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Mullingar. About 2 hrs from Newry. Maybe less with a good run.

I was wondering when this would finally make it's way to the new board.

I understand that this is meant to taken light-heartedly, but still:

1) Extremes will always exist. But they are narrowing.
2) Ryan-er.
3) In both cases, it means more to the fans than the players.
4) How many GAA fans does it take to change a lightbulb? One, but 30,000 to follow him onto the pitch.
5) The first part may still be true, but the second is fading to memory at a rate of knots
6) But Dennis Wise would kick him repeatedly in the ankles.
7) I'll give you this one. But as shirt numbers and positions no longer correlate in GAA, we both bow down to rugby.
8 ) We shouldn't laugh at a sport that applies sensible rules on equipment.
9) Yes, that's why the 16 first round provincial ties are all played on the one weekend.
10) UCD anyone?
11) No segregation, but a stong anti-ulster current
12) One swallow doesn't make a summer.
13) TG4 Gold for you my friend.
14) There are atrocious matches to watch in both codes.
15) If Cora Staunton passed me on the street I wouldn't know her. Or any other Ladies GAA player for that matter. And I'd like to think of myself as a reasonably knowledgeable Gael.
16) There are mascots, ballboys and ballgirls at every single premiership game.
17) Alan Green.
18) If a spectator ever jumped a ref in soccer, I'd like to think the crowd would hammer the shite out him.
19) Brian McGuigan tripped over Greg McCartan's leg when his team were gettig destroyed. Tyrone won the All-Ireland.
20) People always want more GAA. Until  they watch play-off games in December and wonder why they bother.
21) GAA players retire, play a bit of junior, then go and screw their neighbouring clubs for imparting their knowledge of the game in a managerial position.
22) Rural England is really quite similar. you don't find big championship matches in either.
23) Most players would rather get back to their own club or town drink with their own for all that.
24) Any big stadium anywhere in the world when your team is playing in a big game.
25) Finally, we come to one truism.  Long may it continue.

GY - Kerr didn't play down there. On our patch he didn't touch the ball in the first half (not his fault, we ruined them at midfield), but he scored four from play in the second half. From what i saw that day he's very quick with the ball in hand and runs good angles.

You really can't please GAA fans. Mickey Harte has built a tactical system previously unseen in Gaelic Games. He had a look at the players at his disposal and built a system that got the absolute best out of them. He has since tweaked, modfified and improved the original plan, sometimes to get more out of it, other times to adjust to the changes in his panel. When put in place, this system at worst it is effective. At it's best it is nothing short of sublime. It has played a huge part in delivering two All-Irelands to a county that previously had none, a county renonwned for choking. Some of the football Tyrone played in those triumphs was nothing short of exceptional.

Yet Fuzzman wants to throw it out the window and go back to lumping the ball blindly forward. I do despair.

great man? great player maybe.

To be honest, I'd rather Liatroim won. Annaclone are a right enough side, and would surely be in contention to go straight back up, but with their main men available Liatroim would be capable of going unbeaten in Division II. The second tier is going to be competitive enough next year without having 11 sides vying for second place only.

I'd favour leagues of 10 teams myself GY, with 4 teams making the promotion and relegation play-offs in each division. Aside from tightening up the standards, this would give every team something to play for in every game. It would help relieve fixture congestion too. Some clubs would have an issue with lost revenue from losing 2 home games from their calendar, but as 80% of the clubs would be involved in play-offs at the end of the season, which always attract bigger crowds than normal games, some arrangement could be made between the competing clubs and the host club for splitting the gate money at play-offs games - which should more than compensate.

Any team actually progressing through the leagues under this system should be fit for the next tier, as they'll have to be able to beat teams of a similar standard to the higher tier just to get there.

Once you get past Division III, another arrangement would have to be put in place to sort out the uneven (and occasionally variable) number of teams left. I would suggest splitting Division IV into two sections, as close as possible to geographical lines to cut down on travelling times. The top two teams in each section would meet each other in round-robin Division IV promotion play-offs, with the top two sides then progressing into Division III. Every year, the two sections of Division IV would require a slight reshuffle depending on what part of the county the relegated teams come from. As both sections carry an equal weight, it really just would come down to geography. Complaints about the strength of one section compared to the other are neutered by the fact that the two best sides overall progress to Division III.

Based on league position this year, that would give us divisions something along the lines of:

Div 1: Kilcoo, Longstone, Mayobridge, Burren, Clonduff, Loughinisland, Rostrevor, Castlewellan, Bryansford, Liatroim.
Div 2: Annaclone, Shamrocks, An Riocht, Warrenpoint, Atticall, Ballyholland, Saval, Downpatrick, Ballymartin, Glassdrumman.
Div 3: Kilclief, Carryduff, Saul, Glenn, Darragh Cross, Clann na Banna, Drumgath, Ardglass, Tullylish, Dundrum. 
Div 4 North: Teconnaught, Bright, Drumaness, Bredagh, St Paul's, Ballykinlar, Killyleagh
Div 4 South: Mitchels, Bosco, Aghaderg, St Michael's, St John's, Dromara, Aughlisnafin

Bensars, sorry I thought the title of this thread was "most naturally talented", not players who made it to the top through hard work and effort. If that makes me come across as a self appointed know it all, so be it.

