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This card nonsense is getting out of hand altogether. That ref today seemed to dish out a card or a ticking for just about every 'foul' he whistled. It's making a nonsense of the game and apart from anything else completely negates the effect of the quick free, introduced to speed the game up. The whole thing was a stop-start debacle and as far removed from good, honest, tough football as it could be.

TG4's "delayed coverage" was surely meant as some delayed April Fool joke on the supporters. I watched the game without knowing the score. They showed the first half, one of the poorest halves of football I've seen in a long time. They went in 0-8 to 0-4 and TG4 went for a break. When they came back from the break they resumed the game with the clock at 52 minutes – they just chopped the first seventeen minutes of the second half out of the coverage to get finished on schedule. By this time, though, the score was 2-10 to 0-7! So we missed the significant period of the game when clearly everything happened and missed the only two goals in the game. What kind of half-assed carry-on is that? Delayed coverage we were promised. Deleted coverage we got.

From what I saw, I'm not filled with confidence for the championship. God help us if Brian Farrell gets injured. He scored 2-9 of the 2-12 today (Joe Sheridan getting the other 3) – that's some haul for one player in any match. The only other positive I can take from what I saw is the midfield performance, with Mark Ward starting to fulfil the promise he's shown for some time.

Roscommon looked a truly awful outfit and to concede 12 points to them doesn't say much for our defence, especially when you consider our total dominance of midfield. And our four non-scoring forwards were practically invisible, at least for the 53 minutes of the game that TG4 deigned to show us. Maybe they were brilliant during the mystery period when we scored 2-2!

Answer my question first about which version of Shamrock Rovers we're talking about.

I couldnt give two fucks.

So no answer then, because you know it's unanswerable. You can't have it both ways and you can't adduce SR's putative €2M contribution to bolster your argument and then say it's not relevant. You'll quote it again in the future, I've no doubt,  and we'll have to go through all this again.

My point is that there is a huge amount of bullshit flying round GAA circles on this, most obvious that Rovers are getting a 'free' stadium. Its not true.

I've refuted this comprehensively at least twice today alone. And still you carry on. Alright – again – it's substantially free - €100K in a cost of many millions. The €2M is a chimera, as I've shown.

Again, why is it ok for td to get a free ground but not rovers?

This is an unbelievable contortion. Who is suggesting that the issue is about a fee stadium for TD? The issue is about a free (for all intents and purposes) stadium for Shamrock Rovers, and the specific EXCLUSION of TD. So, in case you still don't get it, your question should read "why is it ok for Shamrock Rovers to get a stadium free and GAA clubs to be specifically excluded, having initially being promised inclusion?" Both questions are an avoidance of the issue, in any case. The question is why should TD and the GAA meekly accept O'Donoghue's dictat, and the reversal of a written undertaken from the public authority?

And now I have better things to do with my Saturday evening.

Answer my question first about which version of Shamrock Rovers we're talking about.

€2m from Rovers over 5 years approx 10 years ago IIRC.

Oh THAT Shamrock Rovers! Aren't they the asset-stripping, debt-defaulting, employee-cheating, supplier-screwing Shamrock Rovers that you keep telling us have nothing to do with TODAY'S Shamrock Rovers? In which case what is the relevance of their 'contribution'? (And where did they get the money, btw?)

As Lone Shark pointed out to you more than once, you can't have it both ways. Either this is a different Shamrock Rovers, in which case their contribution has been €100K, or it's the same Shamrock Rovers, in which case they owe us, the taxpayers, their former players and their cheated suppliers a whole lot of money.  Which is it?

It's this sort of tendentious nonsense and your facility to ignore the truths that don't suit you and to trot out again and again the stuff that's been debunked, that provoked my first post today.

Who put in €2M before?

Where did I say 'no soccer club owns its own facilities'? I don't know of any. I don't take any interest in soccer. But my substabntive point stands. I only ever hear of soccer begging for accommodation. GAA people tend to get on with it and build their own.

By the way, where is the documentation for your contention that "all GAA clubs in the SDCC" have had "their grants and planning permission applications frozen"? If that were the case, it would be outrageous discrimiation and victimisation and our friend the judge would be back in action pronto.

