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Scheffler and Bhatia will be there or there abouts.

Sure the lucks been hanging out of the penalty Kick Champs (X2), why change anything? just go full of the bull until it goes pear shaped and then think about it.

Any examples of when other Ulster teams didn't go all out to win Ulster and as a direct result they won an AI?

In the second year if the current competition?

Tyrone had a fair degree of ambivalence to the USFC in noughties. But I'm sure that's the response you were waiting for to refute it.

Harte and the players?

"A couple of years we were of the mindset that we were going to win the All-Ireland and were beaten in the first round. It didn't do us any harm. We went on to win it from there twice."

https://www.belfastlive.co.uk/sport/gaa/gaelic-football/tyrone-legend-sean-cavanagh-issues-28938977#google_vignette


A quote from Sean Cavanagh today funny enough.

Cavanagh is becoming the new Joe Brolly.

Celtic will not have lost this league because of Old Firm results. If they lose it it will be because they did not have replacements for key players like CCV, Rio and to a lesser extent McGregor. That's on the board/recruitment director.

I think the late Late missed a trick here. I don't know why Marty was freezing his bollocks of in Longford. There should have been a greater celebration of Clubs, a nod to John  McKillop would have been nice. I am also sick of the sight of Staunton and Jacob, surely there are better female role models out there? I saw Michael Dara in a new light, Brolly was mildly entertaining in a boring uncle sort of way. Perhaps a longer show?

The shock horror is coming from the Nolan led BBC and unionist medja.

Having read through the 11 pages of the actual report,it would be handed back to an Economics Undergraduate and He/She would be told to consider another career route

The Authors base their case for starters on an assumption that they know the amount of UK subvention into NI every Year,which is news to anyone versed in these matters as the UK government has never stated an exact total or given an exact breakdown

They then assume that a UI would need to match the current NI contribution to a UK defence Budget,(no thanks Lads,We wont be paying for Trident or Aircraft Carriers)or continue to pay a pro rata portion of UK Debt AFTER NI had left the UK or that the UK would reneage on pension contributions by NI workers paid into the UK pension pot when NI was part of the Uk.

Those 3 areas alone come to anywhere between £5 and £7 bn per annum.

it also assumes that growth rates and productivity are stuck to the floor over the next 20 years, takes no account of the savings or synergy brought about by an All Island Economy and takes no account of inputs from the likes of the EU or FDI going into the 6 counties at 26 counties levels.

This is the type of scrutiny that should be published in the media, but it doesn't make a good headline.
I know for a fact, there are quite a few large multi-national's investing in setting up offices and expanding existing operations in NI as a direct result of Brexit and the finalising of the Windsor agreement. An NI business in Finance/Captial Markets and IT has access to GB and EU markets whilst taking advantage of generally lower salaries and operating costs than in GB and ROI. We're talking high value jobs being created here and the impact of those jobs on the NI economy remain to be seen.
But I don't hear anyone in the media talking about that.

To be fair the Irish  Times has a piece in it today which  looks critically at the report.

I do not see where all this optimism around Donegal comes from, they struggled to beat a poor Armagh by a point. Monaghan and Tyrone are ahead of either Donegal or Armagh in my view. The Draw should see Armagh in the final. Derry's UC will depend on what store they place in a third, but Harte  likes to win everything he plays for.

It's the stuff round bloody sunday etc that gets me on her. The whys and wherefores of the whole thing aside it's just so antagonistic and disrespectful.

She is a product of her upbringing and background. Though they would try to say otherwise the DUP's demographic is a mirror image of SF's which includes ultra loyalist/republican opinion through to more main stream. Like many SF politicians Lockhart panders to that loyalist bloc   for votes.

The bottom line is the government in the South needs to start working toward unity so as not to repeat Brexshit. This will inevitably London, though that will be sensitive.

John Doyle from DCU did a full study on that - showed that Irish gov would only incur about £2-3bn of the UK subvention cost when you extract the security/defence costs, NI's contribution to UK national debt and pensions.

It was John Doyle who presented at the conference I attended. He said their work is ongoing. The  biggest challenge will be upping productivity in the North which is between 40 and 60% behind the South.

Having read through the 11 pages of the actual report,it would be handed back to an Economics Undergraduate and He/She would be told to consider another career route

The Authors base their case for starters on an assumption that they know the amount of UK subvention into NI every Year,which is news to anyone versed in these matters as the UK government has never stated an exact total or given an exact breakdown

They then assume that a UI would need to match the current NI contribution to a UK defence Budget,(no thanks Lads,We wont be paying for Trident or Aircraft Carriers)or continue to pay a pro rata portion of UK Debt AFTER NI had left the UK or that the UK would reneage on pension contributions by NI workers paid into the UK pension pot when NI was part of the Uk.

