deploy a more robust style of play.




"It would hurt a lot of teams, but there are a lot of people out there who feel that they are targeted towards Ulster, and you definitely couldn't disagree with that fact," he argues.

"You couldn't say it's NOT targeted against Ulster teams. Ulster teams in general - and Leinster teams like Dublin and Meath, may I add - play it to the line most of the time. It's a physical game and that's where we want it.

"We were bred in for it to be a physical game and we are losing that. That is a very important part of it. Yes, the catch, the kick and the solo and everything else that goes along with that is a very important part of our game, but we can't bring in new rules at the expense of physicality."

Brilliant !   

To be honest I was a bit worried before the game about motivation and was also worriied after the game because I was wondering if we really could motivate ourselves to play Cork yet again having thrown the game away.

However, a week of Kerry hating by the rest of the country is just what we need. It'll keep the lads fired up.

I hope ye wont let us down lads..we are depending on ye !

Whenever I hear  the term "Puke football" being used these days is, for the most part, by Notherners, specifically, those from Tyrone. Its quite astonishing how much this simple term has invaded their psyche. What is it lads..? I think if ye stopped talking about it it would just fade away. Just let it go......sticks and stones and all that. Why is it such a sensitive topic 5 years after it was uttered ?

solid defence that had Mattie forde cleaned out in the second half.
Shane Ryan lording midfield...
Sherlock and co scoring at will....


Surely its a foregone conclusion at this stage. I dont think anybody could live with them on todays form

Theres going to be a lot of this "I always said Lmerick were good" stuff so I thought we should have a poll and get organized about it, like

We have to win or this kind of shite will just get out of hand...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPoHIJLitiE

It is our duty to culchies everywhere...nay, it is our duty to civilization as we know it !!

Terrible stuff altogether. I hope our lads refrain from doing something similar when we win on Sunday

[Bricking it already over this match]

Bricking it already over this match. I really think we could do it this time. Not 'will' or 'should', but definitely 'could'.

Getting nervous already. O'Rourke was like the class clown after the game thinking he was funny and waiting for everyone around him to laugh. It'll be a huge battle at midfield.

It may be hard to believe but I know we will win on Sunday I am so confident that God forbid if it goes wrong I will never post on this site again

brolly and co will have the other 31 counties just sittin there waiting for Dublin to fold.

dnt think it will happen this year, we've learnt a lot(i hope)  

Will we give these hoors the hiding we owe them next week?
I think they're there for the taking,no reason whatsoever why we shouldn't beat them by four or five points....if only we could get someone to take out darragh o'sè

still dreading it , no word on tickets yet so might just stay at home and watch it

Yep, nerves are mounting, although at this stage I was more nervous about the Derry match. Losing to Derry would have been the end of the world, very few will be expecting us to beat Kerry, I reckon we have a good shot but there arent many arent the country who would agree with a statement like that! Anyway, it will be a good one, and i should know in the next two days if i have my ticket sorted!

I think the Dubs are getting more nervous by the day..the bravado is still there but its becoming more and more qualified...definite signs of nervousness as we get closer to the game (as the above quotes from reservoirdubs will attest to) I dont think they truly believe they can beat us.

What do ye think ?

Interesting article.. a love-in for Meath with some digs at Dublin mixed in with some home truths for the Tyrone lads

From the Sunaday Independent:
We all love a Royal romance

Sunday August 12 2007

PERHAPS I'm hallucinating but the strangest thing seems to have happened. M**th appear to have become the neutral's favourite team in the All-Ireland football championship.

Years of backroom wrangling have pretty much destroyed any sympathy the public might have had for Cork. Kerry haven't done anything wrong except to be so consistently excellent that another Sam Maguire for them would leave us all with a sinking feeling of déja vu.

What about the Dubs? Well, any thoughts of how nice it would be to see all that fan fervour rewarded disappeared when Paul Caffrey's charges started acting the knob in the closing minutes against Laois. You couldn't help feeling that if a Leinster title prompts such hubris, their behaviour on winning the All-Ireland would be absolutely unbearable. The prospect of 15 players behaving like coked-up London stockbrokers flashing their wad at the geezers in the gutter doesn't bear thinking about. And that's without the 14 managers joining in.

