An Fear Rua - Gone!!!!!

[AZOffaly]

Although there have been no issues on this website for the small time it was running, it is quite clear from other forums that we are aware of that a small minority of people cannot seem to exercise any discretion when utilising online discussion forums, and a small minority of people can create potential liabilities for both themselves and those who host such websites. As such, we have made the decision to close this website permanently.

This is a permanent notice, and the website will not be revived.

This notice will be taken down shortly and all content removed from the website.

Many thanks to all who contributed to date.

Now, ye shower of utilisers.

[Dinny Breen]

Although there have been no issues on this website for the small time it was running, it is quite clear from other forums that we are aware of that a small minority of people cannot seem to exercise any discretion when utilising online discussion forums, and a small minority of people can create potential liabilities for both themselves and those who host such websites. As such, we have made the decision to close this website permanently.

This is a permanent notice, and the website will not be revived.

This notice will be taken down shortly and all content removed from the website.

Many thanks to all who contributed to date.

Now, ye shower of utilisers.

You do a great job AZ!

[deiseach]

http://www.dubsandclubs.com/forums/register.php

Well that didn't last long!!

When was it set up?

[Bord na Mona man]

Res Dubs had some good posters and the local club scene was well covered.
It also had some head cases too. A few thin skinned conspiracy theorists who saw anti-Dublin culchie plots coming at them from all directions.

[heffo]

http://www.dubsandclubs.com/forums/register.php

Well that didn't last long!!

When was it set up?

April-ish..

[Hound]

The dubsandclubs forum was associated with the DubMatchTracker service on Twitter, which sadly is coming to an end also. I'll really miss that, it was like Ceefax for the Dublin club updates!

There were only ever a small handful of posters on dubsandclubs - a group of mates basically, so I don't think it was ever going to be a full scale forum. It would have been ideally positioned to take over from ResDubs, but it seems there is nobody willing to moderate it.

Heffo, do you know what the reason was for ResDubs shutting up shop? I've only visited it occassionally over the last year or so, but any time I had a look it all seemed very civil and well behaved.
EDIT: I see its been confirmed there was a dodgy pic posted. Inappropriate rather than indecent from what I hear (unconfirmed rumour on boards that it may have related to a former Irish Times sports correspondent), but the administrator decided to call a halt. He's been threatening to close it down for years.

[Declan]

Res Dubs back up and running??

[Bord na Mona man]

RIP Liam Cahill.
He might have had a few jousts with us over the years but he was an entertaining character too.
He put a lot of time and effort into An Fear Rua and it was one of the earliest GAA websites of the digital age.

https://twitter.com/gavreilly/status/1539002178186141696

[Premier Emperor]

It's hard to believe it's already decade since he pulled the plug on the Farmyard!

At its peak it was viewing an online riot. It got even more hilarious when Liam himself would arrive back to the site and try and clean up the mess. Often he banned the wrong people.

[GAABoardMod5]

Limousin thread...

http://www.anfearrua.ie/topic.aspx?id=436611

[Truth hurts]

Anyone you know in your club? (an Fear Rua 20212)

The Shit Stirrer

The scourge of all clubs.

Has no role in society, let alone a GAA club other than turning up at the club's general meetings, dressed in their Sunday best and wreaking all sorts of cumbersome havoc. As footballers they were in general, disgustingly hopeless and with a pair of arms and legs that refused to work together in harmony on the pitch they spent their careers wrapped up in a good big overcoat on the line belittling the efforts of their team-mates on the field and vocally cursing the mentors who had the sense to keep them off the starting fifteen.

Their resentments are built up over the years and anyone who ever crossed their path is subject to their pent up vitriol. Will seethingly complain about everything in the club from selectors to assistant-treasurers, have a penchant for refusing to accept democratic decisions at all levels yet will never offer to do anything constructive for the club and even buying a monthly €5 ticket is beyond their limited capabilities.

Are completely selfish and only seem to care about themselves and their brothers/sons/nephews within the club - all of whom are a milder version of the general Shit Stirrer.

Have a deep hatred of all neighbouring clubs, referees and most of their own clubmates yet in most cases never receive the widespread condemnation they truly deserve.

The Idiot

If a club only has one such character they are something of a mundane outfit.

However, it is usually the most lunatic character within the club's environs that gains this unenviable title. Can be seen at championship matches pacing up and down the line frothing and foaming at the lips of his mostly toothless mouth and shouting all sorts of impenetrable obscenities at the referee, linesman, players from both sides and supporters.

Will be among the first people in the dressing room before a big game, will reappear again at half time and at the end and will be very forthright in his much-maligned opinions. He will more than likely have changed his tack later in the local after a few pints of the black stuff and couple of half ones yet will always swear by his views.

In most cases this raving lunatic doesn't own a car yet there is always someone available to prop him up in the front of their vehicle and bring him to his required destination.

