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Yeah, only the second time trying.

Fair play ! Red or Silver ?

Have a ticket for the Brighton game on 17th Dec. What are the chances of another on the Ticket Exchange?

Did you get your ticket in the ballot?

Ronan McNamee calls time on his Tyrone career. Has been a massive player with Tyrone at full back. Big shoes to fill.

 Size 12 I hear

Arsenal haven't hit the heights of last year yet in terms of performances.

Would love to see John Fury getting levelled by Mike Tyson

Dave Courtney. Took his own life

Am I right in saying after this year the Fianna will have 5 managers in 5 years?

2023 - Barry Tracey
2022 - Stephen Ferguson
2021 - Brian McGukin
2020 - Damian O'Hagan

McNeice was the manager this year

Jaysus lads Paddy hunter knows fcuk all about Tyrone football.

Not a bad commentator like but zero knowledge.

Ger Treacy prob the best.

Anyone want to post out the worst...

Yea that's why he was given the job cos he knows nothing. Wise up seriously. Attacking a man like that !

I think only one of us needs to wise up
 It's an opinion. He strikes me as a soccer man who fell into a Gaelic gig
 Could be wrong.

You are wrong !

Jaysus lads Paddy hunter knows fcuk all about Tyrone football.

Not a bad commentator like but zero knowledge.

Ger Treacy prob the best.

Anyone want to post out the worst...

Yea that's why he was given the job cos he knows nothing. Wise up seriously. Attacking a man like that !

Derry have sold their souls in shabby affair
Harte's arrival worst thing to happen since Plantation
JOE BROLLY


