Messages

ONeills making scrubs is pr bullshit. Hospitals need ventilators, masks, gloves and aprons. Not shiny new scrubs.

you are jumping to a lot of conclusions there and personal abuse is not permitted on this site .

I'm jumping to conclusions? From the gibbering idiot that thinks the Chinese concocted this to make money?

Any personal abuse you get you deserve for thinking like that.

where did I say they concocted this to make money ? Are they selling medical supplies all over the globe ?

You clearly implied it.

The thing is if you order a holiday then the travel agents still have to pay their staff, the airline still has to pay theirs, the hotel still have to pay theirs. All have over heads as well. It's difficult for anyone to accept the whole financial burden be it customer, business or insurer.

You have to have a bit of sympathy for all involved. Likewise calls for the government to carry the burden aren't so simple either. Don't forget us taxpayers are the fund behind the government. Are we all content to have our taxes used to bailout people's holidays? We would rather spend it on that ahead of hospitals/roads/schools/social welfare?

I'm not saying the government should or shouldn't get involved here but obviously in the face of what is going to be the cause of the next global recession they can't just simply start signing blank checks as they did with the bank bailouts.

This is going to be harder to negotiate economically than it will be to handle in terms of public health.

Have heard from a health care worker that due to the pressure on icu in Italy that they're implementing a triage system. Effectively that means everyone above a certain age or with a complicating factor is denied access to ICU and left to fight the disease themselves on a side ward. The vast majority of these patients will invariably die.

Good weekend for a Tyrone football. Great win for 20's against Donegal - well done to all the players and management, of which there were quite a few.

Seen a group photo of the full backroom team and was shocked to be honest. A big number of people involved. Does anyone know their roles or even who they are - didn't recognise some of them to be honest.

Good luck to them all in the All Ireland series

That "back room team" photo contains st least one county board official. Throw in a kit man, doctor, 1 or 2 physios, coach and manager and it's not hard to make it look like a big back room team. In reality I'd say less than half of those are at your average training session.

I know it wouldn't achieve anything but I'd like to see everyone who said "it's just the flu" bull whipped.

Bulls shouldn't be whipped, that's animal cruelty 

Yeah I'm not advocating bulls being whipped just people who don't give a f**k about a virus that's killing thousands of people.

I know it wouldn't achieve anything but I'd like to see everyone who said "it's just the flu" bull whipped.

What was the 15mill spent on at Thurles?

We need to acknowledge these white elephant projects are achieving f**k all. Pairc Ui Choamh is the same clusterfuck. It's time the top brass reeled in the provinces and county boards over their spending. The amount of cash being pissed up the wall currently is no joke.

If we all leave county bias at the door it's centrally located stadia we need in each province that can facilitate neutral matches. Building large, resource sucking stadiums on the periphery of the country with little in the way of appeal to facilitating neutral games is pointless. PUC, casement and McHale in reality are large vanity projects for those involved which have been a hangman's noose for the county and provincial (casement) boards that pushed them.

Semple and Limerick host a large number of matches each year and have obvious benefits of being close to major road infrastructure. Yet both are rotting into the ground whilst an inaccessible 100million stadium in cork city lies empty. Casement will be the exact same. A lovely looking stadium that will be full once a year at best, maybe only once every 2 but will lie idle the vast majority of the time. Really the home of Ulster GAA should be at Dungannon or Armagh. Centrally located in province and close to good road infrastructure. Clones is the home of the GAA because at the time it was the central point in the northern rail network, making it an accessible site for fans to travel too. It was a logical, rational choice to have it as the home of the Ulster GAA. Now once again a rational and logical decision should be made to abandon the large scale casement project and invest the 60 odd million in a centrally located stadium that can accommodate both a county's home matches and a large number of neutral club and county, womens, underage and hurling matches that means unlike the cork debacle we can actually get some use out of the damn thing.

It's news to me that both Semple and the Gaelic grounds are "rotting into the ground"

When Thurles has the best sod in the country outside of croke park and there's been nearly €15m spend on it in the last 5 years as well being the only stadium outside of CP to have Hawkeye,The Gaelic Grounds is also fit for purpose,held a Munster final last year and is well able to cater for attendances,far in excess of what is ever needed in Ulster.