Which leaves, gulp, M**th. Who are likeable not merely because of the weakness of their opponents in the battle for public affection but because of their own admirable qualities. The directness of their approach, the presence of so many exciting youngsters (Bray, O'Rourke, Ward, Farrell, Kenny), the verve with which they play the game and, not least, their no-nonsense attitude.

M**th's dignified approach in victory stands as an implicit rebuke to the Dubs for one thing. And their immediate acceptance of the suspension which put Brian Farrell out of the first match against Dublin was in stark contrast to the way other counties have tried to weasel their way through the disciplinary proceedings.

What a breath of fresh air it was to see Dudley Farrell, M**th selector and father of Brian, admit that his son deserved to be suspended and leave it at that. Imagine the opportunity for playing the sympathy card there. "Well now, Marty, I seen that boy coming in from training and him black and blue and him after giving everything to the game and now I seen him in tears in that dressing room there Marty and I don't know if . . . like amateur players . . . what's going on at all . . . objection . . . technicality . . . let him off . . . poor us. Marty." Only Dudley Farrell isn't that kind of man. And M**th aren't that kind of team. They deserve our support.

It's a strange state of affairs all the same when M**th are the people's favourites. Because if there is any county who might properly have adopted the old Millwall chant, "No one likes us, no one likes us, no one likes us, we don't care," it's the Royals who have for some time now filled the role of Great National Bastards of the GAA.

Think of 1988 when Association president John Dowling saw fit to berate them for the manner of their replay victory over Cork. It was an unprecedented intervention. The victories of Kerry over Roscommon in 1980 and Dublin over Galway in 1983, in the two dirtiest finals in living memory, had passed without presidential censure. Yet M**th came in for special treatment (and retaliated by letting Dowling know he wouldn't be welcome at a function to present the winner's medals.)

That particular M**th side were far from being angels and their matches against Cork in 1988 and 1990 may have been the most physical of the modern era. Yet Cork hit every bit as hard as them and were not tarred with the same brush. M**th, for some reason, got on people's nerves.

This probably had something to do with that old Irish attitude towards people who "think they're great." M**th not only had hard men on their team, they also had articulate men, the likes of Gerry McEntee, Liam Hayes and Colm O'Rourke. In contrast to time honoured practice these guys didn't resort to folksy cliché and pretend that nothing untoward had been going on. They defended the team's physical approach in a forthright manner which was something new to the game and didn't go down too well.

This time there were hundreds of jawbones, hundreds of asses

M**th did recover a bit of public affection in 1991 (though this probably had something to do with them ending the season on a losing note), but by 1996 the excrement was splattering the ventilator once more, after their All-Ireland semi-final win over Tyrone prompted an unprecedented media furore and the Liveline army sprang into action. M**th were the modern day version of the Philistines, the biblical tribe Samson decimated with the jawbone of an ass. Only this time there were hundreds of jawbones, hundreds of asses.

The legend surrounding that match is completely false. Tyrone lost a couple of key players through injury but they weren't butchered out of it. They were destroyed by an exhibition of attacking football spearheaded by Graham Geraghty, the prodigiously under-rated Brendan Reilly and the incredibly unfortunate Barry Callaghan, now almost completely forgotten after a career first hampered and then ended by injury. It was one of the great forward displays of the last 20 years but that never gets mentioned now. Far easier to focus on M**th wrongdoing.

OK, the donnybrook with Mayo in that year's final was inexcusable. But I can't help thinking that Mayo steamed into that brawl with such abandon because the OTT coverage of the semi-final had convinced them that if they didn't stand up to M**th the Royals would come round to their houses and eat their children.

In the popular imagination M**th couldn't have been any more villainous if they had taken the field dressed in black cloaks, twirling their moustaches and saying, "hah hah hah hah, you'll never stop me, never," to the opposition. But the outrage always seemed out of proportion to the level of offence. Why so?