It is the worst thing to happen to Derry since the Plantation.
Louth GAA folk are furious. Plans had been made. Clubs had been consulted. Louth chairman Peter Fitzpatrick said he was "left in shock" after Mickey Harte dropped "the bombshell". He said when he told the players at a meeting the following day, "they were devastated".
This is the thing about professional sport. There is no loyalty. But even by the lowly standards of the GAA, this is shabby.
David Jeffrey, the legendary Linfield FC manager, said on William Crawley's Talkback programme last week: "I am surprised with Michael. There has been incredible uproar with him going to Derry. How can Derry people welcome him to their county? If I ever rocked up to the Oval, who from Glentoran would welcome me? And I can assure the Linfield football family I would never, ever go to Glentoran."
It was sickening to listen to.
William: Is this divine intervention?
Jeffrey: Michael looks to see where God is looking to lead him.
William: Which saintly intervention carried him to Derry? (laughter)
Meanwhile, Tyrone people are veering between scorn and amusement. Seán Cavanagh pointed out in his newspaper column that Mickey, when he was a Tyrone man, was strongly opposed to Tyrone Gaels coaching outside Tyrone. Owen Mulligan tweeted, "Just when I was starting to like the c**t."
The Dungiven boys' WhatsApp group has been renamed 'Mickey Harte's Apostles'. In Derry city, the gormless lad in the Derry Girls mural has had his face replaced by Mickey Harte's.
Most depressing is the fact that the younger generation don't see the problem. For them, the soccer language of the new GAA has replaced the old language of community bonds and loyalty.
The GAA has become a tawdry outfit. At least the League of Ireland declares their salaries, perks and transfer fees. In ours, it is a foul travesty. The Derry board is part of the same hypocrisy. It is one thing to sell your soul, but for Mickey Harte?
Like Donald Trump, Mickey is entirely transactional. When he was ousted as manager for life from Tyrone via a players' WhatsApp poll, his disdain for outside coaches evaporated. Turns out it had always been his dream to manage Louth. There he was, a few months later, with his Tyrone assistant Gavin Devlin, posing with the Blackstone Renault boys (of Ryan Tubridy fame) in front of a brand new Renault car and van. All smiles.
Last week, I understand Malachy O'Rourke turned down the Derry job. Within 24 hours, Gavin Devlin (whose assistant manager at Ardboe is Chrissy McKaigue) and Harte had a firm offer on the table. From there, it was only a matter of informing the Louth chairman that all his dreams had come true. As Peter Fitzpatrick said: "Mickey told me he would love to win an All-Ireland before he retires and he thinks that Derry is the best chance for him."
When the GAA investigated under-the-table payments, former GAA president Peter Quinn famously said, "We couldn't even find the tables." Since then, a professional 'elite' has taken over the game. Clubs have lost faith in their own. Counties, apart from the successful ones, have lost faith in their own.
In the last 20 years, six counties have won Sam Maguire. Armagh (Joe Kernan), Tyrone (Mickey Harte, Fergal Logan, Brian Dooher), Kerry (Jack O'Connor, Pat O'Shea, Éamonn Fitzmaurice), Cork (Conor Counihan), Dublin (Pat Gilroy, Jim Gavin, Dessie Farrell), Donegal (Jimmy McGuinness). In that same time, the hurling winners are Kilkenny (Brian Cody), Cork (Dónal O'Grady, John Allen), Tipp (Liam Sheedy, Michael Ryan), Clare (David Fitzgerald), Galway (Micheál O'Donoghue), Limerick (John Kiely). Notice anything?
I have been arguing for 15 years that the GAA should make a simple rule that only a club man can manage his club, only a county man his county. So, club and county eligibility would be precisely the same as for players. This would return the game to amateur status, save clubs and counties a fortune and most importantly protect our ideal.
An outside manager comes in and his priority is not to be beaten. Blanket defending, heavy training, little regard for the overall welfare of our boys. This has helped to produce the boring, unadventurous dross we see at senior level.
Last Sunday, I went to see Crossmolina and Castlebar B in the intermediate championship. Martin Carney is on the line for Castlebar so sweepers are outlawed. What a brilliant game of football it was, end-to-end drama with three superb goals, reminding us what football used to be like. What a contrast to the sterile, hermetic world of senior football: all life coaches and nutritionists and video analysis and stats, at the end of which Dublin or Kerry and Kilkenny or Limerick still win the All-Ireland.
I coached underage teams in my club St Brigid's for 15 years. With passion and imagination and obsession. Loved the boys. Loved being part of their development on and off the pitch. We suffered joy and disaster and death.
Once when I was teaching them the rules of goalscoring, to the vast amusement of the group, I brought a blow-up doll to training (don't ask) and put her in nets. The idea we had was that the goalie is "a figure of fun" who only saves a shot if it is kicked at him or where he wants it to be kicked. Soon, we were firing in goals easy peasy.
By the time they were skilled and understood the game, we won two under 16 championships in a row, then played in two minor finals. The boys later went on to win the under 20 championship in thrilling style.
Then, the senior management post came up and I was invited to 'apply'. Gareth Bradley, John McKenna and me, who had soldiered with these boys since they were six-year-olds in the St Bride's tiny gym (we painted goalposts on the wall) sat before an interview panel of St Brigid's trusted friends and teammates.
We were asked what our budget was. We said "nothing." We were asked what we needed. We said, "The group will sort anything we need." I said we would contest a senior final within 12 months and be champions within two years. I explained how we would do it. We left the room enthused, ready to embark on this labour of love, as we knew there were no other St Brigid's people applying.
A few days later, the chairman, a friend of mine, rang me and said, "This is the hardest phone call I have ever had to make." I put the phone down. Turns out they paid an outside manager. A psychologist and training guru.
It was of course a disaster. Heavy blanket defence. Endless meetings and video analysis. Inspirational messages. Key players drifted away. Mind-numbing football. Rubbing salt into the wound, shortly after he was appointed he rang me to see if I would "sit down with me and go through what we have." He drifted on to somewhere else.
Me? I have never recovered from that. I feel the hurt yet. I cannot be in their company. If I am, I pass myself, as though chit chatting with a stranger.
I go to the games but it is not the same. Something precious has been lost. Something more important than football.