Those 3 areas alone come to anywhere between £5 and £7 bn per annum.

it also assumes that growth rates and productivity are stuck to the floor over the next 20 years, takes no account of the savings or synergy brought about by an All Island Economy and takes no account of inputs from the likes of the EU or FDI going into the 6 counties at 26 counties levels.

Kevin Meagher has said much the same, I think he called it a nonsense.

If Oisin O'Neill plays in and around Midfield you play Rian FF. Oisin has a knack of finding Rian. Get the other two togged out as well😂

Donegal deserved to win but Armagh were awful. Falling back in to all the old habits I thought they had moved away from this year (Louth match excepted).

The manner of the defeat against a Donegal who will get much better is hard to take. I'd no longer be confident of an Ulster final let alone hoping for something more. 

having saw down Fermanagh and antrim they should be making it with bit to spare.

In fairness I was maybe a little raw after the match but I am not as confident as I was before yesterday

Not saying you are one of them, but Armagh fans have unrealistic expectations for this crop of players. The team is in a better place than it was but there's  still a way to go to get to Derry's level. Is McGeeney the man, I'm not sure but I don't think there is a queue for the job.  Rian O'Neill I understand has had issues outside of the game and is being eased back in. Talking of unrealistic expectations though the fans have placed too much on his shoulders and indeed Oisin's before him. Maybe just let them play football they both are class acts on their day. It was strange I'd say that the best club team in the county didn't have one starter.

this is it in a nutshell. Our fans think we are a top 4/5 team when in reality we are far from it

How exactly are we far from a top 4/5 team. We've proven against Galway and Derry in the last 2 seasons that we are on a par with those 2 sides. Arguably should have beaten Derry last season and beat Galway in the group game. Last Sunday was undoubtedly a blow and would make you reevaluate whether we have learned anything from other recent close defeats. I think we are outside the top 3 at the minute but that can easily change on the basis of one result. Our season will be defined by the Ulster championship this year as I don't think many are realistically expecting us to win the All Ireland.

In my view it would be nice to see us just throw off the shackles and give it a go. Irrespective of whether we actually win anything if we can produce football like the 2022 back door campaign I'd be more than satisfied with that. Plus it actually suits our best players to take this approach anyway as the reality is that we've been losing tight games playing the cautious, cagey stuff anyway. 

We are not at the level of Dublin, Derry or Kerry, we are a bit of Tyrone and Mayo as well and it's a toss up between us Donegal and Galway. To improve on this the obvious errors need fixed, easy turnovers, scoring return and we need to get rid of the habit of easing of on teams. Armaghs best period on Sunday was when they pushed up on Donegal, as soon as they went 1 up they eased off and a poor turnover handed the game to Donegal in the 4th minute of injury time.

I was at an economic conference recently where another researcher working on behalf  of the UU and UCD(I Think) said that the nett cost of a UI according to their research could be as low as £2bn or £8bn if the UK Government didn't play ball on pensions an a settlement fund. Either way he said that the growth in productivity in NI and the benefits to the Southern economy and the economies of scale from combined   services meant that even £8bn was small beer. I suppose these documents will all depend on what you want to prove. In relation to the NI public sector it is much too big but it would not be  a case of sacking a 100,000 people that is just scare mongering. Natural wastage and re-deployment would take care of it.

Donegal deserved to win but Armagh were awful. Falling back in to all the old habits I thought they had moved away from this year (Louth match excepted).

The manner of the defeat against a Donegal who will get much better is hard to take. I'd no longer be confident of an Ulster final let alone hoping for something more. 

having saw down Fermanagh and antrim they should be making it with bit to spare.

In fairness I was maybe a little raw after the match but I am not as confident as I was before yesterday

Not saying you are one of them, but Armagh fans have unrealistic expectations for this crop of players. The team is in a better place than it was but there's  still a way to go to get to Derry's level. Is McGeeney the man, I'm not sure but I don't think there is a queue for the job.  Rian O'Neill I understand has had issues outside of the game and is being eased back in. Talking of unrealistic expectations though the fans have placed too much on his shoulders and indeed Oisin's before him. Maybe just let them play football they both are class acts on their day. It was strange I'd say that the best club team in the county didn't have one starter.