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GAA star dies of suspected sudden adult death syndrome
Friday, 6 January 2012

Another talented Gaelic footballer has died from a suspected case of sudden adult death syndrome (SADS).

Jason Morley was found dead by his wife, Rebecca, in their home at Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo, when she woke on Wednesday morning.

Mr Morley was 37 and worked for a local scaffolding firm.

It is thought that his unexpected death may be down to SADS, which is believed to be responsible for approximately two deaths a week in Ireland.

All-Ireland winning Tyrone footballer Cormac McAnallen was a healthy 24-year-old when he fell victim to the condition in his sleep in March 2004.

His death prompted an ongoing awareness campaign which has resulted in many sports players being screened for cardiac conditions and defibrillators installed at sports clubs.

Typically, SADS victims suffer unexpected heart problems while exercising.

Mr Morley's remains were removed to Mayo General Hospital in Castlebar where a post mortem was due to be carried out yesterday.

It is understood he had been complaining of a sore throat in the days before his death, but had been to a doctor and was taking medication for that complaint.

Over the past two decades, Mr Morley, a brother of former Mayo intercounty footballer Tony Morley, distinguished himself on local playing fields winning many honours with the Ballyhaunis GAA Club.

He was named club footballer of the year in 2000. Ballyhaunis club secretary Vincent Caulfield said yesterday Mr Morley had been the epitome of what every sportsman should be.

"He was brave, as strong as a horse, looked after himself well," Mr Caulfield said. "Off the field, Jason was a true gentleman and a great family man."

A message on the club's website yesterday read: "It is with great sadness and deep regret our club have learned of the sudden and untimely passing of our loyal, cherished player and friend, Jason Morley.

"(We) offer our sincere condolences to his wife Becky, son Conor, parents Josie and Tony, brothers Tony and David and extended family and wide circle of friends."

Mr Morley's removal will take place to his local Bekan Church tonight at 7pm.

What an awful tragedy. 

And two people a week dying of this? 

Breton GAA Moves

Source : Celtic League Porte parole: Publié le 30/12/11 12:10 MANX —

The Breton and Irish Branches of the Celtic League are working together to help coordinate a Gaelic football match between a Breton team and an Irish team, with the aim of progressing the recognition of a Breton team by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA).

The Breton and Irish Branch secretaries have been in contact with each other over the last few months following communication between the Breton branch and members of the Gaelic football movement in Brittany. Previous resistance among members of Gaelic Football's European County Board (ECB) to Brittany's participation in international matches in their own right, seems to have been overcome.

It has been reported to the Celtic League, following a Den Haag GAA meeting earlier this month, that the new chairperson of the ECB, Willie Cashin, and ECB Secretary, Tony Bass, are now beginning to recognise that Brittany has a good case to be included in the ECB. It seems that with the replacement of the previous Chairperson of the ECB, Eileen Jennings, the position of the ECB has shift away from opposition to a Breton team included in international competitions to their preferred participation, along with other national minority groups like the Basques. Comments made by Eileen Jennings at a previous meeting, where it was reported to the League that the Chair person jokingly questioned peoples knowledge of where Brittany was located had worked against her argument of not including the historic nation in the ECB.

Irish branch secretary, Caoimhín Ó Cadhla, who is a member of Na Gaeil Óga (CLG) ? an Irish language Gaelic Football organisation in Ireland ? has been in touch with members of Gaelic Football in Brittany about the possibility of organising a match between the Gaelic speaking team from Ireland and a Breton speaking team from Brittany, to possibly coincide with the Lorient Inter Celtic Festival orthe Breton Language National Festival, where a gaelic football demonstration took place this year. In his communication with the Breton Secretary, Gi Keltik, Caoimhín Ó Cadhla, suggested trying to organise a meeting with the GAA outlining the reasons for recognition of a Breton Team, adding:

there is a precedent already in the GAA for recognising national minorities and not only that but a Celtic Country, in the form of Scotland with the Hurling /Shinty Matches.

