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An update here:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/katherine-zappone-warns-over-dna-testing-of-tuam-remains-1.3339791?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

The Min warns that the DNA route may not be very good at identifying remains and mentions the cost a few times.

I have an awful dislike of this woman. She laps up the Twitterati praise and is all over Repeal the Eight but is silent on major issues like child homelessness and then she isn't too keen on putting the resources in place to investigate Tuam. As noted by one of the lads in the Examiner, she also is failing to look at other possible sites.
She is a dose!

Apart from the desire and will to do it, and the will to train the conditions to create that drive is massively important.
If you are from a club that is a typical bad junior club i.e. the drinking, half-arsed training and the likes, then the glass ceiling is very low. I spoke about this with a lad from a nearby club as to why our club produced the odd county man down the years and theirs never seemed to.
If his club had a county minor they were the best thing going and they coasted for a few years. In other clubs, you have senior county men to learn from and look up to. You go to the local pitch and you see these lads playing and then you watch them on TV or in Croke Park.
That is a massive thing. Your goals are raised and the whole club has a certain high standard to aim toward.

Parents and coaches giving positive encouragement to make the kids want to do is another HUGE thing. If a kid who could be a late bloomer is feeling crap every time he comes home from a game or training they will hardly do the extra bits in the first place.
I do worry looking at some club coaches and I can see them making football and hurling a chore for kids with their own insecurities.

This is a great read and fair play to the young lad for wanting to do this. He shouldn't have to.
I know there are people pointing out some hypocrisy with LFC and Suarez, but I'd rather they f**k off for a few hours and applaud this young fella.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/dec/28/liverpool-rhian-brewster-racial-abuse-england-uefa

FIFA will be under serious pressure in Russia to keep a lid on some of this shite.

The problem is now he might get his 300m and buy two players and somehow there will still be two converted wingers in the full back slots. Now in fairness they are doing well but digging at City who have rebuilt their defence, including a young keeper is stupid.
As I said United will go all out for huge names and then it'll be a shoe-horn job.
Pep had a lot of those lads but he has improved so many of the players that would have been benched earning millions if they were with United. On paper up top and in midfield there is still plenty of class. De Gea is class as is Bailly who is sorely missed.
All the talk of spending and you have to look at the facts Rashford and Lingard were free, as was Ibra.  In the case of City they have spend shitloads but feckin hell what an end product. They are class.
United will splash out again in January and not get any closer. It's harsh on them in fairness as City are humming right now, but they could sustain it for a few years with so many young players.

All prices are for Guinness/ Smithwicks.
Post work drinks in Dublin are now €5.10 a pint. Then on the walk home Northside I get one for €4.50.
A great spot at the top of Camden St area is O'Connells who have pints for €4.50 last time I was there. Everywhere else around them is 50-60c more.

In the locals at home in Kildare you are looking at €4.30-€4.50.

That was a mad aul listen. Betrayed by his own people!
I can take or leave Rorys Stories but he is clever and he has aligned himself well within the GAA and gets talking at things like the Youth Forum. He has a massive following from the teen age group.

Buff clearly hates him and if he played himself less angry he could be getting gigs like that too. He hates the Two Johnnies too. Another rival faction.
These internet people are very touchy!

Managing the local club is fecking a thankless task unless you win things. There is always a history and backstory element. If a lad is taking a wedge too, then the grief would make it even worse.
The problem is that when one crowd do something in the GAA the outside man is the magic bullet. Unfortunately, by the time they are found out the year is wasted along with minimum 10k.

Has anyone mentioned Pat Gilroy here?
Christ, he built up a multi-million euro company. He managed a team to an All Ireland win and he is back in Ireland again full time.
I don't think there are many agin the man either. He always strikes me as decent and the fact he stopped that clapping to the Hill pre-match from the Dubs shows he isn't into BS.

Yes, stopping a team clapping at supporters is a really salient point for the position of director-general of the GAA.