The most naturally talented players I've seen have all been mentioned on this thread. In no particular order: Ja Fallon, Kieran McDonald, Colm Cooper, Maurice Fitzgerald, Peter Canavan, Greg Blaney, Brian McGuigan, James McCartan, Diarmuid Marsden, Padraig Joyce, Oisin McConville, Eamon O'Hara, Colm O'Rourke, Larry Tompkins, Martin McHugh, Pat Spillane, Michael Donnellan.

Other players who made me go 'wow', but I wouldn't quite put in the league of those above include Greg McCartan, Anthony Tohill, Mickey Linden, Trevor Giles, Darragh O Se, Ray McCarron, Tommy Dowd, Ger Houlihan, Joe Brolly, Tony Boyle, Bernie Flynn, Paddy Bradley, Dessie Dolan, Declan Brown, Mattie Forde, Raymie Gallagher, Dermot McCabe,  Sean Cavanagh.

Don't mean to speak ill of the dead Bensars, but what McAnallen achieved in the game was testimony to hard work, intelligence and application, and not natural talent. To even mention him in the same thread as players like Canavan or Blaney is wrong.

And quite where you plucked Seamus Downey out of, I just don't know.

Where is Magic? He gets my vote anyway.

A team of players I'd like to see getting a run-out this year:

Declan Alder (Carryduff)
Paul Magee (Rostrevor)
Andrew Kane (Bryansford)
Domhnall Murphy (Saval)
John Turley (Loughinisland)
Paul Shields (Clonduff)
Liam McVeigh (An Riocht)
Adrian Carvill (Bryansford)
Martin McClean (Kilcoo)
Joe Ireland (Bryansford)
John Boyle (Warrenpoint)
James McGovern (Burren)
Brendan Loughran (Shamrocks)
Aidan Burns (Castlewellan)
John Fegan (Clonduff)

Really lads, goalkeeping isn't a problem in our county. I'd agree with Brick's assertion that Peter Travers is the best around bar McVeigh, but he's hardly going to reappear on the scene at the age of 30-odd. But with the likes of McAllister and Declan Alder waiting in the wings, McVeigh can't rest on his laurels - and there's plenty of talented keepers around who probably won't get any sort of a look in like Gibney from Loughinisland, Featherstone from the 'Bridge, big Sloan from Rostrevor and Kieran Murphy of Ballyholland. Every one of those is a better keeper than Packie McConnell, All-Ireland winner 2005.

Mike Sheehy - it's now been some two years since you posted a message on the gaaboard that wasn't a (pointless) attack on Ulster football. Once upon a time it might have been called for. Once upon a time it might have been relevant. Perhaps once upon a time it might even have been funny.

But these days, none of those things apply, so please take your hopeless crusade and f**k off back to the hole you appeared from.

Midfield has long been Down's biggest problem, and particularly so at winning breaking-ball. But the way to solve this problem isn't to take your best midfielder and play him at full-forward. Benny has been starved of possession at full-forward in recent years with Dan at midfield. I shudder to think of what the reverse might be like.

We aren't Kerry, we can't afford to put our best ball-winner in full-forward.

Anyway, anyone who watched Gordon playing in the National League last year couldn't have helped get the feeling that he was blossoming into a true intercounty midfielder, a good ball-winner, an excellent athlete. So at the age of 22-23, the worst thing we could do is chart him off on another course. Especially when in the shape of Benny Coulter, you have nearly as good a full-forward as you can get if all you want to is rain high balls into the 21.


5iveTimes - you've obviously must never watched Brendan McVeigh play, judging by your comments. There might be areas of his game he could work on, but shot-stopping really isn't one of them.

What a way to start - the Antrim debacle. For some reason though I don't think Shieldsy started that day. He was due to start, but if my memory is right, something happened and he didn't. I could be wrong. My clearest memory of that defeat is that it was the wettest and coldest I have ever been at a match. Even wetter and colder than Newcastle, which is always wet and cold.

Good luck to you with that GY. You'll need it.

You can get everything from 2000 onwards easily on the hoganstand http://www.hoganstand.com/general/results/index.aspx and with a bit of care you'll get reports on every game from 1997 from the Examiner http://www.examiner.ie or the Indo http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/.

Once you get past that though, you'll probably need to do a Jerome Quinn and spend a whole lot of time looking at microfilm in Belfast Library.