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This is a thread about the game, not the respective finances of each county. Everyone knows your views and there are plenty of threads where you can continue to make them known. Why don't you have some manners?

V funny Hound -- didn't expect total agreement but you could have softened the blow a bit!

I just think that Flynner basically plays as an auxiliary midfielder for a lot of the game anyway, and positioning him in midfield from the start adds scoring power there, and will stretch teams from the off - I don't think 70 mins in midfield would faze him, certainly not fitness wise.

Ger's experience against Kerry last year was replicated in the first half of the final - I think teams will look at him as a player to attack, whilst Cian is, I think, the best pure defender in the country, just oozes class and calm and should be playing in his best position.

As for Devereux, I've been conditioned by seeing him in the league over the past couple of years and he never struck me as one who really seized his opportunity there, unlike say, Jonny Cooper or others - happy to be proved wrong.

In any case, I'd like to see options explored at midfield - I'd hate us to lose Michael D and then be casting about for a solution.

Not convinced by Devereux, though I think Ger's day is done at centre back. I'd like to see Cian at centre back permanently and either have Bastick back at midfield or move Flynner there and open up a space in the forward line for Costello/ Rock etc

Best finish to a hurling game since the 94 final - unbelievable equaliser from Canning and fair dues to the ref adding on the delay from the penalty on the added time.

Amazingly, Miroslav Klose only needs one more (?) to equal his record, two to become all time WC goal scorer. If he was English he'd be playing for Stoke and doing the robot dance. in fact, i'd actually rate Crouchigol ahead of klose.

They got to the quarterfinals and were knocked out by Brazil - Pele got the winning goal. Charles played in the group phase and got injured - missed him against the Selecao

I was going to mention John Charles but did Wales not get to a WC Finals in the fifties? Ivor Allchurch and all that?

[is]

Surely the latter is dunting, Hardy, as in "Give him a bit of a dunt".

Do it enough to a nippy corner forward and you'll be accused of dunting his growth.

Problems could arise if when speaking to the ref afterwards, you tell him you were only giving yer man a bit of a dunt, but the ref hears "Yer man is a bit of a dunt." Yellow upgraded to red.

just googled Fontaine there - he's still alive!! Apologies Just, keep on truckin' there.

82 was the first World Cup i can remember watching - and for months afterwards it was "Bags being Rossi for 3-and-in!"

whatever happened to the bould Paolo? Probably knocking about the one World Cup Wonders retirement home with Schillacci, Romario, the ghost of Just Fontaine etc

Zulu you should read Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor. He examines that issue precisely - the German insistence that the Wehrmacht were an honorable force led astray by a weak general staff in awe of the furher. But what he actually concludes that this is a myth. Certainly on the Eastern Front, not only did Paulus' 8th Arny have large elements of SS Sonderkommando who committed a sustained campaign of atrocities against the civilian population, the general orders issued to the Wehrmacht Landsers encouraged them to view their opponents as subhuman, and they also contributed to many atrocities. Indeed, the savage German invasion staged by the Red Army was driven by propaganda which directly related the behaviour of the Wehrmacht in the Stalingrad campaign to the outrages the Red Army were carrying out. It was a campaign of revenge and many Russian soldiers when going through the German countryside marvelled at the neatness of the buildings and farms, because they couldn't understand how such a lush, lovely country could produce the barbarians they met at Stalingrad.

the Wehrmacht were not all guilty - but certainly a large proportion of them participated in war crimes on the Eastern Front under orders that would never have been issued to British Tommies or the Yanks. There have also been large scale social and psychological studies on the German population that concluded that a majority of them knew at some level of the genocide of the Jews. Credit to modern day Germans they confront this fact at every level of their society. The Nazis ran a murderous, criminal, rogue state - but they were voted in democratically and really only started to lose popular support in Germany after Stalingrad. Even then, had there been elections it was very possible they would have been voted back in even as late as mid 1944.

Having visited hostile territory myself, you're probably much more likely to hear it when we're travelling!

Slightly flattering score line there, given that the second goal was a gift - I know we had a lot of goal chances, but any team with  a keeper as good as Brody deserve to be in there at the end.

Nothing more than I expected, Laois always lift it for the Dubs, I just hope that they can keep it together for a qualifier run. As for ourselves, that was just what we needed. Scoreline aside that was no facile win. we had to fight for everything and it will have brought us on a ton.

Very satisfactory altogether.

Jesus Moysider - what do you do? Minister for Justice, by any chance?

Diarmuid Connolly has been found guilty and been given a sentence. Having been a victim of two unmotivated assaults, one here, one abroad, I'd have zero sympathy for him ( and probably would have thought a custodial sentence would have been good enough for him). However my own experience would have taught me that people receiving custodial sentences for these sort of crimes is very rare. Back in the days when I smoked, I was split by a head butt outside a pub from a guy who thought i was someone else apparently (see, smoking is bad for you!). My nose was broken and I was left with a scar across the bridge of my snozz.

The lad was arrested and I heard nothing more about before being called in to a garda station to be told the case had been heard already, yer man had pled guilty and offered a cash sum, which was, his lawyer said all he could afford. The judge viewed CCTV of the incident and told him to triple the amount. I ended up with 1500, which paid for flights to Australia for a holiday. Happy days? Well, i was left with the feeling that the entire point of the exercise was to clear a docket rather than for justice to be served - although the guards were very diligent in pursuing this guy (who was only a young, drunk eejit)

So I certainly don't think Connolly is getting off easy because of his football career. This is the way our system works. And if it is the way it works, then Connolly is in the process of repaying his debt, he has expressed contrition for what he has done, and no doubt he has had to make restitution to his victim. I don't harbour any ill will towards the fool who butted me - he did something that he regretted massively whilst drunk, which is a knife's edge a lot of us have balanced on in our time. It shouldn't define the rest of his life. Nor should it Connolly's (as long as he complies with his sentence).

It is not in our gift to offer forgiveness to Connolly - that is for his victim and his victim alone. But we only have to look at someone like John Leahy to see how committing an act like this can actually be a spur to self reflection and self improvement. I hope that is the road that Connolly travels. In the meantime, the best way of contributing to that outcome is judging him on how he conducts himself after this incident, after his debt is paid. I don't think there is much point in bringing it up every time his name is mentioned. People can change. And I certainly don't think it should disqualify him from training children.