Omagh Ardboe. Dross so far

The Island beat by dmore. Now facing the playoffs

'You're just talking s***': Breathtaking rudeness of Seán Quinn


The former billionaire's new book tells his side of events at his former firms. He wanted to talk, but not to journalist Maeve Sheehan. Even so, he relented, invited her into his lakeside home — then told her what he thought about her
After multiple interviews, an RTÉ documentary called Quinn Country, plus a follow-up book by Trevor Birney, the documentary's director, Seán Quinn has published the story he says the media refused to publish: Seán Quinn, In My Own Words.
With a book to promote, his publisher contacted the Sunday Independent offering the first interview with the former billionaire from Derrylin, Co Fermanagh.
Editor Alan English assigned the interview to this reporter. I have covered the Quinn story often, but word came back that Quinn believed previous articles I had written "had a negative tone". There was a suggestion that sending a different journalist "would create a more comfortable atmosphere for the interview".
The editor declined to swap me for someone else, on the principle that authors promoting books ought not to have a veto over the interviewer.
I did not expect Seán Quinn to change his mind — a decision he had clearly regretted by the time we arrived at the gates of his mansion in Ballyconnell, Co Cavan, on Thursday morning.
He emerged from a side door, smiling and extending a hand to the journalist and the photographer standing in his courtyard by a glistening lake in the blinding sun.
But his words quickly belied his actions.
When I acknowledged that he would have preferred another journalist there, he replied with gusto. I had written "lies" about him for 10 years, the Sunday Independent should not have sent me, and I shouldn't be there. He expected us to be gone in 10 minutes.
And we hadn't even crossed the threshold.
With that unhappy opener, we went inside, hoping the mood would soften. And at times it did, in between him twice calling the interview to a halt, showering me with insults and having a set-to with photo- grapher Mark Condren — a veteran of conflict zones who, as he says himself, "takes no shit".
"The temperature is a little high," Quinn joked at the outset, as he settled into his chair at the head of the kitchen table. He wasn't talking about the mercury hitting 27 degrees.
His new book seemed the safest place to begin. He wrote it because "the media wouldn't tell my story, so I had to tell it myself".
The Quinn Country documentary broadcast by RTÉ last year, and the biography Quinn by documentary director Trevor Birney, were both "pure shite" and "unbelievable stuff" he said. Nevertheless, he liberally quotes from Birney's book in his own memoir, while RTÉ said the landmark documentary series was fair to everyone, including Quinn.
Getting his own account out there, helped by a sister and a daughter, has been a "relief".
"Yeah, I feel relaxed with the book. Yeah. I feel actually it's done and it's another... probably one of the faint chapters in my life. So I'm glad it's over and done and I'm pleased with it," he said.
Writing it every day made him realise "what had been done to me and what they'd taken from me. And when you start putting it [together], bit by bit, every day, every day, every day, you just say to yourself, 'Holy f**k'".
​
The story of self-made billionaire Quinn has never been more comprehensively told. He is the man who turned a sand and gravel pit into a global empire operating from the neglected Border counties; the man who gambled on Anglo Irish Bank shares and lost, triggering events that led to Quinn and his family being ousted from his empire in 2011.
His first-person account includes details of his humble childhood, a loving chapter on his wife and children, snippets about his admiration for people such as Adi Roche and Peter McVerry, his encounters with Dermot Desmond, the "honourable" financier who called Quinn "the man they couldn't hang", the "charming" former US president Barack Obama.
Much of the book charts his account of how Anglo Irish Bank, the regulators and the State worked to have the Quinns removed from their businesses.
Quinn writes that the "stage was set" for his destruction after he disclosed to Anglo Irish Bank bosses in 2007 that he controlled 25pc of the bank's shareholding through contracts for difference (CFDs) as the bank's share price tumbled. To stop him selling, flooding the market and destabilising the bank, Anglo lent him the money to pay the margin calls.
"If they had not injected the money illegally into their own shares, we would have had no option but to sell the CFDs," he writes. And Anglo was "determined" not to let him sell, and wanted the Quinns out of the group to stop them suing over "illegal loans".
