Messages

Wow what a TD!

Ridiculous... more of the same tripe and nothing new or fresh about it at all. Stringer, Malcolm O'Kelly, Dempsey, Paddy Wallace, Mick O'Driscoll shouldn't be near an Ireland team. O'Kelly, Stringer and Dempsey are past their best and would Wallace and O'Driscoll get anywhere near another Country's test team? I think not. I'm quite worried about this 6 Nations campaign as their is very little new about the side. I thought we were supposed to be building for a World Cup in 3 years time? Not by the looks of this squad!!!!

Joni Mitchell - The River

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xCov0TYXBp8

Counting Crows - Colorblind

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=y0s7ycdUcHk

Eva Cassidy - Time After Time (My Personal Favourite... amazing voice and this is live)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SMznNlfLXP4

Jose Gonzalez - Hand on Your Heart

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=UmLGMWgHIgw

Antony & The Johnsons - Hope There's Someone (Haunting but very good, listen for the pianos at the end, very spooky)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm6PfBsXHjs&feature=related

Have to agree that Gaelic Football is the hardest. When younger it was always my aim to try and hit the 45s. Years and years of practice and I'd say if I've hit double figures of them I' be doing well. Played bits and pieces of Rugby but always found a Rugby ball fairly easy to hit with distanve and control. Haven't played much American football but I reckon I could do the same fairly handy.

If I had all 4 balls 45 yards out and slightly to either side it would be the Gaelic football I would struggle with the most.

Probably will be moved to the top pitch on a Saturday. That is if we haven't whored it out to whatever teams want it. You'd think there were no pitches at Owenbeg the amount of Derry games held on our pitch!!!!

Link to the fixtures

http://ulster.gaa.ie/wp-content/uploads/fixtures/uscfl2009/uscfl-fixtures-21012009.doc

Ballyshannon away for the 2nd year in a row   

In fairness we have Derrylin and Truagh at home and Ardboe is only a scoot over the road so we can hardly complain about one long trip lad!

God I wish they'd getrid of these stupid stupid rules!

From tribune.ie

I think, therefore I've Sam


Mickey Harte credits Tony Donnelly as the football mind behind Tyrone. They both talk to Kieran Shannon
Right-hand man: a confidante, lieutenant and above all friend to Mickey Harte since they were in school, Tony Donnelly is vital to Tyrone for his 'insightful, calculated' input

A few weeks before Tyrone played Armagh in the 2003 All Ireland final, Mickey Harte called over to Tony Donnelly's house. At the time Donnelly wasn't part of the official set-up but on match days he was Harte's eye in the stand and between games Harte would seek his counsel as well. "Right, it's Friday," said Harte. "For the next few days you're Joe Kernan. I'll be back to you on Tuesday and then tell me what way you're thinking."

The following Tuesday Harte was back to check in on 'Joe'.

"Well," said 'Joe', "the last thing I want to do with Tyrone is give you the ball, so I'm going to play a three-man full forward line."

"Nah, you'll not," said Harte. "You'll not just change for Tyrone."

"I will," said 'Joe'. "I don't want Tyrone having a spare man at the back the way they attack back to front so quickly. A three-man line will occupy them and ask serious questions of their full back line. I'm keeping [Ronan] Clarke and [Diarmuid] Marsden in there with Stevie [McDonnell]."

The real Joe did – and that night in the Burlington Hotel Harte and his players celebrated the county's first ever All Ireland.

As for where the other 'Joe' was that night? The Burlington? "Nah. Didn't go to the banquet. Was with family."

Where so? "The Skylon, maybe. Not sure. Somewhere in Phibsboro. Again, not sure. I was drunk somewhere else [than the Burlington] would be your answer to that!"

And at that, he laughs, and beside him, Mickey Harte, the pioneer, does too.

• • •

These days 'Joe' is officially part of the backroom team but he's not what you call a selector; in Tyrone only one man picks the team.

He's not exactly "assistant manager" either; if Tyrone ever had someone by that title, it was Father Gerard McAleer. Basically to anyone outside the Tyrone setup, Tony Donnelly's "the guy with the moustache" you always see with Mickey Harte on the line. Outside the Tyrone dressing room, that is.

Inside it, he's the owner of one of the greatest brains in football and one of the quickest wits in Tyrone. And to Harte, he's a confidante, lieutenant, but above all, friend.

They first met in sixth year, way back in '72. Donnelly was only a few weeks in the Brothers in Omagh, Harte was playing in that Sunday's All Ireland minor final, and during one free class, Donnelly made a point of introducing himself to wish Harte all the best. Turned out they had a good bit in common. Football. Pool. In other ways they were polar opposites. That same day Donnelly asked where could he grab a cigarette. Harte, needless to say, didn't smoke. "But I knew where the smokers were," smiles Harte, and he had a friend for life.

They went to St Joe's training college together, shared digs together, and nearly every night went to the Hunting Lodge together, even if Mickey was sporting his pioneer pin already and Tony wasn't.

They shared similar ideas about football too. Tony wasn't much of a player – "I could really analyse my own game – lazy, no pace, no feet" – but Harte could tell he had a serious football mind. In 1982 Augher won the county, with Tony as joint manager. In 1985 they did it again. From a distance, Mickey Harte observed and admired. This was a thinking man's team.