[is]

Dublinfella, your line of argument has been debunked, discredited and demolished innumerable times in this thread alone and yet you continue to trot out the propaganda. You're barefaced and brassnecked to a degree seldom witnessed around here, or anywhere else, Fearon apart. The whole thing is tiresome at this stage, but once more, for the record, just in case anyone here isn't aware of the truth at this stage:

1.   The current proposal sees the capital cost of the stadium 99.1% paid for from public funds. Shamrock Rovers have contributed €100K of a projected €11M. To all intents and purposes, that is a free stadium, or as near as makes your constant challenging of the fact look totally ridiculous.
2.   Your bile about what you term the GAA's  "inalienable right the GAA have to play wherever they want while holding rule 42" is not only spiteful and petulant, it's nonsensical. The GAA has fronted up majority funding for all of its facilities that I know of. On the other hand, I don't know of any soccer club that owns its own facilities. Isn't the truth the exact opposite of your stupid contention? Isn't it Irish soccer, not the GAA,  that's constantly bleating to be accommodated in facilities owned and paid for by others?
3.   Thomas Davis GAA club has every right to seek a review of a dodgy ministerial edict that overturned to their disadvantage an undertaking by a public authority. A judge in open court has decided this. No amount of bluster from you can change that fact and your constant wailing about it here is becoming a bit of a joke.

And Hardy – he really is that good...

That was just a smartass joke - I didn't know Donal played the pipes.

Crack is spelt craic

It is now mostly but it shouldn't be. It's an English word with makey-up Irish spelling.

In an almost similar vein (by Colm Sands) - I'm sure yiz all know it:

LOOKIN' THE LOAN OF A SPADE

Colum Sands / The Sands Family

Is that yourself - Indeed it is - Well you're a stranger here,
I don't know when I seen you last, it must be more than a year,
How are you doin' - I'm not so bad, and what about yourself -
/: No use complaining I suppose, as long as we've got the health. :/

Where are you now? - I'm still at home, it's the brother that went away,
My father he said that if one of us left, the other would have to stay,
Sure jobs are gettin' very scarce, the unemployment's a curse -
/: But still I suppose as the fella says, it's bad that couldn't be worse. :/

- Terrible weather altogether, it's never going to clear -
Do you know what I'm goin' to tell you though, it's not bad for the time of the year,
Sure a sup of rain never done very much harm, the grass could do with a drop,
/: I'd pass no remarks on a skift or two, as long as there's not a slap. :/

- A slap's the last thing that we need, for our wee meadow's in hay
Do you mind the trade we had last year comin' up thon bit of a brae -
The mountain's comin' very close, I don't like the look of the sky,
/: The forecast talked about a change, but you mightn't believe thon boys. :/

(spoken)I think I'll ask him now . . . I think I'll ask him . . .

- I suppose I'd better be headin' on, I've held you back enough,
I was clearin' up at the back of the house, the garden is very rough,
I broke the spade and it's awkward when you've only got a graip,
/: And unless I can get the loan of a spade, the garden will have to wait. :/

- Aye a spade's an awful missly thing, there's the sun again,
But it's only a pet, it will never keep up, I felt a spit of rain -
Would you be usin' your spade today - To tell you the truth I'm not,
/: For I lent it to you a year ago, and since then I never saw it. :/

Cork. Judging by the driving you encounter, it must be very easy to pass the test down here.

Is there a new Supermac's around there?

All the same, I hope they arrest him. Just for the crack, like and it'd be entertaining to see a Hollywood prat doing time on bread and water in some smelly dungeon in India.

And it would serve as a warning to the boorish tourists of the world (American and Japanese papers especially, please copy) that a nod towards the norms and conventions of the host population is nothing more than good manners (as they feckinwell insist on when you go to their country).

I remember being in Notre Dame in Paris one day. A little old lady was kneeling in front of a side altar, praying. A herd of Japanese tourists arrived and started walking around her, gawking at her, some of them taking flash photos of her and the rest of them cackling at high decibels. I know xenophobia is not good mostly, but surely we could make the odd exception to allow, say a short burst of machine-gun fire in a situation like this?

Passedit – that made me spit my coffee all over the screen. And Shamrock – you have a freckeningly accurate grasp of the Shakespearean English we speak by the Boyne.

Anyway, it seems to me the (cheap, English imitation version) Royals would be missing a chance to kill two birds with one suicide bomb here. If the wee fella is really the result of his ould wan's playing away, what better way to avoid the potential embarrassment (though it never bothered them before) of having a bastard on the throne than to make sure he gets in harm's way in Iraq? Hewitt problem solved and a real live (dead) royal hero to boot.

That whole campus looked like one big grassy knoll to me.

I beg your pardon! Tommy Murphy Cup? Meath? Not that I remember. Maybe yiz were battered about WITH the Tommy Murphy cup and you're misremembering?

Just to stay on topic - it won't be worth our whiles turning up. Roscommon are rightly massive favourites for this one.