The Celtic League has previously written to the GAA to ask that it stops referring to Scotland as a `County' and recognise its national status. The General Secretary of the League will be writing again to the president of the GAA and Chairperson of the ECB to ask that Brittany is considered as a full participating member in international matches.

Further information about gaelic football developments in Brittany will be made available on Celtic News as they arise.

Source

The Irish Times - Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Man accused of killing GAA player takes his own life in cell

CONOR LALLY Crime Correspondent

A MAN charged with murdering a Co Armagh GAA player 10 days ago took his own life in a courthouse holding cell yesterday soon after appearing in the court.

Shane Rogers was placed on suicide watch after Judge Flann Brennan directed last week that he receive medical and psychiatric treatment. The judge had been told he was a suicide risk.

Separate Garda and Irish Prison Service investigations are taking place into the death of Mr Rogers, from Deery Terrace, Inniskeen, Co Monaghan, at Cloverhill Courthouse, which is attached to Cloverhill Prison.

Foul play has been ruled out and the investigations will focus on how a prisoner on suicide watch, who was checked by prison staff every 15 minutes, could have had the opportunity to kill himself.

The dead man had been in prison for just a week and his brief appearance before Cloverhill District Court yesterday was the first time he had appeared in court since being charged.

He was taken from his cell at Cloverhill Prison in Clondalkin, west Dublin, yesterday morning and brought to the court holding cells through a tunnel that links the remand prison with the courthouse.

He was placed in a holding cell under the court just before his appearance and was returned there immediately after the hearing. He was to be taken from that courthouse cell and returned to the prison at about lunchtime.

However, at 1.30pm he was found unresponsive in the holding cell and, while efforts were made to revive him at Tallaght hospital, he was pronounced dead shortly after arrival there.

Mr Rogers was on remand at the prison after being charged last week with murdering James Hughes at Carrickmacross Road, Dundalk, Co Louth, in the early hours of Sunday, December 11th.

When a taxi carrying Mr Hughes and 21-year-old Trish Byrne pulled into Cluain Ard, Lis na Dara, a housing estate on the outskirts of Dundalk, Mr Rogers approached with a shotgun and opened fire. A number of shots were discharged and witnesses reported hearing Mr Hughes plead for his life just before he was fatally wounded. Ms Byrne was also injured by shotgun pellets.

Mr Hughes, from Crossmaglen in Co Armagh, was a central figure with the successful GAA club Crossmaglen Rangers.

After the murder, Mr Rogers presented himself at Carrickmacross Garda station. He was arrested and admitted his involvement in the killing.

When he appeared before Dundalk District Court last Tuesday morning, Sgt Kieran Moore told the court that after being first charged Mr Rogers said: "I apologise to him and to his family and friends and to Trish Byrne. I can't live with myself for doing this."

Doesn't say much for the "suicide watch," does it?

If God is right and Hitch was wrong, I wouldn't want to be in His shoes at the minute.

My favourite hitchslap: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcQ2XXfw_Mw

We'll never see his like again.

Put a bleedin' tie on when you're in the Dail.

From joe.ie:

Ireland should put plans in place to host the Rugby World Cup in 12 years' time as the prospect is "absolutely feasible", according to economist David McWilliams.

McWilliams was speaking on Newstalk's Off The Ball show on Tuesday evening.

And he feels that with some forward-thinking strategies from the Government - as well as a bit of help from the GAA - Ireland could be the sole host of the Rugby World Cup in 2023.

As well as the Aviva Stadium, Thomond Park in Limerick and a revamped Ravenhill in Belfast, McWilliams reckons Croke Park, McHale Park in Castlebar and a Cork stadium - possibly a new Pairc Ui Chaoimh - could also form the basis of an IRFU bid for rugby's biggest tournament.

He said, "It's absolutely feasible. We have to do big and bold things to change the psychology of a nation, and a Rugby World Cup clearly for a country of our size would do that.

"Within the psychology of a country it's very important to be seen to be moving forward, to be doing things that you could have only dreamed of a couple of years ago.

"If you look at the numbers from the New Zealand World Cup, they actually made money from the tournament, and that's a phenomenal thing, because in the past - going back to the Montreal Olympics - these things have been seen as white elephants."