Back then that was a very rare species. "Before that at club level," says Harte, "it was just play off the cuff and let the best man do what they do. But because Augher had such a small pick they couldn't play by conventional rules."

For one they rarely played the same central spine for two consecutive championship matches. Brendan McKenna might operate at full forward in one game, centre back the next; Tony's brother Paul in the corner forward one day, centre-forward the next.

They made full use of the width of the pitch. Up to '82, their two wing-backs had seen themselves as limited hunter and gatherers of the ball to lay off to someone like Eugene or Brendan McKenna. Under Donnelly they transformed into two dynamic, attacking wing backs. "You'd have the likes of Trillick playing a diamond around the middle of the field," says Donnelly "to try and smother Eugene and Seamus Daly, so we had to have an outlet to get the ball to them."

While Harte was coaching Tyrone minor and under-21 teams, Donnelly was raising a young family and running an ironing service when he wasn't teaching; helping current Tyrone trainer Fergal McCann out with the Augher under-14s and 16s was the extent of his coaching for a good few years. When Harte was appointed county manager in 2002 though he wanted Donnelly in with him. But Donnelly's clubmate Eugene McKenna had been a member of the outgoing management and had been up against Harte for the post; it wouldn't go down well to be seen to have gone against Eugene. When Harte called again two years later though, Donnelly came on board officially.

It was daunting at first. He'll never forget their opening McKenna Cup game that year, against Cavan in Breffni when Harte asked him to say a few words at half-time. Peter Canavan and Chris Lawn were both playing. "I thought to myself, 'Christ, what am I going to tell the two boys, me here with my two counties from the '80s?' But Mickey told me, 'Donnelly, shut up; they'll listen to you surely.' So it was a deep breath and off I
went."

It went down well. "The players immediately realised that this was not your typical, benign drivel," says Harte. "I often say half-time should be about information, not noise. Tony never comes in with a rant, it's always very insightful, calculated stuff. It's the same on the line. He sees what nobody else sees. The confidence I get from having him on the line is total. Because in live time, you make calls not after you've read the papers, or seen it on video or after a Monday morning chat with 10 different people. It's as it happens and he's as good as there is at that."

Probably their finest moment was Dublin, 2005. The litany of switches at half-time in the drawn game are legendary, but some are forgotten. For instance, Philly Jordan played that second half at corner back.

"We felt Ricey [Ryan McMenamin] would give us some drive at wing-back," recalls Donnelly, "so we switched him there and Philly says to Seán Cavanagh, 'I'm not on!' Seán says, 'No, you're corner-back.' Philly said afterwards, he didn't know which was the bigger shock, thinking he was off or at corner-back! But your play starts from your full-back line and if you have someone like Philly who can burst out, it breaks the next line and suddenly the whole field opens up.

"The key that day was Ciaran Whelan. At half-time I said Whelan was the oxygen for Dublin – their crowd, their forwards, everything. In the first half he had won six clean balls and we said to Joe [McMahon], 'Joe, you have to step on that oxygen line.'"

For Harte, it's little expressions like that players can relate to, and, when Tony feels the need, laugh at. Before last year's All Ireland quarter-final against Dublin on a horrendously wet day, Donnelly had spoken about what Tyrone would do if Brian Dooher won the toss and Tyrone were "playing against the tide". It just created that little ripple of soft laughs every big day needs.

It was Donnelly in the dressing rooms before they played Louth in last year's qualifiers, who spotted that Ciaran Gourley had gone a week without shaving. "Ah, spot the teacher just on holidays!" Ryan McMenamin heard that. Hey, there might be something in that... Donnelly never joined the bearded brothers. He just kept to the moustache and kept in the background, laughing and plotting away. He wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Harte wouldn't want anyone else by his side either.

My first memory of an international news story was 1988 when I was 6. Being not long across the water from Canada and very sporty I took great satisfaction at Ben Johnson winning the gold medal. As I was also fastest in my class I had a great time saying I was Ben Johnson fastest man in the world!

When the truth came out I got some slagging/beatings for it... cheating fcuker! After that I proclimed my irishness to the death until the day I was running around calling myself Waterford Crystal! I'm now a fully fledged Canadian again!!!

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I have the .eps versions as well if you would like me to email them to you. Just send me a pm and I can sort it.

Here you go:

Best supporting actor
Michael Shannon - Revolutionary Road

Under normal circumstances this actor would have run away with this particular award

Stole the show. Could've watched much more of him.

The lad was about the only good thing in the film. Reminded me of Hugh Laurie's character in House!

Is the Reader the holocaust one with Winslet and Fiennes? I thought it's been getting great reviews?

Sorry yeah Frost Nixon was good I enjoyed that. Hoping to watch Che and Gran Torino in the near future.

Yes man isn't like liar liar it's a bit more serious but very good I thought. Based on a book by Danny Wallace where he tried an experiment of saying yes where he wouldn't have before for 6 months and seeing where it led him.

I'd say Slumdog Millionaire, Role Models and Yes Man are the three best I've seen recently although there is a lot of opposition to Slumdog.

Also a lot on here are touting Revolutionary Road and the Wrestler but they weren't my cup of tea. I'd say if you didn't like American Beauty you wont much care for those 2.