Perhaps it was because a lot of casual observers of Gaelic games (your news reporter, your Liveline caller), only take a real interest when the Dubs are playing. Assured year after year that Dublin's time had come, they then had to watch M**th disprove all the hype. Upset at seeing the script torn up in such merciless fashion, they were forced to seek an explanation.

And the explanation was that M**th somehow strong-armed and cheated their way to victory over Dublin. M**th, in the final analysis, were resented for preventing those Dublin triumphs we are always assured the game needs so badly.

Maybe the reason M**th are currently enjoying a long overdue bit of respect is that they haven't beaten Dublin in a while. If they were to go on and beat the Dubs in this year's All-Ireland final chances are the old stereotypes would be deployed once more.

Understandable, I suppose, because M**th have always been a team of hackers. Look at the evidence. David Beggy, Trevor Giles, Bernard Flynn, Brian Stafford, Evan Kelly, Ollie Murphy, Colm O'Rourke, Liam Hayes, Martin O'Connell, Joe Cassells, Robbie O'Malley, Brendan Reilly, Barry Callaghan, Darren Fay. Hackers one and all, without an ounce of skill between them.

Aren't you glad your county hasn't produced the likes of those lads?

Eamonn Sweeney

["If it wasn't for the dubs you'd all be F***ing Brits."]

From www.dubsforum.tk

Dublin vs. Mayo 2006 represented a kind of 'Damascus' moment in my attitude towards culchies. You see, as an average GAA and Dublin supported, I justified the title 'genuine supporter' by regularly standing in the rain at Parnell Park (while Dublin were playing!) and volunteering as a teenager to steward opening matches in Croke Park.

I have fond memories of cheering for most counties, especially if they were playing against Kerry, Meath, and of late Kildare. All in all, I shared a laugh with 'most' of my fellow countrymen. I took them at face value and when, down through the years, they moved into the neighbourhood, I immediately welcomed them as friends.

I can hear some of you already calling me naive!

Then, during last year's game, I was surrounded by fans from Louth, Roscommon, Cork, Galway and even someone from Leitrim. These people kept fairly quite until mid way through the second half when Dublin took their foot of the gas. To my horror, each and every one of them was leaping from their seats, ecstatic and foaming at the mouth as Dublin clinched defeat from the jaws of victory. I was shocked, not by the Dublin performance, but by the sudden realisation that culchies hold some sort of deep-seated grudge against the Dubs.

I asked one man what we had done to deserve such disrespect! He hid his face in shame - my anger getting the best of me, I flung my hands into the air and shouted at them "If it wasn't for the dubs you'd all be F***ing Brits."

From that point, I decided that Culchies deserve no respect and should be looked upon with distain. And, that is why I laughed when the Dublin players flung their hands into the air prior to taking a third Leinster title. In talking to other Dublin supporters, they confirmed my view that the days of showing respect was over. Our generosity down through the centuries has never been appreciated.

What do you think? Do Culchies Deserve Respect?

I especially liked this bit

I asked one man what we had done to deserve such disrespect! He hid his face in shame - my anger getting the best of me, I flung my hands into the air and shouted at them "If it wasn't for the dubs you'd all be F***ing Brits."

wtf ?

Ulster Council await Tyrone response
20 July 2007


The Ulster Council is awaiting a response from Tyrone to see if the Red Hand County will offer a replay to Derry after last Sunday's controversial one-point victory in the Ulster MFC decider.

The controversial 'point' proved to be wide of the post on television evidence but as it was marked down as a score, it is now up to Tyrone to make the next move if they so wish.

Under the rules it is up to Tyrone to offer a replay and the Ulster Council will make a decision on the tie if this response comes.

seriously...were Monaghan dirty or what was going on..there must have been 4 or 5 times that Tyrone players went down, seemingly, injured. I didnt see Monaghan players go down half as much. Were Monaghan dirty..? are Tyrone soft ? or was this, yet again, cynical time wasting and attempts to take the sting out of the game. When are referees going to cop on to this. They really need to introduce a rule whereby if the play is stopped for an "injury" that player must leave the pitch for at least 3 mins. Thats they only way to stop the playacting.

Now that things have died down a bit anybody else feel that the Aussies underlined how ordinary we are at our national game

Its not our national game.