He is scathing about his former management team who now run his old businesses and who, he says, hung him out to dry.
His "biggest misjudgments" were appointing Liam McCaffrey CEO and Dara O'Reilly financial director to the Quinn Group. Among other things, he accuses McCaffrey of taking €500,000 from a Quinn Group company to cover his own losses in CFDs. (One source said he legitimately borrowed €50,000 and paid it back in full.)
He sets out the regulatory breaches at Quinn Insurance — which in 2019 led to a Central Bank inquiry and ultimate settlement with McCaffrey and Kevin Lunney (another of his former executives). The Central Bank discontinued its investigation into Quinn and called him as a witness.
He writes that Kevin Lunney's abduction "insulated" the directors from unfavourable comment, saying: "They were the darlings of the media, and boy, did they milk it."
Sitting at his kitchen table, Quinn was happy to talk about the transactions and betrayals on the road to his downfall. But he seemed less happy being questioned on it.
When I asked if he continued to invest in CFDs after disclosing his bombshell to Anglo, he asked me to stop "cross-examining" him about his account.
"Everything in the book is accurate," he said.
Asked if he is a person who blames others, he said: "I am not big into the blame game. No, I don't believe in it. I believe that people of character do not try to put blame on to somebody else."
For his part, Quinn said he accepts blame for investing in Anglo CFDs and "that's it".
The conversation stuttered on before landing on another unexpected trigger. His memoir refers to the hurt he feels every day at the "power" he gave his former executives.
I asked him to describe the hurt he felt, if he could sleep at night, if it consumed him?
He replied: "I'm not going into it any more. In fact, I think I'll stop the interview, because I was trying to be sociable. I have written the book. You have been very uncomplimentary to me for 10 years. I've forgiven all that. And I've tried to work with you, and you are just going on and on and on."
He didn't stop. He just continued to berate me, accusing me of "belitt- ling" him during our last interview (in November 2021) and asking why I hadn't published criminal allegations made against him by John McCartin, a former Fine Gael councillor who is a director of Mannok, along with Lunney, McCaffrey and O'Reilly
At a loss, I eventually asked him what he wanted me to ask him about.
He didn't want me to ask him anything at all, because I was not the "appropriate person" to interview him about the book.
"I made that clear. They insisted on doing it. So I can't see how you could come along and ask me questions."
He was only warming up.
"Most people, most people including my own family say, 'What in the name of God are you letting that bitch into this house for?'
"I said, 'Look, I'll talk to her. I respect everybody and she's a proud, respectable woman in a lot of ways. But she has done me a lot of damage and she doesn't understand what happened'."
His rudeness was breathtaking, like a car crash unfolding.
The mood darkened further when I asked a question about the Anglo deal that converted Quinn's CFDs to shares that were bought in the name of his wife and five children. The transaction was insisted upon by the bank. Quinn says it was implemented without "any meeting or discussion" with his family.
He had gone to London, where he got legal advice that the action was "totally illegal", he said.
I asked if he told his children then what was happening? Did they know what was happening, what was being done in their name?
"I'm going to stop this interview because you're just talking shit now. You read the f**king book and now you're talking shit to me. So, there's no point in going any further," he said.
He was now angry.
"You shouldn't be here, because you're a critic of mine. You're not a balanced person."
He called "an end to the discussion" and rose to his feet.
Photographer Condren had yet to take a picture. Quinn gave him "three minutes" to take one outside.
"Let me set it up then," said Mark.
"You going to mess me about again?" said Quinn.
"No, I'm setting up a light, Seán."
"You had the f**king last hour to set it up."
After a bit of back and forth, Condren tried to reason with him.
"Listen, Seán, listen. I'm a photographer. I have nothing to do with this, right? I'm a simple photographer. OK? Trying to do a photograph, trying to do my job, right? So, if you have a problem with that, I've no problem leaving."
"All right. Leave," said Quinn.
Condren challenged him again, and Quinn now deflected his behaviour on to me.
"Do you not feel there is an aggressor here?" Quinn asked Condren.
"Who is the aggressor, Seán?" I asked.
"You."
"Do you feel I have been aggressive in my questioning?"
"Yes. Yes. Yes."
Quinn eventually agreed to the photo. "Well, if you do it quick."