Whenever the opportunity arises he will serve as linesman and his arm always signals the same direction - in favour of his team. He will more than likely cause some sort of row but has an uncanny knack of being able to disappear when the going gets tough.

The Saviour

Every club in every county has one - if they didn't they would have ceased to exist long ago.

He is the man in the club that does everything - often without a title to his name. He arranges games, he lines the pitch, puts up the nets, pumps the balls, opens the dressing rooms, turns on the showers, brings the water, jerseys and first aid kit, pays the ref and locks up afterwards. He informs all the players of all the necessary details and if the game is away his car is bursting at the seams with players, supporters and club officials.

Often he will train an Under-10 team on a given evening in the field, finish up in time to select the Junior 'C' team, and end up being forced into action himself because of a lack of numbers before rushing to a County Board meeting as the club's delegate and then back to the 'local' to co-ordinate the monthly draw.
On the rare occasions that this individual falls sick or goes missing for a couple of days the entire club falls into disrepute and scenes of chaos ensue.

[J70]

Limousin thread...

http://www.anfearrua.ie/topic.aspx?id=436611

Hilarious thread!

I grew up on cattle farm myself, but we generally kept a Charolais bull (cows were a mix of Friesians, Angus, Herefords, Shorthorns, Simmentals etc). Honestly wasn't aware of the temperament issue with Limousins, as you didn't see the breed that often in our part of the country. I guess I now know at least part of the reason!

[Bord na Mona man]

Limousin thread...

http://www.anfearrua.ie/topic.aspx?id=436611

Hilarious thread!

I grew up on cattle farm myself, but we generally kept a Charolais bull (cows were a mix of Friesians, Angus, Herefords, Shorthorns, Simmentals etc). Honestly wasn't aware of the temperament issue with Limousins, as you didn't see the breed that often in our part of the country. I guess I now know at least part of the reason!

Same here. Over the years I've asked some farmers who rear a variety of breeds and Limousins never stood out to them as being problematic.

[Bord na Mona man]

https://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/gaa/arid-40901717.html

A parting glass for An Fear Rua, who transplanted unflinching GAA tribalism to cyberspace
Modern GAA social media can be traced to the rise of discussion fora including An Fear Rua, set up by Liam Cahill, who died this week.
A parting glass for An Fear Rua, who transplanted unflinching GAA tribalism to cyberspace
R.I.P: An Fear Rua, Liam Cahill. ©INPHO/Cathal Noonan

THU, 23 JUN, 2022 - 08:00
PM O'SULLIVAN

Certain deaths, beyond a family's personal loss, end up framing an era.

The passing of Liam Cahill this week seemed a case in point. A man of varied talents, he predominantly worked during recent years as political adviser and media consultant. The Waterford City native had previously been an RTÉ journalist, serving as the station's Political Correspondent, before moving during the mid 1990s to a PR position with Intel. Cahill also wrote two well-regarded books, Forgotten Revolution: The Limerick Soviet 1919(1990) and From Suir to Jarama: Mossie Quinlan's Life and Legacy(2021).

The same man found time to run, between 2000 and 2012, an influential and widely read website, www.anfearrua.com. While its threads were always an eclectic mix, GAA discussion drove the heavy traffic this space drew for several years. His website changed the way in which Gaelic football and hurling got discussed, reorientations with us to this day.

A clear line can be traced backwards. Many forms of analysis practised on social media ― on Facebook and Twitter, predominantly ― are related to the rise of discussion fora during the early 2000s. Analysis of hurling puckouts on Twitter, now widespread, grew out of online discussion around the running and possession-centred approach adopted by Cork's Senior team from 2003 onwards. Broadcast and print media had found a rival of sorts.

Discussion fora allowed a multitude of voices. Most of these contributors, in the normal way of things, offered little of note. Some of these guys ― and the readership was almost all male ― were merely wind-up merchants, hopping more balls than Kobe Bryant. But useful information could be found and there were always a few posters, when partisan smoke cleared, quick with incisive observations.

By far the best discussion of Rule 42, for instance, happened online. 

I lived in England between 1992 and 2005. Like many other Irish people studying or working abroad, I found such boards an enjoyable resource, a narrowing of distance. At the time, they seemed rather an underground phenomenon, a kind of samizdat literature, resented but secretly enjoyed by leading GAA figures.

An Fear Rua did not arise from nowhere. From early in the decade, there were specific boards for Cork, Dublin, Kilkenny, Offaly, Tipperary and other counties. I first started writing about hurling in 2004 when asked to become a columnist on the Kilkenny-focused board. Some of them, such as clarehurlersforum.proboards.com and uibhfhaili.com, continue to operate. GAA discussion proceeds in many online spaces. 'Kilkenny GAA Thread' on boards.ie remains widely read within the county. All sorts of everything still get pondered on thefreekick.com. Curiosity is a persistent emotion.