He's absolutely right.  We have facilities that are either capable of hosting such events or upgradable to the point where they could.  Celtic Tiger era road and rail upgrades mean that there's now a reasonably decent transport infrastructure in place.  I'm not much of a rugby fan (a very casual watcher of the odd international game) but I still think this would be good for Irish sport and raising the country's profile on the world stage. We should be aspiring to hosting large scale international events and showcasing the country as a place that's good to visit and good to do business in.

However the biggest obstacle to such a plan would be the "it will never happen" attitude, the age-old Irish mentality of conflating difficulty with impossibility and giving up without even bothering to look at the first hurdle. It's the inability to see how things could be in the future, always looking at the state we're in now and imagining that it's always going to be that way. I'm bracing myself for a tide of "wise up, it will never happen" in 5 - 4 - 3 - 2  - 1 ...

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rHvr5GM9I8

Short film about the hurling all-stars in San Francisco,  including them coaching and helping the youth hurlers from San Francisco and Chicago.  Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rHvr5GM9I8

[GAA chiefs to kick 'square ball' rule into touch]

GAA chiefs to kick 'square ball' rule into touch
By John Campbell
Thursday, 1 December 2011

The controversial 'square ball' rule looks set for the chop after the GAA's high-powered Standing Rules Committee recommended an overhaul.

A new version of the regulation, which will be put to delegates at Congress next April, would see players allowed in the square before the ball, except when the ball is delivered from frees and sideline kicks.

Ironically, the current recommendation sees a return to the rule that was in place for the 2010 leagues before it was heavily defeated at that year's Congress in Newcastle.

However, the folly of that decision has impacted heavily on the last two championship summers.

The official guide states that it is illegal "for an attacking player to enter an opponents' small rectangle before the ball enters it during play".

However, that rule has come under increasing scrutiny following a number of high-profile incidences in the football championship over the course of the summer.

Meath's Graham Geraghty had a 'goal' disallowed during their Leinster championship clash with Kildare, while the Lilies were on the receiving end later in the summer when a legitimate-looking Tomas O'Connor goal during their narrow All-Ireland quarter-final defeat to Donegal in August was ruled out.

Kildare were also involved in one of the most controversial incidents of the 2010 championship, when Down's Benny Coulter scored a goal to send Kieran McGeeney's side crashing out of the championship at the All-Ireland semi-final stage.

Previously, the GAA could only make changes to playing rules in years divisible by five, but the Standing Rules Committee, which was formed at last April's Congress, can now make recommendations for alterations as it sees fit.

The other major recommendations from the committee are aimed at speeding the game up.

Congress will mull over the merits of the introduction of 'instantaneous subs', which means teams will no longer have to wait on a break in play to make a switch.

A more radical move towards 'Tap and Go' free-kicks will be trialled extensively next year and will not be brought before Congress until 2013 at the earliest.

You know what really grinds my gears? Rugby puns in GAA headlines.

Anyway. How about it?  It's the devil's job enforcing it.  It's a hard enough job for the umpires to keep an eye on the ball, but to watch the square at the same time? If they talk to each other and agree on who's watching what then you can manage it, but even then it's still hard to tell in a borderline case. For hurling even more so.

[GAA stars launch scheme for booze-free January]

GAA stars launch scheme for booze-free January

A HOST OF inter-county stars have lent their support to a new GAA initiative which calls on members to give up alcohol for the month of January.
Armagh legend Oisin McConville joined Mayo footballers Aidan O'Shea and Alan Freeman in Croke Park this afternoon to launch the Association's "Off the Booze and On the Ball" health project.

The challenge encourages GAA members around the country to kick off the new year by abstaining from alcohol for a month, collecting sponsorship money for their local club as they do so.

The scheme's participants will also be given guidance on recommended weekly exercise levels as well as tips and activities to help them hit their targets.
Also present at today's launch were GAA President Christy Cooney, Minster of State at the Department of Health Róisín Shortall, as well as players from Leitrim club Melvin Gaels whose entire senior panel will be taking up the challenge after Christmas.