Condren said later that when they went outside, he told Quinn he didn't care who he was, he wasn't going to take that behaviour from anyone. He said Quinn apologised and shook his hand.
Quinn later referred to their contretemps as a "test".
He resumed his insults when he came back inside. I invited him to read from the written statement in his notebook. With minimal encouragement, he sat back down at his kitchen table and began to read.
"I believe the appointment of the administrator to Quinn Insurance was wrong. I believe the appointment of a share receiver [to the Quinn Group] was illegal because it was based on illegal loans," he read.
"And I believe that the deal that was hatched between the management in Quinn in 2014 and the bondholders was also illegal. And the fact that there has been tens of millions of pounds of reported fraud since then that hasn't been investigated by the gardai, I feel that is totally wrong.
"I believe that Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan knew that the loans were illegal, and they knew they couldn't put in the share receiver and they had to wait. They were a barrister and a solicitor [by profession]. And it had to wait for two teachers, [Enda] Kenny and [Michael] Noonan, that they put in the share receiver."
He said Leo Varadkar was "best friends with John McCartin... and had slept in his house and attended a meeting in the packaging factory".
​
There is nothing to be gained from reporting on the many other slights and put-downs that poured out of Quinn's mouth over the two hours of interview. There is no pleasure in reporting any of it.
His behaviour came to dominate the interview to the extent that not to report on it would be an unfair reflection of what happened.
In fairness to him, and as he made abundantly clear, he believes I have written unfair and untrue things about him, and he did not want me there in the first place.
In fairness to me, I was assigned to the job and was happy to do it. I have written sympathetically about Kevin Lunney and his colleagues following his abduction and torture. The journalism Quinn complained bitterly about is on record. He never did specify what "lies" I told.
At the outset, I suggested to Quinn that we take a different approach.
"Like?" he asked.
"No antagonism," I said.
And there were periods when he spoke to me without hostility, mostly about his family, his grandchildren and the people who have supported him in his community, his many achievements.
His family are glad he has written the book, he said. They "know that everything in the book is true, they know that I'm right to tell the people that are supportive of me the truth — which they haven't got from you, or the media, or the courts".
Quinn said he was happier last week than he had been at any time over the last 10 years, now he has told the story he says the media wouldn't tell. He didn't write it for "people like me", he said ("It's just beyond belief the sort of individual you are," he added). It's for his supporters, so they can know they were on the right side all along.
"I would like the people in this area to know that I'm not a cheat, I'm not a gangster, I'm not a fraudster. I never stole anything that didn't belong to me. I want people to understand that and know that," he said.
He does not agree that tensions have eased. He said the "level of hatred" is so high that "those individuals can only go into certain shops in certain places", he added.
He met Tony Lunney, Kevin's brother, on the morning of the interview.
"There was no salute."
He was once very fond of both, but believes forgiveness is not on him.
"I'll take a lead from Fr O'Reilly. So whenever he moves, I move," he said, referring to the priest who condemned the unnamed "paymaster" behind the attack on Kevin Lunney.
Quinn is launching the book with his family on Thursday in the Slieve Russell, the hotel he built next door that he hopes will return to Quinn ownership. He has not set foot in the hotel for eight or nine years, but chose it because it is a "Quinn venue".
The fraught interview ended amiably enough. Quinn got to his feet. He extended his hand, and I shook it. I told him then that the repeated personal insults he threw at me were offensive and rude. He looked at me, but he didn't say anything.
I had already turned away when his hand shot out for the second time. I took it, I suppose instinctively, thinking it might be a conciliatory gesture.
"What's this for?" I asked.
His response made no sense to me. "I forgot the first time," he said, with a laugh.
​
'Seán Quinn: In My Own Words' is published by Red Stripe Press and is out now

Thought he died years ago tbh.

Was decent from memory

Specialised in British politicians. ((male obviously )
When thatcher came along in 79 as PM was beginning of the end of the big time tv for him

Mickey Yarwood. Impressionist
Massive TV star in the 70s