I went too far saying that "they're rotting into the ground" but they are dated stadiums that really look every bit of their age. They're cold/unwelcoming stadiums in inclement weather and when you look at the quality and appearance of rugby stadiums in the Champions Cup or even Championship soccer they don't compare well at all. An outsider looking in would hardly believe that Thurles is the home of hurling and the GAA's second flagship stadium.

The general point is that the GAA should exercise more oversight on county boards and 100m would have been better spent on a 30/30/40 split between PUC/Limerick and Thurles.

There was €15m spent on Thurles and your calling it dated and sub par

You now want to spend €30/40m on it to bring it up to top end rugby stadiums?

You'd want to be spending multiples of that to bring up it to those standards.

Thurles and the Gaelic Grounds more than does the job for what it's intended

Thomond Park was redeveloped for 40 million. Ravenhill for 20 million. Even allowing for the extra capacity of Thurles the economy of scale would certainly keep it under 50 or 60.

We need to acknowledge these white elephant projects are achieving f**k all. Pairc Ui Choamh is the same clusterfuck. It's time the top brass reeled in the provinces and county boards over their spending. The amount of cash being pissed up the wall currently is no joke.

If we all leave county bias at the door it's centrally located stadia we need in each province that can facilitate neutral matches. Building large, resource sucking stadiums on the periphery of the country with little in the way of appeal to facilitating neutral games is pointless. PUC, casement and McHale in reality are large vanity projects for those involved which have been a hangman's noose for the county and provincial (casement) boards that pushed them.

Semple and Limerick host a large number of matches each year and have obvious benefits of being close to major road infrastructure. Yet both are rotting into the ground whilst an inaccessible 100million stadium in cork city lies empty. Casement will be the exact same. A lovely looking stadium that will be full once a year at best, maybe only once every 2 but will lie idle the vast majority of the time. Really the home of Ulster GAA should be at Dungannon or Armagh. Centrally located in province and close to good road infrastructure. Clones is the home of the GAA because at the time it was the central point in the northern rail network, making it an accessible site for fans to travel too. It was a logical, rational choice to have it as the home of the Ulster GAA. Now once again a rational and logical decision should be made to abandon the large scale casement project and invest the 60 odd million in a centrally located stadium that can accommodate both a county's home matches and a large number of neutral club and county, womens, underage and hurling matches that means unlike the cork debacle we can actually get some use out of the damn thing.

It's news to me that both Semple and the Gaelic grounds are "rotting into the ground"

When Thurles has the best sod in the country outside of croke park and there's been nearly €15m spend on it in the last 5 years as well being the only stadium outside of CP to have Hawkeye,The Gaelic Grounds is also fit for purpose,held a Munster final last year and is well able to cater for attendances,far in excess of what is ever needed in Ulster.

I went too far saying that "they're rotting into the ground" but they are dated stadiums that really look every bit of their age. They're cold/unwelcoming stadiums in inclement weather and when you look at the quality and appearance of rugby stadiums in the Champions Cup or even Championship soccer they don't compare well at all. An outsider looking in would hardly believe that Thurles is the home of hurling and the GAA's second flagship stadium.

The general point is that the GAA should exercise more oversight on county boards and 100m would have been better spent on a 30/30/40 split between PUC/Limerick and Thurles.

We need to acknowledge these white elephant projects are achieving f**k all. Pairc Ui Choamh is the same clusterfuck. It's time the top brass reeled in the provinces and county boards over their spending. The amount of cash being pissed up the wall currently is no joke.

If we all leave county bias at the door it's centrally located stadia we need in each province that can facilitate neutral matches. Building large, resource sucking stadiums on the periphery of the country with little in the way of appeal to facilitating neutral games is pointless. PUC, casement and McHale in reality are large vanity projects for those involved which have been a hangman's noose for the county and provincial (casement) boards that pushed them.