"January is a month of the year when the commencement of good habits comes into sharp focus and twinning a reduction in alcohol intake with increased physical activity makes perfect sense after the possible excesses of the festive season," said Cooney.

"This scheme also offers members the chance to generate funds for their local clubs through sponsorship so the benefits for those involved are plain for all to see."

"Everything begins with small steps," Shortall added, "and I am confident that this programme will find its way into every club, every community and every county in Ireland.

"Alcohol abuse presents one of the greatest challenges our country faces and I am delighted to see an organisation as renowned and respected as the GAA take a lead on this issue and I hope other sporting associations will adopt similar schemes."

I was at a GAA meeting at the weekend and everyone went to a pub afterwards.  I was a bit jet lagged and couldn't stay awake so a nap turned into a 4-hour kip, and when I woke from that I went down the hotel bar around midnight and sat with a few people who had stayed at the bar.  I'd already had one drink earlier after the meeting so I was on soda water for the rest of the night.  Later the ones who had been to the pub came staggering in through the door barely able to stand up, the pub had closed and the hotel bar was closing.  They decided to go out again across the street because they heard that there was another pub that would stay open a bit longer.  I though to myself "Why? Are yiz not legless enough already?"

I used to do it myself when I was a teenager and in my early 20s, and I remember what the appeal of it was.  But at this stage?  People in their 30s and 40s still taking the all-or-nothing approach of staying sober or getting completely airlocked?  Have they not grown out of it?  Can you really not relax and enjoy the company of your friends without getting tanked up?

Boggles the mind.

What's all this business about the word "patron" being a new invention? I remember sitting in the old stands of Croke Park on the wooden seats when I was a wee lad and the word "patron" was used by the stadium announcers all the time. I remember it used at Clones, at Casement, throughout the GAA and nobody batted an eyelid and nobody thought ill of it.  Why has it suddenly become a bone of contention? Why have people got such short memories?

Indy Hurling never ceases to amaze!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6S6QKa9Byfg

Let me get this straight. The markets are panicking because of the prospect of the people of Greece having a democratic vote on the terms of their bailout. Merkel, Sarkozy and the troika are wagging their fingers disapprovingly at Papandreou for such a move.

Is it just me or is there something inherently wrong here? Who gets to call the shots? The people or the investors? Shouldn't the people be supreme? And in the birthplace of democracy of all places!

I mean, am I missing something?

Love the sound of:

Cork (the one where people sound like they're singing and end most sentences in 'boy')
Fermanagh
Geordie
Scouse
Cumbrian
Welsh
BBC English (not the stuffy one from the 60s, the modern type)
That neutral accent spoken by continental people from the likes of Scandinavia, Benelux etc.
Canadian
Australian
New Zealand
But my favourite one of all is South African. Could listen to it all day.

Grinds my gears:

People who speak with my own accent when played back on TV
Boston (sounds very abrasive)
Southern USA (reminds me too much of people like George W Bush, Rick Perry and other half-educated idiots.  Bill Clinton's accent was a lot milder and I can listen to that)
Cockney

Makes me laugh:

Birmingham
West country / Devon & Cornwall
Scouse
California valley girls, were everything is like, a question?

Is there going to be an Irish edition of this? Occupy the International Financial Services Centre? "Occupy the IFSC" doesn't quite have the same catchy ring to it as the New York original, but they're probably every bit as justified or maybe even more so given the scale of the bailout that the likes of Anglo Irish Bank got.

[Irish man Ciaran O Conghaile is shot dead in Boston]

BBC
11 October 2011 Last updated at 13:25 ET

Irish man Ciaran O Conghaile is shot dead in Boston
The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs is providing consular assistance to the family of an Irish man who was shot dead in Boston on Monday.

Ciaran O Conghaile was found lying in the street in the Dorchester area just after 1am with a gunshot wound.

He was pronounced dead at the scene. It is understood the 36-year-old was from Inis Meain, one of the Aran Islands, off Galway.

He lived in the Dorchester area and worked in construction.

The Press Association quoted Irish government sources who said US investigators believe Mr O Conghaile was not "intentionally killed" but may have been caught up in a "botched robbery".

