Messages

Nothing against the Irish Language but access to a decent healthcare service will always be a greater benefit, and I would like to think more important for the majority of people, than if the local road signs are in Irish or not.

The two things are not in conflict at all, we should have both.

In the current economic climate of course they are in conflict. I know from my side, if it was a choice between ten more nurses in the NHS in the province or every sign in Irish it's a no brainer  as far as I'm concerned.

I must admit, I dont have the first clue about trading in crypto and I'm a million miles behind when it comes to what is on the market now.

Can anyone provide a very high level overview on the current state of Bitcoin/cyrptocurrencies etc? I see a few posts there about Gaming and AI coins, but I've never even heard of those.

I feel like I'm missing out and could be making some money on side 

If you can get them to explain what drives the value fluctuations as well I would be interested in hearing that.......

[nun]

What about sex - are they allowed to have sex? Maybe it only matters if it is:

1) on your own
2) with another first team member
3) with a squad member
4) with a squad member from the neighbouring parish
5) with a woman (over 40)
6) with a woman (under 40)
7) with a sheep
8 ) nun of the above
9) all the above

Fixed that

I think if anyone liverpool will push them this year. They've improved significantly since last year. The rebuild klopp has done in midfield has been incredible.

Liverpools defence is giving up too many chances and don't have a proper 6.

I don't even think a good number 6 is needed in the new system when you've 2 of the best number 8s in the league. Teams are constantly on the back foot against it.

And yet defensively they are giving up too many chances?

And yet they have played City, Spurs, Chelsea and Newcastle away and Villa/Brighton at home and have the second best defensive record in league?

So Everton docked points for  having  financial losses.  Would it not be fairer if the PL  put a limit  on  what clubs are allowed to spend instead?

I suppose there's  ways around that too.

Ah feck it,  football is a farce . I blame Jimmy Hill

The whole point of FFP was to keep the same teams at the top perpetually. Giving the same spending limit to all teams wouldn't achieve that goal.

Salary Caps like the AFL/NFL have are the only way to keep it competitive. 12 different Superbowl winners and 10 different AFL premiership winners in ;ast 25 years. However, the difference in these sports is that there is no alternative market, they are both country specific. For it to work in soccer it would need a collective agreement among the top 10 leagues at least and turkeys dont vote for Christmas....

Coalisland vs Moy

2pm Next Sunday 19th in Pomeroy.

Coalisland by 4. Have the players to mark Conroy and Coleman.

Probably agree, player for player Coalisland seem to have the better matchups over the field to come out on top.

The only thing I'd say against Coalisland is that they haven't played much football lately, compared to Moy who have got to a championship final and had two playoff matches in recent weeks

Think that stood to Drumragh in the div 2 playoff. Since they lost the championship final they won the Reserve Championship and got through  couple of play off and definitely looked stronger in the last quarter compared to kileeshil who have been sitting around waiting for over a month for a competitive game. Drumragh might surprise a few teams next year. It's a big step up for them but they seemed to have good strength in depth judging by their bench. Kileeshil will be gutted to lose after leading for most of the game but they should come straight back up. Not that is that easy as a few teams recently have found out.

[shit coins]

Now's a good time to look at shit coins and gaming coins. They're gonna 10, 20, and 30x

Not financial advise, only risk what you can afford to lose etc.

You will have plenty of choice

[a lot of which was spent on players past their peak or other who simply didn't warrant the fee and weren't proven.]

Hard to know where to start to get them back competing.  On the face of it there's few players there that are worth keeping.  Over 400 mill spent since summer 2022 - a lot of which was spent on players past their peak or other who simply didn't warrant the fee and weren't proven.  Players who should have been shipped out years ago are still there, which only festers negativity. Bonkers.  Get rid of Ten Hag and who do you replace him with.  Take a gamble on the Brighton manager or someone else who hasn't proved it at the very top level?  Groundhog Day.

There have been some sliding doors moments for United over the past few years. Signing  Maguire when City wanted him, Ronaldo the same. Mount in the Summer was apparently Liverpool's top target and I think they were rumoured to be looking at Antony as well   . I think Liverpool got lucky this summer with Caicedo as that was definitely a panic move but in general the difference seems to be that United refuse to be "outbid" for a target whereas City/Liverpool/Arsenal etc generally have a valuation in mind and if it is exceeded they walk away. 

Chelsea are the closest to United's approach and while that has not ended up well at least Chelsea buys are generally younger and on lower wages. United still have some decent players (which after £400m plus spend is crazy that you even have to comment) but as was said above, they have so many players on crazy money it would cost a fortune to reset. Despite the spend you would be hard pushed to name a single United player who would start in the City/Arsenal/Liverpool teams.

Cookstown haven't changed much over the years- a pack of thugs

What were the red cards for? TV stream didn't have it and the commentators had no clue. Had no impact on the result anyway, Think both were in injury time. Drumragh did well to weather a poor start to the 2nd half. Looked like cookstown  were going to turn it round.

Will be an interesting final. Fintona have some serious pace through the team  but Drumragh have provably a stronger panel judging by their bench options last night.

Junior Champnionship quarters went according to form anyway looking at the league positions.

Aghaloo through with a few points to spare on Saturday to play Fintona who looked good yesterday. Drumquin conceded two early goals  and Fintona's forward line racked up an impressive tally. Unfortunately Drumquin's discipline meant they played most of the second half with 13 men due to two reds and had a ten minute spell with 12 after a black card which meant it was never really in doubt.

Cookstown  beat Eskra in a tight game and they will meet Drumragh on the other side of the draw who can count themselves fortunate to have got past Glenelly yesterday by a point.