Semple and Limerick host a large number of matches each year and have obvious benefits of being close to major road infrastructure. Yet both are rotting into the ground whilst an inaccessible 100million stadium in cork city lies empty. Casement will be the exact same. A lovely looking stadium that will be full once a year at best, maybe only once every 2 but will lie idle the vast majority of the time. Really the home of Ulster GAA should be at Dungannon or Armagh. Centrally located in province and close to good road infrastructure. Clones is the home of the GAA because at the time it was the central point in the northern rail network, making it an accessible site for fans to travel too. It was a logical, rational choice to have it as the home of the Ulster GAA. Now once again a rational and logical decision should be made to abandon the large scale casement project and invest the 60 odd million in a centrally located stadium that can accommodate both a county's home matches and a large number of neutral club and county, womens, underage and hurling matches that means unlike the cork debacle we can actually get some use out of the damn thing.

[seeing in what France have done and still managed to hammer what was the RWC Finalists, makes you wonder if someone was brave enough, who knows.]

OK so hear me out as I am being shot down in a rugby WhatsApp group by lads who know a lot more than me BUT...
I'm told that there are serious lads coming up...BUT...not many new faces
I'm told that there are new tactics in place...BUT...Box Kick Murray is still at it and we have no width or offloads
I'm told that Andy Farrell is just in the door...BUT...he knows these lads inside out already and knows who could be brought in too.

Then I was totally shot down for saying we should feck one 6 Nations series for the sake of building...BUT...then you read stuff about the IRFU (no matter they say) care more for the 6 Nations as it brings coin and they can't afford a bad year.
Are we going to settle this year and do OK, and then rebuild next year?

There are good players coming through, problem is....they are mostly Leinster players and will they get the gametime needed? 

Farrell will be a good coach, I was a bit disheartened at the weekend....but it was a win none the less against Scotland. Suppose he didn't have the luxury of a summer or November series to get some testing out of the way either so perhaps I was too harsh in wanting Earls, Aki and Murray dropped.

I don't think you can ever bum off a six nations, but seeing in what France have done and still managed to hammer what was the RWC Finalists, makes you wonder if someone was brave enough, who knows. The French as RWC hosts are definitely planning for the future but they might just have stumbled upon gold....if.....they can sort out their away form, which I suppose is irrelevant in 2023

France won the last two U20 World Cups. Ireland finished 8th and 11th in those competitions.

Probably fair to say that France are better positioned to revamp their squad at the minute.

Not necessarily. Ireland have James Ryan and co waiting to take over from the current incumbents

Who's "James Ryan and co." I'm looking forward to that long list.

Especially as we'll all be living in €65,000 houses, will have no tax to pay, everything will be free.......
Why didnt someone think of all this before?
Who said 1977?

Lad, what slightly irritates me is this snobbery around SF's lack of financial know how. I mean when you consider the mess the country is in today, homelessness, a childrens hospital out of control and hospital services that are almost 3rd world (to name a few) brought to you by the financial experts in FF and FG. Who are they or their supporters to throw stones. They have royally fucked the country. For christ sake FF ran it to bankruptcy and had the IMF in and their leader was a minister in that government!

You've never been to a 3rd world if you think the health service, level of homelessness and what is being spent on a children's hospital are 3rd world.

The MOT centre debacle rolls on. Mine is due on 8th Feb. Anyone any idea when this will all be sorted out?!

That's pure horse shit too. There's f**k the much wrong with any photos I seen of those car lifts. If they'd work away until they got them fixed/replaced it wouldn't do anyone any harm.

A lot of people seem to be impressed by Burns at FF so far but I'm not sold myself.

Think Ronan O'Neill deserves his start, not convinced he will be the answer but he's been in good scoring form pre season.

I thought Grugan was very poor last day out, would like to have seen Coney get a start at 11 and thought Michael O'Neill was very good the last day out and I'd preferred to have seen him there over McCann.

Hope to see Kerr off the bench, he has some genuine pace we are lacking inside.

Id rather see Kerr start instead of RON. For all the abuse Harte gets its his loyalty to the likes of RON (who has never proven it at the top level) over the likes of Kerr (who could be a future star) that is hardest to take.