Boston police are investigating whether he had his wallet stolen as he walked home from an Irish festival.

It is the second tragedy to hit his family in recent years.

His older brother Michael Dara O Conghaile was swept into the sea by a freak wave as he stood chatting to his sister on the pier of Inis Meain in 2000.

I made this because with my 5-minute movie I found myself having to fast forward to get to the point whenever showing it on a handheld device. I think this would be more suitable for the "elevator pitch".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgEMvRrOCRI

[Replay to cost Exiles €50,000]

Replay to cost Exiles €50,000
26 September 2011

New York are expected to apply to the Ladies Gaelic Football Association (LGFA) for funding to help them offset the cost of another trip to Ireland after yesterday's All-Ireland junior final against Wicklow ended in a 0-9 each draw.

Wicklow substitute Laura Hogan's late equaliser means the Exiles must return home for a replay in a fortnight's time - costing them an estimated €50,000 when flights and accommodation are taken into account. It will be New York's fourth trip home this year, having previously returned for the All-Ireland quarter-final and semi-final.

Under LGFA rules, no provision is included for extra-time in All-Ireland finals and the Exiles are now hoping that the governing body will look favourably upon their request and make a contribution to cover some of the huge costs involved in financing another visit.

New York manager Philip Sheridan revealed before yesterday's final in Croke Park that players and management have raised over $25,000 between them in fundraising since April, with each club asked to raise an additional $2,000.

Hogan Stand

Couple of things:

1 - Has anybody noticed that this game has taken place? It costs a fierce amount of money to send players across the Atlantic to play in a game, so you'd like to think it was high profile, wouldn't you?

2 - The article constantly refers to the players as "exiles" and "returning home" to play in Ireland despite most of the players being American-born.

3 - When you enter a competition I would have thought it was customary to ensure that you have the resources to get your players to every stage of the competition in the event that you might win it.  Remember the Ulster Hurling Championship debacle of about five years ago when NY were unable to send a team to the final because some of their players were undocumented in the US?  This reminds me of that.  It's almost as if NY puts teams into these competitions on the assumption that they're not going to win.  And if they do win then we have to have "emergency meetings" to find ways to finance the astronomical cost of playing the next round.

In any case how does this raise the profile of ladies football in the US? How many Americans became aware of the existence of Gaelic football because a team from NY travelled to Ireland to play in this competition? Not one.   These overseas adventures for American-based GAA teams are a huge financial drain and I cannot see any benefit in them.

I've briefly read about this game before.  Just saw some clips of it on youtube. It's like Ice Hockey on a soccer sized rink! Interesting!

[Our politicians who steered the ship onto the iceberg have walked away with fortunes]

Kevin Myers: Our politicians who steered the ship onto the iceberg have walked away with fortunes             

Tuesday September 13 2011

A national narrative is not just about the past. It also enables the present, for it contains a covert and coded morality. This is why I go on and on, endlessly, about the 1916 Rising.

It was at its core an evil event, wholly unjustified by the circumstances that existed in Ireland, with many deplorable outcomes. If you make that affair the "start" of authentic independent Irishness, then you cannot be surprised that the resultant political ethos is as lacking in a core morality as was the Rising itself.

The state which is now amply rewarding the architects of our financial ruin truly is a right and proper heir to 1916. Senior civil servants such as Rody Molloy and Patrick Neary, who should at the very least have been sacked and questioned by the Garda fraud squad, were instead allowed to take early retirement, with tax-free golden handshakes of several hundred thousands, and annual pensions of around €150,000 each.

And now Dermot McCarthy, another central player in the decisions which have brought poverty to hundreds of thousands, is taking an early retirement package of €570,000, and an annual pension of €142,000. Our elected politicians who steered the ship onto the iceberg have walked away with comparable fortunes.

To have given civil servants a warning of a cut in their future pensions if they stayed at their job, and to have allowed them retain their extravagant benefits if they retired early, would have been an act of deranged stupidity in a prosperous society: in a country that is in receiver-ship, it was simply criminal.