On the weekend's performances Fintona are the form  team with Cookstown/Fintona final looking the most likely outcome, which would mean that both  teams are promoted irrespective of the result.

[So basically what's the point in playing a game if you can't have a rip after it?]

A more worrying statistic from Junior is that 74 ** Reserve **games were conceded from a potential 136, over 50%. Even if we exclude Killyman who conceded all 16 we would have 58/120 conceded, still approaching 50%.

According to the results in the website Killyman conceded 16, Urney 10, Donaghmore 9, Errigal & Aghaloo 8, Brocagh 7, Clan na Gael 4, Brackaville & Derrytresk 3, Drumquin & Castlederg 2, Fintona & Augher 1.
Only Cookstown, Eskra, Glenelly &Drumragh did not concede a game.

Are you looking at the reserve fixtures? Find it hard to believe Killyman never fielded in any games.

Sorry, yes. I was talking about Junior Reserves. It is a lot of games not played and a lot of players missing out on football.

Serious amount of games - I do believe reserve leagues need looked at, or at the least the junior reserve. A lot of these clubs rely on reserves beefing out the senior squad and often have players playing in 2 games.

I like the Friday night football but it is almost impossible to get a reserve team to the other side of the county for 6.45pm throw in when alot of reserves work to 5 and 5.30pm.

An east/west reserve league maybe an option. or if the fixtures committee sit down at the beginning of the year and split games between Fridays and Sundays in all grades. The "derby" or neighbouring games could all be friday nights and anything over an hours spin for any team it should be Sunday automatically. Then you'll see a-lot less games conceded. - This will also solve the refereeing issue when the games are splt between friday and sunday. IMO

Club footballers do not want Sunday football any more. There would be more numbers leaving if it went back to that on a more regular basis

So basically what's the point in playing a game if you can't have a rip after it?

Not that simple. Players are fitter now and playing a lot longer now. There would be plenty of Reserves in Junior playing well into late thirties/early forties and this should be encouraged. MOst of these people have kids and would like to go an do something with the family on a Sunday during the Summer. I know when I quit that was a major reason for it, the kids were aged 5-10 and I wanted to go to beach etc. If I had known that I had no commitments on a Sunday I probably would have played another couple of years.

I didn't know this :

"To stop him selling, flooding the market and destabilising the bank, Anglo lent him the money to pay the margin calls"

I think thats been the argument, that Anglo took actions to prop up the price and that without this when the share price went against him initially he would have closed out the CFDs, taken the hit of a few hundred million    and moved on. The issue was that transactions involving this volume of shares would have negatively impacted the share price further which is why Anglo bosses took steps to avoid this happening. By staying in longer the scale of his losses grew exponetially as the share price fell further.

Above all caveated by its my hazy memory of the news reports, could be completely wrong. In any case,  I assume that if Quinn Group had decided to take the hit, either before Anglo got involved or by telling them that it was not interested in the plan they pulled together they could have done so. It would have been catastrophic for Anglo and a massive financial hit for QG to close out the CFDs but the Group would have survived. They chose to go along with the Anglo plan and the most likely assumption is that this was to try to reduce Group losses. The legality actions of Anglo/Receivers etc after this I think is a separate conversation.

A scary weekend in the junior championship in terms of mismatches. Surely some sort of reform for junior is required asap?
Will need amalgamation of clubs within the next 5 years at current rate.

Unfortunately this is always going to be the way in Junior, there can be a massive gap between the top few and the bottom and unfortunately this year the draw seemed to be particularly unkind. I dont think any of the top 3-4 teams drew a team in the top half. Not sure splitting it is the answer, even the teams down the table would rather have the chance to go for the main prize in a knock out. Its not great to see some of the hammerings handed out this weekend but unfortunately that's sport. Look back to Killyman a few years ago who finished bottom intermediate but won the Championship. Also, Newtownstewart got out of Junior through the Championship about 5 years ago from a league position of 7 (I think) and they have stayed up in Intermediate since. In a knockout game anything can happen.

Cookstown only narrowly beat Fintona and Drumragh at home in the league and if the venue had have been reversed they would have dropped points for sure, so if they were to meet either of those teams later on in the championship it will be close. If the draw is A v B then they will likely play Aghaloo in the 1/4 Finals which would be very tricky for them also.

Would agree with that. Drumragh missed an injury time penalty against them that would have given them full points and Fintona will consider themselves unlucky up there as well.

Aghaloo have experience of playing and winning big games so they will be difficult s as well. If they can get their best 15 on the field for the championship they will be hard to beat but I don't think they have the strength in depth of the other contenders. The short turnaround between opening rounds could be an issue for teams if key men pick up injuries

Read somewhere average AFL salary is around Aus$400k c €240k.
A few got up to a Million$ so...
Rookies prob get around €20k average I'd suspect.

The international rookie minimum is at least €50k per year plus there are a fair few perks/allowances guaranteed as well.
It means even the lads who go for two years on rookie contracts can come back with a nice chunk of change especially for lads around 18/19/20.
Heard before that Tuohy was definitely a Euro millionaire and that Mark O'Connor will likely end up one if he signs another contract.
Salaries in the women's game were doubled last year or the year before so while it's nowhere near to what the men can make - it's not a bad earner for a few month's work.
The minimum salary in the women's game works out about €24k per season which when you consider the length of their season (about 4 months including pre-season) is not too shabby.
There's going to be no change in the flow of lads or lasses willing to get it a go any time soon.

Conor Nash has moved onto another level with Hawthorn this year as well, He has been one of their best players albeit in a transitioning team.