That may have been just a little additional thing to show where he comes to things from a personal GAA standpoint. He cuts out BS.
But fair play for ignoring the fact that he has played inter-county, managed a team to an All Ireland on top of running a multi-million euro company in Dalkia.
Thanks for zooming in on that btw. Here is a bit on Gilroy in terms of him meeting your standards.

Former Dubs manager Pat Gilroy is one of the country's top businessmen. He is boss of Veolia Energy Ireland plc, a water, waste and energy management firm. Veolia is on an expansion drive with plans to boost its Irish workforce to 800 by 2019.
Gilroy won the All-Ireland senior football final with Dublin in 2011, having previously won it as a player in 1995.
His firm is part of the French-owned Veolia group and was renamed Veolia Energy Ireland plc from Dalkia Ireland plc in 2014.
Veolia still owns a 20pc stake in Luas operator Transdev, but is gradually winding down its transport assets in order to focus on its utilities solutions business.
Gilroy is an engineering graduate from Trinity College. He previously held roles in the ESB and Amdahl Ireland.
Gilroy worked as general manager of Dalkia in Ireland before becoming managing director in 2005. During the period from 2002 to 2008 the energy business grew from €14m turnover to €120m.
A former president of the Ireland-France Chamber of Commerce, he is well-known in Irish business circles as a board member of the SEAI and a member of the Ibec national council.

Has anyone mentioned Pat Gilroy here?
Christ, he built up a multi-million euro company. He managed a team to an All Ireland win and he is back in Ireland again full time.
I don't think there are many agin the man either. He always strikes me as decent and the fact he stopped that clapping to the Hill pre-match from the Dubs shows he isn't into BS.

Ah I know he has his 'helper' but still a lad who will be there for a while. Elsewhere in Kildare you have Glenn Ryan, Brian Flanagan and Karl Ennis who are all former Lilywhites with their own club.

Honestly just wondering what the scene is like in other counties here. There were mad stories in boom times. i know one club who were always within a whisker of winning IFC. Their local manager thought they needed to kick on so they paid BIG cash to a former county star from another county.
He didn't even know all the players names and was ran half-way through the year.

I see Michael Foley and Christy O'Connor have updated their study from a few years ago.
Money isn't as high but there are still lots paying nice chunks of change to lads from outside.

http://www.offtheball.com/podcasts/GAA_on_Off_The_Ball/GAA_on_Off_The_Ball/59006/The_Price_of_GAA_Club_Success

Just looking in Kildare there seems to be a trend for more homegrown and when you see a 32-year-old in-house man in the form of Ross Glavin win a Leinster Club with Moorefield it might focus the minds a bit.
We have a good spread of counties on here and, it is that time of year, so how is it with your club. Are there lads being brought in or are funds being watched more than Celtic Tiger times?

True. But i just think that so many more talented teams on paper don't dig in and scrap like them.
Even today Lomans looked like better ballers for most of the match but still couldnt put Moorefield away.
Murray, O'Connor and Sweeney were immense.

If only the county team had half of the heart that Moorefield have.

Amazing to win it without Tyrrell, Houlihan or Ciarán Kelly.

They will have to build a statue to Roli. Mr Moorefield.

Moorefield are a team of committed die hard club men. None moreso than Sweeney. Kildare county lads don't dig deep for their clubs every time and that has affected the county team IMO.
The Moores just know how to win it and the fact that they didn't fold helped to cause a lot of the Lomans panic.
I was fully ecpecting black cards in injury time but Lonans were too nice. Mental game!

Is there any backstory to this. The two clubs are closeby...
I know of lads who switched clubs in the hope of staking a county claim, but that isn´t the case here.
Also if there was a rip-roaring row usually the team that is losing out digs in their heals and lodges an appeal.
Just all seems a bit pointless for him to dump his home club...

A lovely bit of f**k you thrown in by DCC. 
I can´t stomach the man. How did we end up with him and Bono?! Can we swap them for the Boss?
Of course, Sir Bob could always win back his honour by actually doing something like organise a homeless event in Dublin, but that might only get him on RTE and he craves the BBC. It also isn't a world issue so who cares, it's just his home town with ordinary people suffering...