But that's what you can expect when you build a political morality on the quicksand that is 1916. Instead of letting that deplorable tragedy lie in the pages of history, it is endlessly being re-invented as a polit-ical morality play, in which the main instigators are always turned into victims.

Do you understand the following very simple observation? If you make a hero of a schoolmaster who not merely trains his boys in the ways of physical violence, but also leads these under-age lads to turn their guns on their fellow citizens, do not expect morally-consistent society to result. If a polity teaches reverence for a Marxist totalitarian who wanted a world-wide class-war, and who gave a gun to his 14-year-old son to go out and shoot people, a law-abiding, respectable society will not be the outcome.

I have repeatedly written about this, and to no avail. Let me repeat it now. The conspiratorial narrative of Tone-Pearse-Connolly-Collins remains the core of Irish nationalism, even though the consequences of their demented creed have always been civil war, bloodshed and failure. In the deranged ethos that has resulted, we can see criminal financial greed, at the highest level, being rewarded. The Hospital Sweeps __ founded and run by gunmen __ was the greatest financial scam in the history of the State until the Celtic Tiger __ though it was nearly matched by De Valera's theft of the millions raised for "Ireland" in the US.

The great hero of secular Ireland, Douglas Gageby, editor of 'The Irish Times', in 1974 was the co-author of The Irish Times Trust, which was founded the day before capital gains tax came into effect. This personally netted him around £350,000 tax free: around €32.5m in 2007 values. He duly concealed the tax-free nature of the deal from his readers, and it took the newspaper and its underpaid staff 20 years to pay off. Is it any wonder that during his decades as editor he never tried to investigate the financial squalor that was Charles Haughey, or that his pol-corr, John Healy, was by a wide margin Haughey's most fulsomely servile admirer?

The grotesque rewarding of civil servants and polit-icians who have laid waste to Ireland's finances is not some depart-ure from a civilised norm, but it is the latest expression of the moral dystopia that has ruled in Ireland since inde-pendence. This dystopia has always resulted in economic failure and mass emigration: always. Each cycle of success __ usually brief __ has concluded with ruin of some kind. One single statistic is key. The population of every single state in western Europe, including Northern Ireland, increased by 40pc between 1920 and 2000. The population of independent Ireland rose by just 20pc. Twenty years before, it wouldn't have risen at all.

In addition to this State producing chronic failure, it also fails to perceive this failure as intrinsic to its political culture. Suicidal grandiosity is part of that culture. Suicidal grandiosity lay at the core of the Rising. Suicidal grandiosity gave us the Economic War with our only trading partner, the British Empire, a conflict which it didn't notice but almost destroyed Ireland. Suicidal grandiosity led to De Valera's condolences upon Hitler's death. Suicidal grandiosity caused Haughey to fund the formation of the Provisional IRA. Suicidal grandiosity killed the Celtic Tiger. And suicidal grandiosity is now enabling an entire generation of senior civil servants to waddle off into the sunset with millions of money borrowed from our grandchildren.

It is all perfectly disgusting. but it is not remotely new.

Change the record, Kevin. You're spot on that corruption is a bad thing, who would disagree?  But to blame Charlie Haughey's greed and thievery on the events of 1916 is a bit of a stretch, wouldn't you say?  Do you really think that if Ireland had somehow peacefully seceded from the UK then the current "brown envelope" culture wouldn't exist?

In any case people who think life in Ireland was a bed of roses before 1916 are the same type of people who think that all was well in the Ulster garden before 1969 when the IRA sprang into existence for no apparent reason.

The 'morality' that prevailed before 1916 was that there was an Anglo-Irish ruling class who were superior to the natives by way of birthright, where the native culture was inherently inferior and had to be replaced by a more 'proper' British one. To be a catholic was to be very poor.  It was the perfect breeding ground for nationalist sentiment, and in a world where it was customary to settle international disputes by use of force the 1916 rising didn't look all that out of place at all. In fact it was relatively tame compared to the contemporary horrors of the trenches in Flanders where "suicidal grandiosity" was claiming thousands of lives on a weekly basis in an imperial pissing contest. Was the battle of the Somme a better foundation for civil society?