Same time, An Fear Rua did up various antes around 2005. Many contributors to an earlier board, clarehurlers.com, migrated to AFR (as it became known) when the former site ceased operation in early 2004. Liam Cahill introduced columnists and actively sought exposure through ads and articles in GAA programmes. Even in August 2012, long after the place's heyday, AFR saw 74,000 individual people click into its pages.

The phenomenon possessed fascinating sides. Sociologists could mine the archives involved for insights into Celtic Tiger Ireland, as the country surged from boom to bust. The National Library of Ireland did contact Cahill, emphasising they understood the potential significance of internet content. The NLI were keen to make AFR part of their holdings.

The week of its founder's passing prompts reflection. There were obvious and less obvious dynamics attached to such boards. Few people had smartphones during the mid-2000s. To my eye, the vast majority of AFR readers fell into two categories. They were third level students with free Internet access or white collar workers with Internet access in their workplace.

Cahill noted perils for the latter category during an Irish Examiner interview in September 2012. He spoke of contemplating a new site feature: "a button that would turn the page black and white, remove the logos and make the computer screen look like a Word document. That way when bosses wandered around offices, they'd never realise what their employees were, and more importantly weren't, doing."

Cahill's overall approach tapped into one of Irish society's deepest tensions: the relationship between supposed metropolitan sophistication and supposed rural backwardness. An Fear Rua, in and of itself as a trope, was conceived in faux naïf mode ― specifically, faux culchie or faux hick mode. This vein in Irish culture runs back to the Irish R. M. trilogy (1899-1915) of Somerville and Ross, where Flurry Knox is a canny rustic who plays the fool. A century earlier, there had been Thady Quirk, narrator of Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent (1800), another manipulative rustic with his eye on the main chance.

Faux naïf emphases, at their best, provide a means of having your ironical cake and eating it. These styles seek an equilibrium between past and present, lore and latest, style and fashion, wisdom and smoothness. The first half of the 2000s, not coincidentally, was dominated by the so-called Rule 42 debate. That tedious process involved gross stereotypes about rural Ireland and the GAA sphere.

These connections might seem fanciful but I believe they are apt. AFR anticipated television such as Pure Mule (2005), Hardy Bucks (2010-2011, 2015, 2018) and Bridget & Eamon (2016-19). I found the last two of those three shows only fitfully enjoyable, if enjoyable at all. Faux naïf modes often end shredding themselves by becoming drearily predictable, à la hipster facial hair. Father Ted (1995-98), Ireland's most brilliant recent artefact in this mode, never became predictable.

What did GAA discussion fora, despite certain inbuilt difficulties, achieve during the 2000s? Main answer: legitimisation of regional and rural accents, articulation of non metropolitan perspectives. Any notable contributor's key aspect? His native county. The resultant tribalism was sometimes shocking and sometimes glorious but always febrile.

The lead up to big championship matches could be every bit as intense as the most packed terrace. I was forever amused by how the supposedly utopian colouring of the World Wide Web allowed unflinching GAA tribalism to transplant itself into cyberspace. Kilkenny's ascendancy in hurling happened in tandem with AFR's heyday, a convergence that occasioned far more heat than light.

Yet there was great value in gleaning perspectives from all around Ireland. County-focused identity is inherently insular. I got to know GAA supporters from far different backgrounds. One of them, a Limerick native, emailed this week about AFR: "A bit like 'free education' in the 1960s meaning that lads and lassies from different parishes got to know each other much better than they ordinarily would have. Less 'them and us', less faction fighting. I now know very knowledgeable hurling people from all the counties, something that would not have been the case without online forums or the web in general."

Within spaces such as AFR, the GAA also lost most of its baggage and became far more a matter of taste. People wanted to discuss hurling in the same spirit as they would discuss a preference for certain whiskies or a particular album by PJ Harvey. People wanted to say they preferred hurling to soccer or rugby on aesthetic grounds.

Liam Cahill deserves a parting glass for being one of the individuals who facilitated, among all the grandstanding and the squabbles, these welcome developments.

[Bord na Mona man]

A very informative take by PM O'Sullivan. There is plenty of discussion nowadays about the "toxicity" social media and all that goes with it.

I wonder how will history remember the first wave of online discussion in the digital age?
In Ireland did it start to turn the wheel on perceptions of the GAA and people outside of the Montrose bubble for example?
Those discussions about, 'You know you're a Junior C player when'... It all helped shine a torch on how the GAA has more layers and dimensions to it.

I remember about 20 years ago working with some D4 dollies when one of those "Micheal O'Muircheartaigh quotes" emails was forwarded around.
They thought they were brilliant, were crying out for more and lamented they hadn't a clue about the GAA but it was dawning on them what they were missing out on. 
Perhaps the insular, inward looking types were not the GAA loving savages, but the metropolitans who thought civilisation only stretched as far as the end of the 50km zones.